But when Tew and co-founder Michael Acton Smith first pitched the idea of Calm to investors, it wasn’t met with universal acceptance or interest. “It was tough for the first round of fundraising because it was a different kind of thing and very different than traditional businesses. It’s not a hard-core technical business even though it has a lot of technical aspects to it,” says Tew. “So, at that time, it was a little challenging to convince people this was a good idea.”
But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, he says. “When people say that your idea is kind of weird or ‘I don’t get it,’ that can be a good thing. And I knew in my heart this was the right thing to do.”