*Tope Awotona, the forty-year-old Nigerian who founded the Calendly app, has joined the club of the richest immigrants in the US. The Calendly, scheduling software for streamlining work-life, meetings, and appointments, is now worth $3 billion after it took Silicon Valley by storm. This windfall has made Awotona one of the richest immigrants. Forbes has estimated his personal net worth at $1.4 billion. He is also the CEO of Calendly.
Awotona founded Calendly in 2013 in Atlanta with his $200,000 life savings. By then, he was working at Dell EMC, a tech firm. He consistently pursued his dream, and the rest is history. The platform currently has over 10 million users. Industry giants such as Ancestry.com, Lyft, La-Z Boy and Indiana University are some of the users. Calendly is now raking in huge revenue; the tech company’s last year’s revenue doubled the previous year’s, at $100 million. This year’s revenue is expected to double last year’s!
But it is not like there is no competition in the calendar industry. Calendly is competing against giants such as Microsoft, Square, and Doodle, but it has an edge due to its easy-to-use design that consumers find irresistible. Its premium version is also a no-ad zone.
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“Tope could be the most successful African-American tech entrepreneur of his generation,” said David Cummings, the founder of Atlanta Ventures.
“In my life, I’ve benefited from not taking the conventional wisdom,” the tech founder told Forbes. “It’s benefited me personally, and I think it has benefited the business.”
But Awotona failed thrice before succeeding. He founded three different companies that didn’t succeed. These were a dating website, the sale of garden equipment, and the sale of projectors. It was when he founded Calendly that his entrepreneurial ventures finally bore fruits.
So, what has given Calendly an edge over its competitors?
“The obvious idea to me was that scheduling is broken,” Awotona said. “With my previous businesses, I hedged my bets a little bit and gave myself a way out. With Calendly, I flew into a war zone and put in every cent I had.”
He now aims to bring in new features in Calendly that will make it stand out even more: increased analytics, international expansion, and attaching an applicant’s résumés to recruiters’ calendars.
“If you’re going to do something, you have to go all-in,” added the billionaire.
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