 Good afternoon, Helsinki. Sounds like everybody's been having an amazing slush. I feel we're just going on before the judging, the Slush 100, which is really exciting. But one of my roles is that I'm a partner of 500 startups. And I deal with all sorts of amazing startups and the journeys the founders take. And Carl, I got to know a couple of years ago. We met in the basement of a Korean restaurant, in fact, at a karaoke bar. And it's true in the darkest depths the most unusual friendships are made. I've had a great pleasure of getting to know Carl over the last couple of years, even visiting him out in Shenzhen. And what I love about Carl is that not only is he all typical Swede and that he's very humble and very demure and seems to like herring, which I don't understand. Who likes herring, really? Vish? No? Anyway, is that he is an excellent storyteller. And so what I really love is that he's here to tell stories today about how not to die as a startup. Not how to make a million dollars, how to find your next unicorn, but how not to die. And I think it's really refreshing. So, Carl, why not to die? Well, I think first let's ask the people here. Who here has heard about OnePlus before? Can you please raise your hand? What? That is insane. I know that a lot of people here are from other countries, but for those of you who don't know, OnePlus is actually kind of a big deal here in Finland. I saw it as I came in. You have this enormous billboard as I was coming in and I was like, oh my God, that is amazing. So here we're working with the largest national carrier. It's called Elisa. Yeah. And over the past 12 months, OnePlus has been the number one selling phone every month. What? Number what? Ahead of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy. It's a good product. Wow. That's amazing. You must be so proud. Give it up. I mean, you're what, a four-year-old company now? In two weeks, we're four years old. Yeah. Two weeks, four years old. That's incredible, bro. It's been a really interesting journey. I mean, in our first year, we did more than $300 million in revenue. And we're available in over 30 countries. And just two weeks ago, we launched our brand new product, the OnePlus 5T. And we did it at an event in Williamsburg in New York. Well, it's funny you should mention that because we've got a OnePlus 5T on screen. It's a good-looking phone, right? The funny thing about this event was that we had 500 people, and most of them were our users. And they actually had to pay $40 to see the show. Oh, in Williamsburg, they paid $40 to come to an opening event. Exactly. And we had one guy fly in from Argentina to see it. So it was really heartwarming to see this. I mean, I think this is what I love the most about the business you've built, right? Your customers don't just use your products. They fall in love with them. You are literally the Romeo of the mobile phone world. No. Like, while all this is important, I mean, sales are important for any company. But for us as a product company, the most important thing is still the product and what people feel about our product, their feedback. So the OnePlus 5T has been out for a while, two weeks, and it's gotten a great review so far. Well, it's funny you should mention that. I was surfing the internet, and look what I found. Yeah. So there we got our advertising in. Yeah, sorry, guys. We had to, right? You know. Anyway, less about advertising, more about the stories that you've had along the way. Because the thing I love about OnePlus is that when you were building it, you were building it such that it was the time of the Samsung Galaxy and the terrible TouchWiz interfaces. And you just said no to that. Yeah, so we created this company back in 2013. And the early employees, we sat around the table and like you do, you put your phone on the table and we realized that everyone was using an iPhone. And that's why we started asking ourselves, why is this the case? It felt like back then, all the Android brands focused more on who could have the most features instead of design and build quality. On the other hand, you had Apple. We really put a lot of emphasis on the design and the details. So we said, hey, there must be Android users out there who also care about these things. So that was our big opportunity. We wanted to build the best Android flagship smartphone. And at the same time, we also thought that the way people were selling phones wasn't very smart. There were a lot of middlemen making the phone much more expensive than it needed to. So we started selling direct to consumers and cutting out the middlemen, having a great product at a much more fair price. And I guess that's what you did right early on. Like in your first eight months, you had that $300 million in revenue. And it must have totally changed your company, right? That rocker ship. I remember you were telling me about how you had a lot of trouble hiring people at the beginning. Yeah, I think a lot of us who run startups in the beginning, it's really hard to hire people because we were this really obscure company. No one had heard about us. We were foreign. We're based out of China. So people were afraid. And I understand that. But it all changed the first year after we made our first product, the OnePlus One. It got so much coverage. I think Fortune, New York Times were on TV. And just overnight, from not being able to hire anyone, period, we got so many nice resumes coming in from people who worked at Apple before, or Google, or Uber, or even from Wall Street firms. Wow. And so I guess you must have just jumped at the bit to hire an ex-Googler, ex-Facebook people, these