Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast
Get to know the brightest and boldest names in European tech with Sifted’s weekly podcast, hosted by Amy Lewin. She interviews the founders, operators and investors building Europe’s most exciting startups and, in conversation with Sifted’s expert journalists, pulls back the curtain on the most intriguing companies they’ve been reporting on.
Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast
Nothing founder Carl Pei: ‘If you’re serious about hardware, you should spend time in China’
Few founders have the know-how — or the guts — to take on Apple. But Carl Pei, founder and CEO of London-based startup Nothing, is one of them. Nothing makes smartphones and earphones at a fraction of Apple’s price, has shipped millions of units, raised $200m in September at a $1.3bn price tag — and is now exploring AI-native devices and apps.
In this episode, host Amy Lewin sits down with Carl to explore how Nothing is approaching prototyping new devices, why Europe has struggled to produce globally successful hardware startups and what a future of personalised phones might actually look like.
Carl also shares how spending time in China taught him the hardware ecosystem’s secrets, why India represents one of the biggest opportunities of our lifetime and which early-stage founder he has on his radar.