Investing in Calm | How to Buy Pre-IPO Shares

The Calm App is a popular tool used by millions to help reduce stress and anxiety and improve mental health. It combines a host of helpful features and mindful tools designed to teach you how to take control over your mental state and develop a balanced lifestyle.

Today, the Calm App operates as a leading option in the sector. Its features and growing community continue to attract more users to the platform, alongside investors. However, Calm is a privately owned and operated company, meaning that the only way to access shares is through the secondary markets. Here’s what you need to know.

What is Calm?

Calm entered the market on May 4, 2012. Its founders, Alex Tew and Michael Acton Smith, both well-known entrepreneurs, were no strangers to stress and its effects. They understood that the majority of people have no way to alleviate stress buildup, which can lead to serious medical conditions. Their goal was to provide everyday users with a plethora of tools to manage everyday stress.

To ensure their application was effective, the team began by gathering clinical experts, researchers,  and meditation teachers. They then combined these lessons and other stress relievers into the app in the form of exercises and daily routines.

These tasks were specifically chosen due to their ability to help people manage stress, sleep better, and live a healthier life. The application includes several proven stress relief programs, guided meditations, and anxiety reduction strategies. These options integrate breath work, movement, and other strategies to teach users how to reset their stress meter.

Sleep

The Sleep feature is one of the most popular options provided by Calm. It includes a range of tools to help you get the most out of your night’s rest. From tasks designed to help you fall asleep faster, like breathing exercises and stories, to sounds that help you achieve deep sleep, the engineers wanted to include easy-to-follow tasks that got results.

Sleep Meditations

The Sleep Meditations feature includes soothing sounds that can help you doze off faster. These exclusive sounds were specifically chosen for their effectiveness at reducing cortisol levels and inducing relaxation. The app combines advanced options, including the ability to monitor your sleep, alongside these features.

Bedtime Stories

One of the most unique features offered by Calm is its bedtime story feature. This option enables you to scroll through +300 titles to find one that entices you to relax and sleep. Impressively, the developers managed to have some of the stories read by familiar celebrities like Matthew McConaughey, Idris Elba, and Jennifer Garner.

Bed Time Mixes

For those who prefer music to sleep over stories, there is a selection of curated songs designed to help you get some shuteye. Like the bedtime stories feature, Calm went out and hired some headliners to make the experience more memorable. For example, you can find artists like Moses Sumney and Tom Middleton to help soothe you to sleep.

Sleep Monitoring

Use Calm to ensure that you’re getting a full night’s rest. The app can leverage devices like your watch to monitor your sleep quality, heart rate, and timing. This feature enables you to fine-tune your bedtime strategy and track what works best.

Meditation

The Calm Meditation feature is one of the main reasons why the application continues to gain popularity. This feature combines soothing sounds, daily guides, and meditation practices to help you take your relaxation to the next level.

Source – Calm

Unlike competitors that simply give you some guidance, Calm provides guided meditations that focus on teaching you a strong foundation and integrating mindfulness. These sessions can be tailored to fit your schedule. There are short 1-2 minute options for those seeking a quick relief or longer courses that can help you establish a strong daily meditation routine that works.

Calm Health

Calm Health is another game-changing feature that has helped the App secure more users. This service integrates a psychological approach towards relaxation. It leverages a program developed by experts to achieve results. Calm evaluates crucial aspects of your mind state, job, and lifestyle to provide you with real-time mental health screening capabilities and more.

Users can gain valuable insight into their mental health and track it as it improves after each session. Keenly, the Calm Health feature uses a gamified approach to mental health that rewards users for completing specific daily challenges, which are all designed to improve their overall mental stability and increase relaxation.

Free Download and Trial

Anyone can download the Calm App and install it for free. The app includes a seven-day free trial, which allows you to see if it’s a good fit for your lifestyle. For those who can benefit from Calm, they can register for a subscription to gain access to the entire suite of mindful tools and services.

Historical Funding Rounds

Summary of Calm Funding:

Total Funding: Calm secured $225M across 9 funding rounds

Largest Round: Calm’s largest funding round secured $88M on January 30, 2019.

Investors: A total of 41 institutional investors and 17 Angel investors back Calm

Latest Round: The latest funding round raised $398K and was a Grant round held on March 01, 2021.

Funding Rounds Breakdown:

•  3 Seed
• 4 Early-Stage
• 1 Late-Stage
• 1 Grant

Key Investors:

Calm secured investment capital from Goldman Sachs, Lightspeed Venture Partners, TPG Growth, Michael Birch, Joe Greenstein, Andy McLoughlin, Tabreez Verjee, Oleg Tscheltzoff, Kirill Makharinsky, Jeff Cantalupo, Darius Contractor, Darran Garnham, Steve Pankhurst, Sokratis Papafloratos, Saki Georgiadis, Matt Mullenweg, Matt Cheng, Jason Calacanis, Insight Partners, Harry Styles, Sound Ventures, CAA, HHS, and more.

Why Invest in Calm?

There are many reasons why someone would see Calm as a wise investment. For one, it’s the leading relaxation app in the market. This positioning provides it with direct access to a massive network of potential users, which grows daily.

Simplicity

Recognizing that confusion is also a cause of stress, the developers worked tirelessly to ensure that Calm was as easy to navigate and use as possible. The app features a straightforward interface that helps people connect and share their stress relief stories. In this way, it provides a space for meditative minds to gather, share, and grow together.

