 Hi everyone. Thanks for having us. I am Paul Murphy. I'm a partner at Lightspeed, also a former founder of a game studio called Dots, which we sold recently to take two. And I'm here with Michael. We'll talk more about that in a second. But for those that don't know, I want to give you a little overview of Lightspeed. Our presence in Europe is a little bit more recent. Lightspeed is actually a really incredible platform. It's a global team. We have ten offices around the world. We've deployed ten billion dollars of capital into great startups and really have had the privilege of working with some of the most iconic companies that have emerged from that. In Europe, we've actually been investing for a while, 14 years in 20 companies like Personio who's here, Matillion, Vinted, Triple Dot, Grafana, Blockchain, many others. And we've deployed about half a billion dollars into Europe. We're extremely excited about all of you and what you're building in Europe in general. My personal view is that the European startup community will be as big, if not bigger than the US, just a matter of time. And so we want to play a role in helping make that happen. I'm here with Michael, who's co-founder and co-CEO of COM. And it's a really amazing story. My partner Nicole, who would have liked to have been here but couldn't make it, had the privilege of starting to work with you in, I think it was 2019, investing in your Series B. And then later, Lightspeed and Nicole led the Series C investment into COM at just over a $2 billion valuation. And I think as the host had mentioned, really watched you build one of the leading mental wellness brands in the world. So let's start there, Michael. Maybe tell us a little bit about some of the experiences that led you to create the business that you have today. Yeah, so great to be here. And Lightspeed are fantastic investors, by the way, if anyone's looking. We've been huge, huge champions of calm over many years. So I love startups. I love business. Isn't it amazing being here and feeling the energy and the ideas and the creativity? There's nothing quite like it. And I've been building businesses for decades. My previous one was called Moschy Monsters. I don't know if anyone remembers or has kids, but it was a few hands going up. It was the weird and wonderful world of pet monsters. You adopted them online and it grew very rapidly. We got to about 80 million users around the world, books and movies and toys. And we thought we were unstoppable. And then it all kind of imploded. And it was a very, very difficult time, very stressful. I wasn't sleeping well. I wasn't eating well. I burned out and had quite challenging mental health issues. And it was a real watershed moment for me because my co-founder in calm was a good buddy of mine, Alex Chu. And he was encouraging me to try this thing called meditation. And I was like, that sounds really weird and woo-woo. I didn't fully understand what it was. But I was so stressed and so challenged that I went away and I started to read about it. And I looked at the research papers and the science coming out. And I realized that meditation, this ancient practice was, it was neuroscience. It was a way of rewiring the human brain. And if we could build a brand, if we could make it accessible and relatable and simple, this could be one of the most exciting businesses in the world and help millions and millions of people. So that was kind of the early stages. Scratching my own itch. I needed it. And it's been developing my meditation practice has been one of the most valuable skills I've learned in life. It's amazing. Actually, I mean, I think for this audience as well, I think founder mental health is not spoken of. Yeah. And it's I struggled with it. My, you know, and it's weird because even the most successful founders actually struggle with this as well. It's not just the ones that have a hard time. It's so, so true. You know, mental health has been stigmatized for so long. We didn't really talk about it. And with the pandemic and the world we're in now, it's changing. It's really exciting to see it step out of the shadows and into the light. And particularly amongst founders, we work so hard. We optimize our business. We look at every single metric. But what is the most important piece of the puzzle? It's ourselves and it's our own minds. And if we're not in a mentally strong place, how do we expect our teams to be? How can we kind of show up as great leaders? So I think it's a really, a really valuable, important shift that's happening in society. Cool. Well, let's talk a little bit about the growth of your of your companies. So we all know startups don't, you know, it's not linear growth. Yeah, there's a few ups and downs. We'll talk about the downs in a second. But you know, there's there's always like inflection points in a successful company, things that, you know, lead you to grow faster than you expected. Maybe we can talk a little bit about some of those now and then we'll touch on the down parts in a minute. Yes. So we started as a meditation app many, many years ago. And we were charging $10 a year to unlock all our meditation content. And we were getting a few subscribers. It was growing steadily. But we needed to do something dramatic to kind of up our income, our revenue, because we were struggling to raise financing. And we thought, what if we just increase the price? We quadrupled it to $40 a year, thinking