Calm (company)

Calm produces mindfulness meditation products. These include a digital service offering mindfulness-based guided meditations and Sleep Stories, which are available online[1] and via an app.[2][3]

Calm
Private
Founded 2012 in San Francisco, US
Founders
Headquarters San Francisco, California, United States
Area served
 Worldwide
Products
Number of employees
  • 12 (2017)
Website calm.com

History

Calm was founded in 2012 by Michael Acton Smith and Alex Tew.[4]

Acton Smith is a serial entrepreneur, whose previous credits include founding the kids entertainment company Mind Candy and creating the global kids phenomenon Moshi Monsters.

Tew successfully launched his first start-up: The Million Dollar Homepage in 2005 and the site gained global attention.[5]

Tew later joined forces with Acton Smith to develop their idea of bringing meditation to the world by using the power of the Internet.[6] The pair together launched Calm in 2012.[7]

Backed by $1.5M in angel investments, Calm is run by a small team, with headquarters in San Francisco.[8]

The Calm Android app is listed on Google Play as having between 1 and 5 million downloads and it has been reviewed 68,129 times.[2]

Product

Calm produces mindfulness meditation products, which are accessible to users through various channels: the company’s website, Calm.com; a bestselling book;[9] and its primary product, a mindfulness meditation app, available on both iPhone and Android platforms.

The app features both meditation tools and sleep aids. Using the meditation area of Calm, users can pick from a quick breathing exercise, a unique daily meditation that teaches a new mindfulness concept, a variety of multi-day programs targeting specific issues or goals, as well as unguided and guided meditation sessions.[10][11]

The “Sleep” area of the app gives users access to a new audio feature called Sleep Stories – bedtime stories for grown-ups. On December 1, 2016, Calm launched an initial range of 23 different sleep-inducing tales, mixing soothing words, music and sound-effects, with the aim of helping adult listeners to wind down and drift off into a deep and natural sleep.[12]

Most of the Sleep Stories range in length from 20 to 30 minutes and in kind from non-fiction nature essays describing natural wonders to an extract from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream. They include both original stories, devised by mindfulness experts, and slow-tempo retellings for adults of such classic children's tales as The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen.[13]

One non-fiction Sleep Story features the voice of Ben Stein who played the droning Economics teacher in the '80s teen movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Stein reads an excerpt from the classic 18th century economics text, The Wealth of Nations by the Scottish economist Adam Smith.[14]

To access all the features Calm has on offer requires a subscription. Subscriptions are available on a monthly, yearly or lifetime basis.[15]

Publications

A book written by Calm co-founder Michael Acton Smith and published by Penguin.

Media Attention

Calm has received wide media coverage, including by The New York Times,[16][17][18] The Times,[19] The Daily Mail/Mail Online,[20] The Guardian,[10] Lifehacker,[11] Time,[21] Techcrunch,[12] Mashable,[22] The Daily Dot,[23] The Huffington Post,[24] The Daily Telegraph/Telegraph.co.uk,[25] and Sleep Review: The Journal for Sleep Specialists.[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Experience Calm". www.calm.com. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  2. 1 2 "Calm - Meditate, Sleep, Relax – Android Apps on Google Play". play.google.com (in en_GB). Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  3. ↑ "Calm: Meditation to Relax, Focus & Sleep Better on the App Store". App Store. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  4. ↑ "Calm.com, Inc.: Private Company Information - Bloomberg". www.bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2017-02-21.
  5. ↑ "BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The million-dollar student". news.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-02-21.
  6. ↑ Smith, Michael Acton (2016-03-17). Calm: Calm the Mind. Change the World. Penguin UK. ISBN 9780241284506.
  7. ↑ "Blog News". Calm. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  8. ↑ "Calm | crunchbase". www.crunchbase.com. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  9. 1 2 "Calm, Calm the Mind. Change the World by Michael Acton Smith". www.penguin.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  10. 1 2 Dredge, Stuart (2016-05-26). "Five of the best meditation apps". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  11. 1 2 Pinola, Melanie. "Calm.com Trains You to Meditate in Two to Twenty Minute Sessions". Lifehacker. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  12. 1 2 Buhr, Sarah. "That one time I was tucked in by a startup". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  13. 1 2 "Calm Launches "Sleep Stories"—Bedtime Tales for Adults - Sleep Review". Sleep Review. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  14. ↑ "Calm app: Bedtime stories for grown-ups are now a thing". The Memo. 2016-12-08. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  15. ↑ "Calm - Subscribe to Calm". www.calm.com. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  16. ↑ Rosenbloom, Stephanie (2017-01-24). "Head Trip: Meditation Apps for Travelers". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  17. ↑ Hamman, Brian. "How to Pick a Meditation App". Well. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  18. ↑ Eaton, Kit (2016-05-04). "The Smartphone Way to Inner Calm". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  19. ↑ "The Moshi Monster millionaire who wants to send you to sleep". Retrieved 2017-02-21.
  20. ↑ "'Sleep Stories' mixes soothing words with music to help you drift off". Mail Online. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  21. ↑ TIME. "7 Mindfulness Apps To Help You Refocus". Time. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  22. ↑ Lekach, Sasha. "Fall asleep faster with the help of boring teacher from 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'". Mashable. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  23. ↑ "Let Ben Stein lull you to sleep with this bedtime story app". The Daily Dot. 2016-12-08. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  24. ↑ "How Mindfulness Can Help You Sleep Better". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
  25. ↑ "Moshi Monsters founder: 'I was Mr Stress, now I'm Mr Calm'". The Telegraph. Retrieved 2017-02-20.
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