Practical Tools

Another major reason why investors and users continue to flock to Calm is that its tools are practical. These research-based options can help you to quickly regain control over your anxiety. It combines proven concepts like meditation, grounding, breathwork, and more to produce instant results.

Personalized Options

Calm has beat out the competition because it personalizes its meditative strategies to your lifestyle. The majority of competitors have some preset course that is delivered to all users regardless of their age, lifestyle, or employment. Calm is the first option to customize its offerings based on the user’s exact needs, providing a more effective solution.

Funding and Investor data sourced from Tracxn

1. Pre-IPO Secondary Marketplace

Secondary markets are purpose-built exchanges that connect pre-IPO shareholders with potential investors. These marketplaces can offer these assets because they work closely with employees, early-stage investors, and venture capitalists, who are crucial to the company’s pre-IPO growth.

Investing in pre-IPO shares of Calm could offer strong returns if the company’s valuation increases following its IPO. It’s common for company valuations to increase following an IPO. As such, it makes sense to add pre-IPO shares to your portfolio before the firm announces plans to go public.

Secondary marketplaces have many requirements. Here are some concerns you should be made aware of:

Eligibility: This approach requires you to be an accredited investor, meaning you will have to show at least $1M in liquid assets to qualify for access.

2. Private Equity Firms

Private equity firms gain access to pre-IPO shares during investment rounds. They then offer these shares to high-net-worth accredited investors with a commission. Notably, private equity firms are known to have extra stipulations, including blocking the sale of shares for years in some cases.

3. Employee Equity Sales

Many consider employee equity sales as the best way to acquire pre-IPO shares in Calm. This method of acquiring pre-IPO shares requires you to connect with former employees. It’s common for companies to issue shares as part of an incentive package. Notably, this profit-sharing method has become more popular, leading to more pre-IPO share opportunities for investors.

Private Transactions: There are a lot of hoops you will need to jump through to complete a private pre-IPO transaction, including creating specific legal agreements, conducting valuations, and setting in place any limitations on the transfer of the asset.

Brokerage: Brokers will take a lot of the confusion out of the pre-IPO process. These professionals can guide you through each step, ensuring full compliance and avoiding common errors untrained professionals make.

There are several risks that you should consider before jumping into the pre-IPO shares investment arena. Here are the top concerns:

Liquidity Risk

If you are looking for an asset that you can sell right away, pre-IPO shares are not the best option.

These investments can include sales and transfer clauses that prevent the transfer of the asset until certain criteria, such as the IPO’s completion, are met. It’s even common for pre-IPO shares to require you to wait years before gaining the ability to sell your assets.

Finding a Broker

If you meet the requirements and are comfortable with the risks, several platforms offer access to pre-IPO opportunities:

Forge Global: One of the largest private stock marketplaces, offering shares in late-stage startups like SpaceX, Stripe, and Databricks. Minimums typically start around $100,000.

EquityZen: A popular platform allowing accredited investors to buy into private companies with minimums as low as $5,000. Past offerings include companies like Discord and UiPath.

Rainmaker Securities: A full-service broker that helps source and negotiate private share sales, including opportunities in companies like OpenAI, Stripe, and Palantir.

Hiive: A newer platform with live bid/ask pricing for hundreds of private companies. Transparent and low-fee, with minimums starting around $25,000.

MicroVentures: Offers pooled access to late-stage companies through special purpose vehicles (SPVs), including past investments in SpaceX and Instacart.

EquityBee: Allows investors to fund employee stock option exercises at startups, often at discounted valuations, with minimums around $10,000.

Augment: A digital-first marketplace showing real-time pricing for pre-IPO shares, targeting tech-savvy investors and offering lower transaction fees.

StartEngine Private: Launched in late 2023, this platform offers accredited investors access to Regulation D offerings in later-stage, venture-backed companies. In its first nine months, it generated $16.5 million in revenue, with average investments of around $32,000

Important: Always perform thorough due diligence and consult a financial advisor before investing in private company shares.

Valuation of Calm and Future IPO

Calm qualified for Unicorn status after it secured a $2B valuation on December 08, 2020. This growth was the direct result of the platform’s commitment to providing the most relevant stress relief options to its users. This personalized approach to stress relief continues to pay off as more users seek out options with proven results.

Calm combines everything you need to reduce stress and learn how to cope with it before it becomes a problem. This unique business model has helped millions become more balanced in their daily health and improve their mental stability.

Those holding Calm app shares seek to capitalize on the company’s position as the industry leader and its growing community. If the app can maintain its current trajectory and continue to provide timely stress relief to a wider audience, it’s likely to achieve even greater success moving forward.

Calm Conclusion

Holding Calm Pre-IPO shares opens the door for future opportunities. Stress relief is a vital aspect of today’s fast-paced lives, and given that many people spend their spare time on their smartphones, it only makes sense for the application to be mobile-based, making it available no matter where or when you need it.

It’s recommended that you consult a financial expert before you make any pre-IPO investments to avoid exceeding your risk appetite. These assets can include specific restrictions that differ from traditional shares. For example, no sale or trade periods are common.  For those who complete further research and can qualify for Calm app shares, there’s a lot of room for growth in the coming years.

Learn about Other Pre-IPO Opportunities Now

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Pre-IPO shares are typically available only to accredited investors and carry significant risk. Always perform thorough due diligence and consult a financial advisor or legal expert before making investment decisions.