we'd see quite a big drop off. And we didn't see any drop off in subscribers. It was amazing. And I think that was a valuable lesson. I think Andreessen talk about this. Raise your prices. If you're building something great, don't be afraid to charge for it. And it makes such a massive difference in those early days. So that was an important point. The next one was when we worked with Tamara Levitt, our brilliant meditation teacher to create the daily calm. So meditating is hard, you know, sitting down on your own, focusing. And Tamara created a 10 minute session every day that was unique, a new lesson, a new quote, a new motivation. And that helps people build a habit and come back every day. And that was a crucial turning point. And then the third major inflection point was sleep stories. And that was a huge, huge turning point for the business. Okay, let's talk, let's talk more about first off, I have to comment because the when you said you raise your prices, my own experience, we had a free game. Yeah, it was free. And then we gave something for people to buy. And we had a revolt. So a revolt. Yeah. So obviously, we didn't have successful product that you had at least time. But let's talk about sleep stories. I think it's really interesting. It's a, you know, it's a move into content, which is, you know, a little bit different to building, you know, a meditation app, which maybe is more reusable. The process to kind of get there, you talked a little bit out tomorrow's sort of voice. But what led you to that? Was it data driven? Was it instinct? Yeah, how'd you get there? Yeah, it was a little bit of both a bit of data driven bit of bit of instinct. I think those are usually where the best ideas come from. And we thought we were growing steadily with our meditation content. But we thought there could be something around sleep. You know, could we create ways to help people sleep? And anecdotally, we heard there was just a lot of insomnia amongst our friends. It was something that we thought we could develop a product for. And the data piece came from looking at when people were meditating in the app. So we saw this massive spike every evening about 11 o'clock all around the world. And we were like, what on earth is going on there? And we realized people were using Tamara's meditations to help them fall asleep. Her voice was so soothing and calming. And we were like, that's not how you meditate. That's all wrong. But then we stepped back and thought, well, hang on, what if we created stories that were mindful, that mixed music and sound effects with soothing voices? And instead of it being like a story arc that gets more and more interesting, it would be a story slope. It starts interesting, engages your mind, and then gradually gets more soporific until you fall asleep and you don't hear the ending. And it was a bit of an experiment. We launched it in the app and it was a massive hit. People loved it. Hundreds of millions have been listened to. We've worked with everyone from Harry Styles to LeBron James to Matthew McConaughey. It's been a, yeah, it's been a really important point. And the lesson, one of the lessons there is go after big markets. You know, meditation is great and a very important part of calm, but every single human being on earth goes to sleep every single night. 7.8 billion people. So that's, that's a big market to play in. A big 10, as we say. Hard to go beyond that unless we go to Mars or elsewhere. The celebrity piece is interesting to me because I don't know, my instinct would be that if there was a celebrity speaking, maybe I would be more engaged, I'd be more sort of excited to hear the story as opposed to sort of doze off. Did you have that, did you AB test that? What led you to that decision? Yeah, it's a good point that the main thing the celebrities have done is, is attract awareness. And you know, we get incredible PR when we work with celebrities. In the early days of working with Nicole, we told her about our ICE framework, which when we work with a celebrity, the I stands for investment. We want them to have skin in the game and to have a steak and calm. The C is content. We want them to create something unique that can only be got at calm. And the E is engagement. We want them to actually be a user of the product and an ambassador and advocate. So that has helped drive a huge amount of PR when we bring them in. And it's also helped normalize the conversation around mental health. You know, if LeBron James, one of the world's most famous athletes, is talking about his mental health, it makes it okay for everybody else to talk. So to your point, the stories are quite interesting. And that's the idea at the start. But then we encourage the talent to slow down their voice, to soften it, and it gets gradually more sleep inducing. Oh, cool. I'm going slightly off piece here for a second, so bear with me. Okay. I'm just because I had my own experiences working with celebrities and it can be amazing and it can be challenging. Yeah. I mean, how when you're trying to engage the principle, the celebrity to be a part of your company, did you find that difficult having to work through their people and navigate because I think some of the founders here may find themselves in that situation. Yeah. Yeah. So any founders here, if you're trying to connect with a celebrity, it is if you can get the right celebrity that feels authentic for whatever you're building, it