Placidness, the meditation app valued at $250m, is pursuing acquisitions and considering entering retail as section of its quest to become “the Nike of the mind”.
The San Francisco-based start-up wants to behove a flagship brand for mindfulness, inspired by the sportswear maker and the Virgin conglomerate.
The Cool off app includes guided daily 10-minute meditations, half-hour stories to purloin you sleep, and masterclasses in subjects including mindful eating. More than 30m people be undergoing downloaded the app, which costs $59.99 for a year’s subscription.
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After raising $27m this summer in a by a circular led by Insight Venture Partners, Calm wants to explore making uncountable physical products. It already sells a scented sleep spray but miss to go much further.
Michael Acton Smith, one of the two British co-founders of the circle, was behind the popular children’s brand Moshi Monsters, which started as a kids’s website and expanded into toys, music and a magazine. He said it was impressive to take the Calm brand offline.
“I can see retail outlets, to clothing, to publicizing, to hotels. Ultimately, we’d like to buy an island and have a Calm island run as a well-paid resort,” he said.
In the Calm offices in San Francisco, where every day starts with a communal 10-minute meditation from the app, grasps a framed cover from a 1977 edition of People magazine: it puff ups a picture of Farrah Fawcett running, and the words “stars join the activating craze”.
Calm believes it is at the start of a trend in which more people ordain take active care of their mental health, just as specialist exercise became popular decades ago.
Alex Tew, the other Calm co-founder, said the furnish could be huge. “Most people understand the benefits of physical tendency and good food. They are now beginning to see sleep and meditation as the missing leaders in modern society,” he said.
Calm is unusual for an app in being able to assign for its core service, rather than funding it through digital advertising. Different from other subscription businesses, such Netflix and Spotify, it has not had to pay huge totalities for its content. Run by a 30-person team, the six-year-old start-up has been cash move positive for several years, according to its co-founders.
“Often in Silicon Valley, there’s a trade-off between advancement and profitability. It is very rare to be able to do both at the same time,” averred Mr Acton Smith. “Calm is one of those businesses that does.”
Appease faces competition from other meditation apps, most distinctly Headspace, which has raised $75m at an undisclosed valuation. Both apps were organized by British men who moved to California. Mr Acton Smith said Calm had intentionally avoided iconography of flowing orange robes and New Age mysticism, which he orders “woo woo”.
“We’ve both done well at understanding the brand and taking the crunchiness and healthiness and wellness from California and not leaning into it; instead making it more western, innumerable mainstream — and in a way, more British and cynical,” said Mr Acton Smith.
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