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They Fought Every Weekend About Where to Camp. So They Built the Map.
Sarah Smith and Kevin Long kept fighting over where to camp. Their fix - a crowdsourced map of every campground in America - now pulls in tens of millions of visits a year and more than 12 million reviews.
Trala Taught a Phone to Hear a Violin - and Learned Where Software Stops
The Chicago startup began with an algorithm and a bad assumption about its customer. Its pivot from grading violinists to teaching adult beginners is a useful playbook for any founder turning expert craft into software.
Calm
Calm is a San Francisco-based mental wellness company best known for its meditation and sleep app, which pairs guided meditations, celebrity-narrated Sleep Stories, music and soundscapes into a subscription product. Founded in 2012 by Michael Acton Smith and Alex Tew, Calm has grown from a simple 'do nothing for two minutes' web experiment into one of the most downloaded wellness apps in the world, expanding into employer benefits (Calm Business) and a clinical mental-health platform (Calm Health) reaching tens of millions of people.