Acton Smith: Silicon Valley offered scaling talent and openness lacking in London
Michael Acton Smith · Calm: Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith · May 26, 2025 · at 49:59
Michael Acton Smith explains why he and Alex Tew relocated Calm's headquarters from London to San Francisco in 2014.
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“Silicon Valley was the place to build this business. You know, the, there was more investors who were open to ideas like this. The climate was more open to it as well. A lot of our friends and people we knew in London were very, very skeptical of meditation and mindfulness and talking about mental health. It was really not, not the hot important topic that it is now. So California was much more open to that. I think another reason was there was just so much more talent who had been at companies like LinkedIn and Facebook and others who had seen, you know, firsthand how to build and scale companies rapidly. We didn't have as much as that in, in London.”
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