can be a huge accelerant for the growth of the company. But it's not easy. You know, we took years banging on doors in Hollywood trying to take trying to get people to take us seriously. And it's hard because they have so many endorsement opportunities and they're so busy and you have to kind of get a bit creative and figure out instead of going in the front door through, you know, talent agency, how can you connect with them another way? So our breakthrough moment was one of our investors at sound was Ashton Kutcher. And he knew Matthew McConaughey and we'd heard that Matthew used calm in one of his children's charities. And so he was a big fan of calm and when he was approached, he was like, great, let's do this. So once we got him on board, then the dominoes fell. All the celebrities were knocking on our door and it made it much easier. So you have to get creative and find an unusual way in. Yeah, that's great. I mean, also authentic engagement. I think that's a really, it's a great takeaway. Okay, so you mentioned kids. Let's talk about kids because you launched Calm for Kids. Yes. I have a six year old daughter. She's used it, loves it. We all used Calm, by the way, during the pandemic. So we're big family fans. Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about the process to kind of introduce that? Because obviously you have your experience working with children's apps in the past. Yes, yes. So I learned a lot about the kids space with Moshi Monsters. A lot of, it's an incredible space to work, but also very, very challenging for a lot of different reasons. And, you know, our mission at Calm is bold and big. We want to make the world happier and healthier by solving the global mental health crisis. And one of the best ways to do that over the next decades and centuries is starting with the youngest generation. If you want to change the world, start with the kids. And what if we can help this next generation grow up with more empathy, with more resilience, with more gratitude, with better ways to manage stress. So we have created a schools program to put Calm into schools and teachers around the world, which has been hugely successful. And then we thought, what if we could create content just for kids? And so we're starting with sleep, taking characters that kids know and love, everything from Peppa Pig to the Minions. And then we're creating our own characters as well, developing our own IP. So similar to how Netflix started, you know, licensing external IP and then creating their own. And then we're going to go from sleep stories to kids, to meditations, to helping them with all sorts of other ways of managing their emotions. So, yeah, big, very important part of the business. Cool. Well, that's I mean, for those, for parents in the room, you know, when you're trying to get that afternoon nap in with your kid, this is a great way to do it. Encourage them to lay down and rest. So we can sort of say that from personal experience. So all right, so that's very helpful. Let's talk about some of the down moment. Some of those challenging times that you faced, any that you're willing to share at least, that we'll learn from. Yeah, there's been there's been many. I think it's never plain sailing, building a big business. One of the most frustrating things for many, many years was we just couldn't raise money. You know, we raised a little bit of seed money, about one and a half million dollars at the start. And then for years until our series A in 2018, no one would chat to us. I think meditation and mindfulness was seen as a little bit niche. You know, would people really pay for this? Would it be big enough? You could get this content free elsewhere. And we passionately felt that mental health was going to be one of the most important issues of our time. The penny just hadn't dropped yet. And I think this is such an important lesson for any entrepreneurs in the room. If you have that strong conviction, if you have that strong foundation in what you're doing, you can cope with all manner of short-term blips and obstacles and issues. You just charge through those walls. And the analogy we often talk about is a bit like surfing. You know, you're out there waiting for the wave. You can't be too late because everyone's, the wave is gone. And you don't want to be way, way too early because then you'll just be freezing to death on your board. You've just got to be a little bit early. And I think we were with Carmen eventually, sort of around 2017 when we won app of the year with Apple. That was when the lightbulb went on and people recognised there was something huge here. And it's just been a rocket ship ever since. That's great. And then, I mean, do you think that there is a role that the pandemic has played at all in either positively or negatively? I'm sure initially it was scary for you, like it was for all of us. Yeah, the pandemic has been such a challenging, difficult time for the whole world. And one of the, if I can say it, one of the positive things that's done is it has shown the importance of our mental health and, you know, looking after our minds as well as our bodies. And what we saw in the early days of the pandemic was a huge influx of companies coming to us, asking if we could provide calm to their workforces. All their teams were at home stressed and anxious. No one really knew what was going on and calm was a valuable way to provide a little bit of