Nigerian immigrant to billionaire founder
Nigerian-American Tope Awotona is the founder and CEO of Calendly, a scheduling automation company used by over 10 million people. The company was valued at over 3 billion dollars in 2021. Tope had a challenging route getting to this point, though.
First, he saw his dad die in a carjacking and dealt with insomnia from that incident in Nigeria. Then, after a successful sales career, his first three entrepreneurial attempts failed, a dating website, an e-commerce site selling projectors, and the third, selling grills. Finally, in 2013, he started Calendly with his entire life savings of 200k. He sometimes ran into issues raising funds early on, perhaps due to his background and race. Today, the company is the market leader for employee scheduling.
Quotes
I am not a big activist, but what I can do I really want to do: Make Calendly successful. If I make Calendly successful then my nephew and niece (my biggest motivations), have people in tech that look just like them,
Tope Awotona
References
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How Atlanta’s Calendly turned a scheduling nightmare into a $3B startup
There were several other entrepreneurial attempts, none particularly successful and at times quite frustrating because of the grunt work involved just to speak to people, before his businesses themselves could even be considered.
TechCrunch
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Insights about Tope Awotona: Product-led Calendly’s Path from 3 Failed Startups
Tope realized he kept doing things he was not passionate about and decided to make a bigger commitment. His previous efforts had been only about starting a business to make money, but he knew that was not working.
EnvZone
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This Atlanta Founder's Secret Weapon in Building His $30 Million Company: Growing Up in Nigeria
I raided my bank account and 401(k) to launch Calendly in 2013. Eventually, I ran out of money and started to seek VC funding. I had a working product, and customers using it, and everyone said no. Meanwhile, I watched other people who fit a different "profile" get money thrown at them for shitty ideas. Those VCs were ignorant and shortsighted. The only thing I could attribute it to was that I was black.
Inc
