‘Be part of Nothing’: Carl Pei wants tech community to invest in his new company, build products together

OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei’s next consumer tech company, that’s literally called ‘Nothing’, is seeking new investors. After having secured $7 million seed financing from big-name investors including iPod inventor Tony Fadell, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, YouTuber Casey Neistat, an undisclosed amount from CRED founder Kunal Shah, and another $15 million in Series A funding led by Alphabet VC arm GV (formerly Google Ventures), Nothing is opening the platform for its tech-enthusiast community so it can ‘be part of Nothing’ and help create its future products.

More specifically, $1.5 million worth of shares will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis to general public, at the same price as Nothing’s wider Series A funding round led by GV. To be clear, you can’t invest in Nothing just yet, though you can sign up for what the company is calling an early access to the funding platform by heading over to https://nothing.tech/. Sign up is as simple as submitting your email address. Those who sign up will be able to invest in Nothing on March 2 via Crowdcube.

Aside from holding equity, potential shareholders will be eligible for some exclusive benefits, to be announced later, and get access to the company’s private forum. Nothing also plans to elect one of the investors as a Community Board Member, to “ensure the community is always heard and never left behind.” More importantly, this shareholder community will be part of Nothing’s journey from the very start and play an active role in it, Carl Pei said in a statement.

Nothing is yet to announce its first product, but Carl Pei and Co. are already generating a lot of hype in the way they are going about fashioning the new venture.

Pei’s role as co-founder of OnePlus saw him actively engage with the tech-enthusiast community while designing products, an experience that is clearly being carried forward to Nothing. In fact, some would say, Pei is taking things to an all-new level, without even having a product on the table. Pei had a reputation of building hype around OnePlus products in a certain way, drip-feeding information that always left fans asking for more. Something very similar is happening with Nothing as well.

In an interview with Bloomberg recently, Pei had confirmed that Nothing’s first product will be a pair of TWS earbuds, set to launch sometime this summer, though no further details were shared. Going forward Nothing is looking to launch a suite of connected devices that will apparently be able to talk to each other. The sentiments seem quite in sync with what Andy Rubin’s start-up Essential was trying to do recently, before calling it quits.

Signs that Nothing may go down the ‘Essential’ route have always been there, and a new 9to5Google report suggests the company now (also) owns the rights to Andy Rubin’s brand. Nothing is yet to confirm this, but whatever it is, one thing’s certain: Pei seems to be in no mood to settle.