When Alex Tew saw the domain “Calm.com” was up for grabs, he thought it was the sign he and his business partner, Michael Acton Smith, needed to finally get their mindfulness app off the ground.
“We thought Calm was the perfect name for this company, this mission,” Tew told CNBC Make It last year.
But the 1 million pounds price tag — $1.2 million USD — was too high to commit to then, Acton Smith said in an interview with The Diary of a CEO: “We don’t have money to buy that.”
So, they didn’t. But about a year later, the owner of the domain reached out to Tew because he was ready to sell it and “willing to do a deal.” The pair was able to successfully negotiate a new price “for much much less,” Acton Smith said.
As the two pooled their money together to buy the domain, Acton Smith made a risky move.
I think to build successful companies, you have to go to the edges, you have to do things differently.
Michael Acton Smith
Co-founder and Co-Executive Chairman of Calm
“I’d earmarked this money to put a deposit down on a house, but thought buying Calm.com might be the more sensible thing to do,” Acton Smith said.
So, he used the money to contribute to the cost of the domain.
“My parents thought it was the silliest idea,” he said. “That was kind of the starting acorn that was planted for that business.”
It took some time to sell investors on the idea that a mindfulness app would be profitable, the co-founders said.
“If you think back like a decade, it’s hard to imagine now, but no one really was talking about mental health back then. Meditation and mindfulness were these very strange concepts,” Acton Smith said.
Now, the Calm app has been downloaded more than 150 million times and has a valuation of $2 billion.
“I think to build successful companies, you have to go to the edges, you have to do things differently and think differently,” Acton Smith said.
“So, if you are always trying to conform and fit in, you’re rarely going to create that breakout product or company and have that extraordinary success.”
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