Tope Awotona: Meet first Nigerian-American billionaire and Calendly founder

Only a few Nigerians can rub shoulders with the movers and shakers of the tech world. One of them is Tope Awotona, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co-founder of a scheduling app, Calendly. He is the first Nigerian-American tech billionaire and the second black tech billionaire in the United States after David Steward.

Calendly was founded in September 2013 and specialises in simplifying the process of scheduling meetings and appointments.

In less than five years, the app has served close to 30 million people worldwide and continues to grow rapidly every year. Awotona’s success is every entreprenuer’s dream. Read on to learn how he started his success story from Lagos, Nigeria, to Atlanta, Georgia in the United States of America.

Table of Content hide 1Biography 2Career 3Startup 4Net worth 5Family 6Conclusion

Biography

Tope Awotona was born in Lagos, Nigeria. He was the third of four children (all boys). Nigeria is a country made up of the rich and the poor. His parents came from both worlds. Awotona’s mother came from a wealthy family where his grandmother ran a successful import-export textile business. Her success allowed her to send all her children, including Awotona’s mom, to the university, which was a rare achievement. His mother worked first as co-owner of a small pharmacy and second, as a manager at the Central Bank of Nigeria.

On the other hand, his father was raised in a poor and broken family where he had to work extra hard to escape poverty. He became a microbiologist for Unilever but later left the company to start his own business. The older Awotona became a successful distributor of industrial chemicals after starting and mostly failing at other businesses.

Awotona describes his childhood as fun and adventurous. He describes his parents as the “coolest in the world.” His father was the more lenient and easy-going, while his mother was very strict and ambitious.

However, tragedy struck the Awotona family when his father was killed in a carjacking incident. Tope Awotona was 12 years old and witnessed the whole incident, which left him with post-traumatic stress disorder for years.

Shortly after his father’s death, his mother moved the family to the United States, where they settled in Atlanta. He finished high school in the US at the early age of 15 and got admission into the university the same year. Worried that her son was too young to adjust to college life, his mother refused to allow him to attend the university but insisted that he must attend his junior and senior years in high school first.

He graduated high school and proceeded to the University of Georgia where he majored in Management Information Systems.

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Career

After graduating from the university, Awotona began his career at an Internet Travel Agency. He later became a door-to-door salesman before getting a job at IBM, a computer company, as a sales rep in Atlanta from January 2006 to September 2007.

Awotona later joined Dell EMC, a storage company, as an Enterprise Software Sales Rep and Account Manager, where he sold enterprise software systems to large companies like Coke, Aflac, Equifax, Blue Cross, and Shield. He worked there from July 2012 to February 2014.

He also worked at Perceptive Software, a growing startup in Kansas City as an Account Executive from October 2007 to January 2010. He then joined Vertafore, another software company, as National Account Manager from January 2010 to July 2012.

Buoyed by an ambition to fulfill his father’s dream of owning a company, Awotona ventured into entrepreneurship. Armed with his vast knowledge in software sales, he created his first business, STT Media (Single To Taken), a dating site, but it never launched. He created another startup, Projectorspot.com, an e-commerce site selling projectors, but the business didn’t sell many projectors.

Not discouraged, Awotona created his third business YardSteals, a platform for selling home and yard equipment. The business was a bit more successful, but he couldn’t continue because he wasn’t passionate or knowledgeable about what he was selling.

Startup

Awotono got his “eureka!” moment out of frustration for scheduling meetings through emails. He had realised that the existing tools were all slow and clunky. That was all he needed to create an idea for his next startup – finding a solution to the problem.

In early 2013, Calendly was conceived. According to a report from Atlanta Tech Village, he “went for broke” and put every single dollar he had ever made into it. He contracted the Ukrainian firm Railsware for programming help. According to Forbes, Awotona was in Kyiv eight years ago as protesters battled government forces in the streets. Calendly helped 10 Ukraine-based contract developers at Railsware relocate to the US and provided financial support to them and their families.

Calendly officially launched in September of 2013, and two months later, the app went to Atlanta Tech Village. Visitors on the site began using and tweeting about the app, which soon caught the attention of David Cummings, a successful startup tech entrepreneur. Atlanta Ventures and OpenView eventually invested $550,000 in Calendly, which catapulted the business to a huge success.

As of 2021, the Calendly company closed a $350 million investment from OpenView Venture Partners and Iconiq. The startup is now valued at over $3 billion. Calendly has about 30 million subscribers and more than $60m (N22,875,000,000) yearly revenue. The app is free for individual users but usually costs about $25 per month per user for corporations. Also, users can set up customized landing pages, move meetings to specific groups of people and connect their Calendly software to other tools such as Salesforce, Stripe, Zoom, and Hubspot.

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Net worth

Awotona personally funded Calendly for years before taking on a $350 million investment in 2021. The company is now valued at $3 billion. However, his net worth is estimated at $1.4 billion, making him the second black tech billionaire in the US, according to Forbes.

Family

Tope Awotona is reportedly married, but his wife and children are not known at the time of this report. However, the 40-year-old has credited his success story to his parents, whom he described as his greatest role models. Unfortunately, his mother died from cancer the year Calendly was born.

Awotona still suffers from insomnia, something he attributed directly to witnessing his father’s murder when he was 12 years old.

Conclusion

Awotona’s success story is an inspiration to entrepreneurs, especially in Nigeria. Like most entrepreneurs, it hasn’t been a straight journey to success. Still, he values the journey and hopes one day to use his experience to develop more aspiring tech entrepreneurs in Nigeria.

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