people who you couldn't imagine ever working with eight months ago. We felt validated. We felt like all the hard work had paid off. And we were, in a way, grateful that these people with such nice resumes would even consider working at our company. So we hired a few of these rock stars. And how did it go? I mean, it must have totally transformed your company. Well, in the beginning, we thought we became successful because we had all these name brand people at our company. But very soon, we felt like things took a turn for the worse. Oh. The morale didn't feel as good anymore. And I think a lot of our early employees felt disrespected that we, all of a sudden, hired a lot of these shiny people into our company. And they were making the calls in the company. And they also felt like they were smarter than the other people. I have this one story where this one person that we hired from Uber, and she had only been at the company for one month. And one morning, she takes me aside. She tells me the solution to all our problems is to fire the entire team. Wait, wait, wait. She'd been in the company for one month and then said she wanted to fire everybody else. And start from scratch and build a better team. So that's when we knew that the approach we were taking to talent was completely wrong. So what are the one or two things that you'd look for, maybe even three things that you'd look for now when you're hiring? So the mistake we made was that we were hiring for pedigree instead of character. So today, we really take character very seriously. So we would ask questions like, we would ask ourselves, actually, would this person stay at our company for five to 10 years? Because it takes time to become really good at something. Cool. And I guess what about the approaches to thinking about OnePlus and the way they think about the customer? The smartphone industry is really competitive. So I would really like them to tell me why they think OnePlus can be successful. This shows that they understand the brand. And finally, we try and look for people who are self-reflective and have high standards for themselves. So I would ask them questions like, now we're nearing the end of the year. What were your New Year's resolutions at the beginning of the year? And how well are you doing on implementing those? Ooh, interesting. So have you had any interesting New Year's resolutions? Unfortunately, I haven't had a really good answer to this question, because I think most people, when they set goals, they're very vague. Like, I'm going to lose some weight. But how much weight are you going to lose? And by what time will you lose it? I don't know. Interesting. So you like to apply people who apply KPIs to their real life as well as their jobs? I think it's important to set clear goals. Or else you don't know where you're going, be it in your personal development or in your company growth. Interesting. Interesting. So moving on from metrics, one of the other stories we've talked about in the past is how it's like you, at one point, tried to take over the world with your devices, if I remember correctly. And that's where you learn to remember correctly. You always talk about you have to be the master of your own land before taking on another. Right. So we launched our first phone. It went much better than we thought. And everyone was covering us with a lot of buzz about our brand. I began getting recognized, sometimes on the streets. A famous fame. We almost won. We got nominated for TechCrunch Startup the Year Awards. That's another sad story for another time. Let's move that one on, yes. So all this went to our head. This notion of so-called success. And we felt like we were invincible. We felt like everything we did could turn into gold. So we made this one flagship product for a flagship market. And then we wanted to make a cheaper product for a mass market and sell many more phones. I mean, I can totally understand that. That's the way most companies do. Famously Nokia, that's what they did. They had this super flagship phone and they went mass market. So we made a cheaper phone. It was called the OnePlus X. And we had huge sales targets for this phone. And if I remember correctly, the OnePlus X didn't do that well, did it? It didn't. It was actually a mistake in hindsight. OK, why do you think it didn't succeed? Because I think we lost track of our original mission. Our original mission was to build the best Android flagship phone. But with this product, we were trying to build the best selling Android phone. And these two things are not the same. So we lost track of our original mission. And we forgot the reason why people liked us in the beginning. They wanted flagship products for OnePlus. They wanted that precision, that engineering, that love and detail. And you can't do that in the mid-range as well. Not at that price. So I guess, what would you say the key thing that you'd say from that point of view? I guess you're not going to be launched. I'm not going to see a OnePlus smart scale or a OnePlus VR headset anytime soon from what you're saying. Unfortunately not. So I get a lot of tweets. I get a lot of people on Twitter asking me, hey, great phone. But when are you going to make a tablet? Or when are you going to make a smartwatch? And my answer to that is, only when we've mastered the flagship smartphone, only when we made the best flagship smartphone will we consider making anything else. I think you're on your way there, though. I think you're on your way there. One day. Not far off, so that's really cool. And so the one thing I've loved about you is that you're a very balanced entrepreneur