support. And for, yeah, for remote workers everywhere. So I think, and I think this has just accelerated in the last year or two, the B2B side of mental health has grown very, very rapidly in the last 18 months. That's great. So we'll, I want to come to that in a second, but I'm just curious, is there any other hard oh shit punch in the gut moments that you had that you felt like were instrumental in building the company you've built today? Yeah, I think going back to raising money where the cash in our bank was dwindling and the hosts mentioned we were down to less than $10,000 and we literally could not raise money for love or anything. And we had to get creative and we both maxed out our personal savings and I was giving a talk at an event, a little bit like this, and there was a publisher in the audience who emailed us afterwards saying, could we do a book on calm? And we were like, whoa, well this isn't really part of our strategy, but what would the advance be? Can you give us some money? Yeah. And we were able to get a quite a significant advance for this book, which kept the lights on and that was a way of making sure the business could keep going and what we did from that was just make sure we were profitable, that we kept our costs incredibly tight and low and that DNA is still very much part of calm to this day. That's great. I mean I think you mentioned timing and I do feel like for the founders in the room, it is very difficult to get timing perfect. It's almost impossible. So I think when you've got something that clearly you believe in, you know is working, the data tells you it. Yeah, trying to find ways to kind of, you know, hang out there, keep building, stay scrappy and then in your moment it does eventually come and I think having been in the business for a little while now, you can really... there's so many stories I can think of, companies that we were like, they were just about to kind of go under and now they're, you know, they're up here being interviewed by people. It's amazing how fast it can flip as well, isn't it? So yeah, don't lose hope. If you believe in what you're doing, you just have to keep hustling and finding a way and that shift will hopefully happen. Cool. Okay, so let's then talk a little bit about the future. So you've built this highly successful company, it's, you know, $2 billion valuation, you know, we're incredibly excited to be part of it. Where do you take calm from here? Where does it go? Yeah, it still feels like we're at the early days, you know, day one as Jeff over at Amazon used to say. We have about 120 million downloads of the app, about four million subscribers, but that's a tiny proportion of the world and we believe that anyone with a mind could gain value from what we're creating at calm. So there's lots of different directions we can go in. There's the expansion of the brand, so, you know, big fan of Richard Branson and what he did with Virgin. Could we take calm into other areas that are traditionally stressful? You know, could we have a hospitality arm? Could there be retail products? Could there be a magazine? So I think there's a lot of interesting things there in the future. A more short-term, bigger opportunity is around B2B. How can we go and work with companies for them to support their workforces with mental health? And again, a few years ago this was seen as a bit weird and left-field and I think it's one of the most exciting areas of SaaS at the moment. There are some really major players out there. I think there's going to be a hundred billion dollar business built in this space and we hope it will become. Yeah, no, we obviously fully agree on that opportunity. As you're, again, we think about sort of founder lens, you know, going into adjacent categories or, you know, different business models, you've got a very presumably consumer-focused team or you had a consumer-focused team, now you've got this B2B arm. Yeah. How have you brought that into the fold without it kind of, you know, being too problematic with the rest of the crew? It's challenging. It's like, yeah, riding two horses into battle and as a consumer entrepreneur, it's been a very steep learning curve, you know, for Alex and I and the rest of the team to figure out B2B. There's very different metrics, there's very different things to focus on, different sales cycles, but we hired some fantastic people with a lot of experience and we listened to them and we worked closely with them and now we built a really, really strong B2B team within the company, it's the fastest growing part of calm. So we talk about the two fly wheels of calm, the D2C consumer side and the B2B side and the faster each of them spin, the faster the other one spins, they kind of support each other and I think that metaphor, that kind of dual engine powering our rocket ship, kind of is working really well. That's amazing. I mean, I think, and you know, again, like trying to distill a takeaway there, it's like, it seems like it always comes down to people. Oh yes. You've got a great person leading your B2B efforts and it's working and so that's very exciting. Well, excellent. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us. Thank you. And share your lessons with the team here. Thank you for investing and believing in us. So yeah, hope to get to meet lots of the brilliant entrepreneurs flash today and tonight as well. Very good, cool. Thanks, Michael. Thanks, everybody. Thanks.