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The Times Tech Podcast

Calm's Michael Acton Smith: "Dopamine-frazzled zombies"

The Times Tech Podcast

Will Morley

Business, Unknown, Technology

4.9654 Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2018

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Michael Acton Smith, co-founder of Calm, the hit meditation app, to talk about starting out with the idea five years ago (4:40), the rise and fall of his previous company Mind Candy (8:30), moving to San Francisco (13:20), trying to build a “moat” around around the app (14:45), how meditating is like jogging (16:45), why Calm uses the smartphone as the delivery mechanism (19:45), the death of boredom (21:15), creating a profitable business (23:30), why sleep is a growth industry (26:35), the science of meditation (28:10), trying to sell rocks as a child (33:10), setting up an Internet retailer in 1998 (35:40), why he thinks Calm is going to be a billion-dollar business (38:45), his plans to buy an island (41:35), and why the world’s top two meditation apps have been created by Brits (43:45).

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Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:06.7

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0:12.9

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0:17.7

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0:22.1

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0:33.0

Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top people in tech.

0:40.8

Before we get to this week's show, two kind of administrative things.

0:46.4

One, season two, I must inform you, is coming to a close.

0:52.2

Yes, we've got a few more episodes this month, perhaps leading to the first

0:56.3

week of August. We're still finalizing the plans, but then we will take the rest of August off,

1:02.2

and we will be back around mid-September. Of course, I won't stop working. We are cooking up some

1:09.5

really fun stuff for season three. So I think you'll dig

1:13.6

that. We have big new guests, more special reports, maybe even an investigation or two.

1:19.2

Oh yeah. It's all happening. And the other thing, of course, while we're here, how's about a review?

1:25.2

If you'd like to show, press pause right now. Just do a quick rating, maybe jot down a few words if you like to show press pause right now just do a quick rating

1:29.0

maybe jot down a few words if you feel so inclined it's a huge help it really helps other people

1:33.6

find the show so please take a moment and do that okay that is it for housekeeping now

1:40.7

let's get to today's show. Yo, technology.

1:46.7

What is it all about?

1:48.4

So we think we are right at the start of an unbelievable new wave that will be just as big as physical fitness around mental fitness.

1:57.1

And it seems obvious, but why do we not treat our minds with the same care and respect

2:04.0

as many of us do our bodies? This can be the Nike for the mind. This week on Danny in the Valley,

...

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