in everything that you do. And I think what's particularly interesting is that you've always been about surviving and thriving. Well, so you've learned that surviving comes more important than thriving. I mean, it's one thing I see in a lot of my startups. They are so aggressive. They want to take the big risk. We've all been told, in Ben Horowitz's book, he always talks about, I bet the house on this and everything won. All the successful companies, they have these stories that when they took a big risk and they got a huge payoff. So that's naturally what people gravitate towards. And so is that what you've done all the way through? I think we learned our fair share of lessons. So the first two examples were two cases where we made a mistake, we learned from it, and we became better because of it. But this story that I'm going to share now is a mistake that we almost made. We didn't make it. And if we did, we wouldn't have been here anymore. Oh, OK. Hang on, wait, wait. If I remember correctly, this story involves the SVP for, oh, actually, I shouldn't say the name of the carrier because that would be rude, but a very large Asian carrier, right? Yeah, so this was back in 2014. OK. We had just launched our first product, and we weren't even a year old. And we got approached by the SVP of a major Asian telco. And this guy was a real deal. He had worked with Steve Jobs before. And I had a Steve Jobs mannequin on my desk. Wow. Wait, wait, but did you have the turtleneck? No, I don't own a turtleneck. Not really that much of a Steve Jobs fanboy, are you? But he was telling us that we reminded him of Steve Jobs. And the gifts he brought us, he said, he also brought to Steve Jobs. So we were really flattered. I was 25. So we took it all in and we soaked it all in. But all of a sudden, he says he wants to order 250,000 phones. 250,000 phones? 250,000 phones. And the value of that deal was around $90 million. And remember, we were not even a year old. So back then, it was a lot of money. But even now, $90 million is a lot of money for anyone. I think everybody in the room would say $90 million is a lot of money. So we were really happy and excited, but we tried to keep a straight face. We tried to be serious. Yeah, somebody promises the world of money and you're there going, hee-hee-hee-hee. Don't act too interested, you know? But as we were negotiating this deal, we figured that it might be too good to be true. Like, who's going to take all the risks? We make 250,000 phones, and they might have the best intentions to sell all of them for us. They believe in us. But if they can't, who ends up with inventory? So let me just clarify something for the audience. Most telephone companies, they order phones, but they only actually pay for the ones that they actually consume. So they could have ordered 250 million phones. 250,000 phones. 1,000, oops. Million, eventually, right? That's like 1 plus 2020, right? But yes, so how did you feel after that scenario? So what we did was we went back to assess the risk, and then we told them, thank you for believing in us. But to make this work, please pay us 50% of the entire deal up front. Right, so you wanted to de-risk the whole project. If we were a small company, we wouldn't have been able to take on the risk. Got it. So in the end, we were at a crossroads. Either you take the $90 million deal, and you take the risk, or you walk away. Wait, so he wouldn't pay 50% up front? No. For them, it was the weirdest thing they've ever heard. OK. So I assume you went ahead with it? We walked away, because it wasn't worth betting the entire company on the $90 million. Wow. Yeah, that must be hard to have turned down $90 million. Nobody's going to feel very good after that. But this story is actually a happy story. So it turns out a couple of months later, they launched another brand. They couldn't get us, so they launched another new brand. And they only sold 20,000 phones of the new brand. Wait, wait, so 20,000? Yeah. So if you had taken that order, less than 10% would have been consumed. Yeah. So you would have been stuck without inventory. And would you have survived? Of course not. We wouldn't be here today. And although it's bad to be happy about other people's failure, the team all looked at each other and smiled when we saw this. I can imagine. Wow. So you saved yourself. And I guess this comes to your whole theory of survival, right? So one of the people I most look up to in the world of venture is a chap called Bill Gross. And he's famously done all of this research about how timing is everything. But I love how you're advancing it, because in reality, timing may be everything. But if you're not there to survive, how do you take advantage of that timing? Yeah. Survival is not very sexy. But I think in the end of the day, it's really important. So my promise is that. Is that the problem that I guess is that you survive. Lots of companies keep going on and on about how they're making their big revenues. But if they're not there to survive, they're not there to actually take advantage of the opportunity. They can never thrive. You're not surviving. You cannot thrive, right? And you don't have the chance to fulfill your biggest dreams and ambitions. And you also don't have the chance to actually change the world instead of talking about it at a tech conference. How many stories of changing the world have we had at this tech conference? Quite a few, I imagine. Carl, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thank you so much for this conversation. And thank you for sharing your stories with us. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you.