Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith
How I Built This with Guy Raz
Guy Raz | Wondery
4.8 • 31.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2025
⏱️ 81 minutes
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Summary
As a young entrepreneur in the Wild West days of the internet, Alex Tew was drawn to meditation for its simple calming power. Together with fellow tech founder Michael Acton Smith–known for hits like Moshi Monsters–the two brainstormed ways to bring the ancient practice of meditation into the 21st century. In 2011, they bought the domain calm.com, built an app, and started producing meditations and Sleep Stories, narrated by celebrities like Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba. Despite initial pushback from investors who insisted no one would want to meditate on their phone–let alone pay for it– the Calm app grew to a valuation of nearly $2 billion, with 180 million total downloads.
This episode was researched and produced by Katherine Sypher with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant. Our engineers were Patrick Murray and Robert Rodriguez.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wonderie Plus subscribers can listen to how I built this early and ad-free right now. |
| 0:05.7 | Join Wonderly Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:11.1 | Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. |
| 0:18.5 | From household names like Mattel and Jimshark to brands just getting |
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| 0:28.7 | more. And if you're looking to grow your business internationally, Shopify has global |
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| 0:47.9 | converting checkout on the planet, you'll never miss a sale again, only with Shopify. Get all the |
| 0:53.9 | big stuff for your small business right with Shopify. |
| 0:56.8 | Sign up for your one pound per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.co.com. |
| 1:01.8 | UK slash built. |
| 1:03.9 | Go to shopify.com. |
| 1:05.3 | UK slash built. |
| 1:07.6 | Shopify.com. |
| 1:09.0 | com. |
| 1:09.4 | Okay. |
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| 1:37.1 | you build customer trust. Over 8,000 global companies like Synthesia, FlowHealth and |
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