Calendly Founder, Tope Awotona, One Of Only Two Black Tech Billionaires In The United States

Founder Tope Awotona is a Nigerian-American businessman who built his startup into a billion-dollar technology company with a market capitalization of $3 billion. Awotona is the son of Nigerian immigrants.

In a Forbes article, the CEO of Calendly, who has been dubbed "one of America's wealthiest immigrants," is referred to as "one of America's wealthiest immigrants."

With a $200,000 life-saving investment, Calendly has grown tremendously and now generates more than $100 million in revenue, primarily as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic that has boosted the company's popularity.

Earlier this year, the company raised $350 million in funding from OpenView Venture Partners and Iconiq Capital, putting its market capitalization at $3 billion.

As reported by Forbes, the company's revenue is expected to more than double in the next few years as a result of the company's perseverance.

Awotona could be entering a market worth $20 billion dollars. It is estimated that Awotona's majority stake in the company is worth at least $1.4 billion, even after deducting the 10% Forbes share discount.

Tope Awotona’s story

Awotona was born into a middle-class family in the Nigerian city of Lagos. His father was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was twelve years old. In addition, he and his family relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, where he grew up, in 1996.

At the University of Georgia, he studied computer science for a while before deciding to pursue a career in business and management information systems. His justification is as follows:

Coding was something I enjoyed doing, but it was time-consuming. To be honest, I'm probably a little too outgoing to be a programmer.

His experience as a sales representative for technology companies sparked the idea for Calendly, which was born out of his frustration with the scheduling of meetings.

After using all of his credit cards to start Calendly, Cummings led a seed investment of half a million dollars to free up the company's fund and allow it to grow.

Additionally, the Ukrainian company Railsware provided programming assistance to Awotona for a fee. Calendly has now assisted its contract employees from Ukraine in relocating and providing financial support to them and their families while the country is in the midst of a civil war.

Calendly was founded in 2013 and has since grown to serve more than ten million users worldwide. Lyft, Ancestry.com, Indiana University, and La-Z-Boy are just a few of the companies who have used their services.

In the field of technology, Tope has the potential to be the most successful African-American entrepreneur of his generation.

David Cummings is a co-founder of Atlanta Ventures and a seed investor in Calendly, having invested $550,000 in the company.

Calendly is a one-of-a-kind product when compared to other similar products. The platform's simple, consumer-friendly design, as well as its freemium business model, have all contributed to its success.

Calendly's founder, Tope Awotona, hopes to expand the platform's functionality beyond meeting scheduling in the near future. He hopes to create tools that will be useful to recruiters, salespeople, and other professionals in the future. A strategic plan is also a useful tool for incorporating pertinent documents such as agendas, budgets, and curriculum vitae into a larger document collection.

Meeting scheduling, in the opinion of Awotona, is an integral part of everything that takes place within an organization.

Not following conventional wisdom has been beneficial to me in my life; it has been beneficial to me personally, and I believe it has been beneficial to the company.

Awotona Tope 

Individual users can use Calendly for free, but businesses typically pay $25 per user per month to use the service on a larger scale.

However, Calendly was not Awotona's first venture into the world of business and entrepreneurship. Prior to starting Calendly, Awotona tried her hand at three other businesses that failed: a dating website, a projector sales company, and a garden equipment sales company.