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Tope Awotona

Tech entrepreneur and founder of Calendly

Tope Awotona is a prominent tech entrepreneur best known as the founder and CEO of Calendly, a widely-used scheduling software that simplifies the process of booking meetings. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, he experienced significant personal tragedy at a young age when he witnessed his father's murder during a carjacking. This event profoundly impacted his life and motivated him to pursue entrepreneurship, inspired by his father's legacy as a businessman.135

Early Life and Education

Awotona's family moved to the United States when he was 15, settling in Atlanta, Georgia. He attended the University of Georgia, where he initially majored in computer science before switching to business and management, earning a Bachelor of Business Administration degree.14

Career Path

Before founding Calendly, Awotona worked in various sales roles at companies like IBM and EMC. His frustrations with scheduling meetings during his sales career led him to develop the idea for Calendly. In 2013, he launched the platform after investing his life savings of $200,000 and seeking additional funding from investors.256

Under his leadership, Calendly has grown significantly, achieving a valuation of approximately $3 billion and serving over 10 million users as of 2024.135 The company has become one of the few Black-owned unicorns in the tech industry, reflecting Awotona's success as an immigrant entrepreneur in America.35

Recent Developments

Awotona continues to lead Calendly as it expands its offerings and user base, with notable growth in enterprise adoption among Fortune 500 companies. His journey from personal hardship to building a billion-dollar company exemplifies resilience and innovation in the tech landscape.346

Highlights

May 24 · linkedin

I spend a lot of time thinking about meetings for our customers: why we have them, how we run them, and what needs to change to make them more productive.

Meetings drive businesses forward, but figuring out how to encourage participation from everyone to get the best outcome from those meetings is tougher than some think.

I spoke to Harvard Business Review about this topic. If you haven’t read Luis Velasquez MBA, PhD.'s article yet, it’s worth checking out. He explains what’s broken with today’s meetings and how we can make simple, yet effective changes. Luis spoke at our Calendly company kickoff earlier this year to help us rethink our roles as meeting hosts and attendees so I knew I’d agree with many of his points.

Meeting dynamics are important and I have learned that there is definitely a better way forward!

#BetterMeetings

Jan 5 · linkedin

As we kick off 2024, I have been reflecting on some of Calendly’s key product and customer accomplishments over the past year and I’m also excited to share what I’m pumped about for the year ahead.

1️⃣ First, we added thousands of new customer logos including Crocs, Carnival Corporation, and GardaWorld. We’re now servicing over 20 million users, including customers at more than 100,000 organizations in over 230 countries around the world.

2️⃣ We launched Calendly Routing, our highly-requested lead routing solution that allows sales and marketing teams to qualify, route, and schedule meetings with inbound leads instantly from their company’s website.

3️⃣ We ramped up our existing security and compliance controls by launching Domain Control, which gives IT leaders and admins more oversight into scheduling in a secure, centralized way.

4️⃣ Our connectivity enhancements skyrocketed. We partnered with our peers in 2023 to ensure we’re everywhere our customers need us with the launch of Calendly for Gong Engage and our all-new integration with Microsoft Dynamics.

5️⃣ Lastly, these achievements wouldn’t have been possible without the team behind them and their dedication to serving our customers. Calendly being named on the Forbes Cloud 100 is just a sampling of the company accolades we received in 2023.

​​In 2024, we're focused on making Calendly more impactful for your meetings and relationships. I can't wait to get your feedback as we roll out these changes.

From all of us at Team Calendly, thank you for a memorable 2023 and Happy New Year. There’s lots to look forward to this year, and we’re here for our customers every step of the way!

Related Questions

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Tope Awotona
Tope Awotona, photo 1
Tope Awotona, photo 2
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Location

Atlanta, Georgia, United States