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Alex Tew

Co-Founder & Co-Executive Chairman, Calm · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutive@tewy ↗LinkedIn ↗calm.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Alex Tew is a British entrepreneur best known for co-founding Calm, a meditation and sleep application. He first gained worldwide recognition in 2005 by creating The Million Dollar Homepage to fund his university education.

9statements → 6claims → 1claims resolved → 3.78/5average certainty → 1.22/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 6 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

6 assertions · 1 insight · 1 disclosure · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 6 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 5 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Alex argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Calm hit its first $1 million month in January 2017
“She helped do our first successful user acquisition, and it was in, I think, January, 2017, we had our first million dollar month, and it's because we had cracked the UA code.”
Alex Tew May 26, 2025 ▶ 1:01:27 Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Alex Tew on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Alex Tew said on How I Built This that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Disclosure
Tew: Calm raised over $400k from 12 angels after 100+ meetings
“I think in, in the end we raised from about 12, 12 people and they were all individual angels. The biggest concern people had was, how is this going to be a business? You know, you're going to build a business around Calm. You're going to bring meditation. Lik…”
Alex Tew May 26, 2025 ▶ 45:34 Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith
What-if
Tew: Early capital constraints forced Calm to innovate sleep stories
“I think if we had raised tons of money very, very early, we may have not had the scrappiness to, say, do sleep stories. You know, we may have just kind of been drunk on, you know, expensive, unprofitable user acquisition. So I think we kind of got the foundati…”
Alex Tew May 26, 2025 ▶ 1:08:26 Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tew: Early Million Dollar Homepage advertisers got massive returns
“People were getting something in, in return, you know, they were getting an advert that people could click on, and some of those early Advertisers got an insane return on their investment.”
Alex Tew May 26, 2025 ▶ 16:58 Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith
Insight
Tew: Press attention drove the Million Dollar Homepage's viral loop
“Every piece of press was making it more valuable. I remember one of the early interviews I did was on the BBC breakfast show. So this is like Good Morning America, right? But in the UK. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sitting on the couch and they're like, you know, why i…”
Alex Tew May 26, 2025 ▶ 17:22 Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tew: 'Do Nothing for Two Minutes' gained 2M visitors in a week
“We just, we built it one afternoon and tweeted about it, and it just went viral. And within a week, had about two million visitors.”
Alex Tew May 26, 2025 ▶ 37:49 Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tew: 10% of early Calm mobile app downloaders paid the $5 fee
“There was like a couple of audio recordings for free, and then you'd pay five dollars to unlock the full app. There was no subscription. In fact, at the time, Apple hadn't embraced subscriptions at all but it was encouraging because 10% of people who downloade…”
Alex Tew May 26, 2025 ▶ 47:23 Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith
Assertion Supported
Calm hit its first $1 million month in January 2017
“She helped do our first successful user acquisition, and it was in, I think, January, 2017, we had our first million dollar month, and it's because we had cracked the UA code.”
Alex Tew May 26, 2025 ▶ 1:01:27 Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tew: Calm raised prices from $10 to $60, boosting net revenue
“So, you know, the very first subscription we had was 10 dollars a year, and then I think in 2015 we made it 40, then it was 50, and then 60. And each time the conversion rate would be lower, but the net of it would be that we would make more money, you would h…”
Alex Tew May 26, 2025 ▶ 1:03:21 Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tew: Only 50% of users could do nothing for two minutes
“And funnily enough, only about 50% of people who went on the page could actually do nothing, like not touch their mouse or keyboard.”
Alex Tew May 26, 2025 ▶ 38:00 Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith May 26, 2025 18m
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