![]() The company, which was founded in Atlanta but no longer has any physical offices, has been profitable since 2016. Last year it raised $350 million in funding from OpenView Venture Partners and Iconiq Capital at a price that values the business at $3 billion. That means Awotona’s majority stake is worth at least $1.4 billion, after the 10% discount that Forbes applies to shares of all private companies. Awotona is one of just two Black tech billionaires in the United States, along with David Steward, the 70-year-old founder of Missouri-based IT provider World Wide Technology. “Tope could be the most successful African-American tech entrepreneur of his generation,” says David Cummings, founder of Atlanta Ventures, which led a $550,000 seed investment in Calendly seven years ago.Ĭalendly doesn’t have the scheduling business to itself. Square, Microsoft and Zurich-based Doodle offer competing products. But Calendly has gained traction with its sleek, consumer-friendly design and its freemium model that lets it gain paying customers with no marketing.Īwotona is now moving beyond scheduling meetings to creating tools that help recruiters, salespeople and other white-collar workers manage those meetings before and after they occur. That means routing meetings to the right person at a large company and adding relevant documents, such as agendas and budgets, that are needed to make the meeting run more smoothly in the invitation itself. It also includes integrating with productivity tools like Salesforce to track results. Others may view scheduling meetings as drudgery, but Awotona sees it as key to making connections to everything that happens within an organisation. This expansive view allows him to speculate that the global market Calendly is selling into is potentially worth $20 billion. “In my life, I’ve benefited from not taking the conventional wisdom,” Awotona says. “It’s benefited me personally, and I think it has benefited the business.”Īwotona was born in Lagos, Nigeria, into a middle-class family. His father was a microbiologist and entrepreneur his mother worked at the central bank. Lagos, a city of 15 million, is economically vibrant but dangerous. When Awotona was 12 he witnessed his father get shot and killed in a carjacking. “There was a part of me, from a very early age, that wanted to redeem him,” he once said. In 1996, when he was 15, he moved with his family to Atlanta. He studied computer science at the University of Georgia, then switched to business and management information. “I’m probably too extroverted to be a coder.” “I loved coding, but it was too monotonous,” he says. #350M OPENVIEW VENTURE PARTNERS ICONIQ SOFTWARE#Instead, he sold software for tech companies, including Perceptive Software, Vertafore and EMC (since acquired by Dell). CALENDLY 350M OPENVIEW VENTURE PARTNERS ICONIQ SOFTWARE He also founded a few businesses on the side: a dating website, a company that sold projectors and another that sold garden tools. His idea for Calendly was different in that it was sparked by his own frustration as a salesman setting up meetings-a task that would sometimes take dozens of emails and days of delay. “The obvious idea to me was that scheduling is broken,” he says. In 2013, he launched Calendly from Atlanta Tech Village, a coworking space for entrepreneurs. To fund it, he raided his 401(k) and maxed out his credit cards. “It could’ve gone really badly,” he says. “With my previous businesses, I hedged my bets a little bit and gave myself a way out. CALENDLY 350M OPENVIEW VENTURE PARTNERS ICONIQ SOFTWARE. ![]()
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