Tope Awotona’s Atlanta-based scheduling platform Calendly helps make virtual meetings easier, and because we’re all meeting virtually in the time of coronavirus, the market is rewarding him.
Calendly has raised a $350 million investment, valuing the company at more than $3 billion as business booms for tech founders who service people who work and study from home.
The Calendly funding round was led by OpenView Venture Partners, a Boston-based expansion-stage firm and existing investor, with participation from San Fransisco-based Iconiq Capital, Atlanta Business Chronicle reported.
Calendly doubled its subscription revenue to $70 million in 2020, according to the announcement. More than 10 million people per month, including workers at Zoom and Twilio, use the platform to streamline the way they schedule meetings.
“Our profitable, unique, product-led growth model has led to Calendly becoming the most used, most integrated, most loved scheduling platforms for individuals and large enterprises alike,” Awotona said in a prepared statement.
After immigrating from Nigeria to the U.S. as a teenager and attending college in the U.S., Awotona worked as a door-to-door salesman but planned on becoming a tech entrepreneur, according to NPR.
He launched a series of e-commerce businesses that failed because he had no passion for them. Then he had an idea that excited him: designing software that would minimize the hassle and headaches of scheduling meetings. In 2013, Awotona cashed in his 401k and went into debt to build Calendly.
Awotona founded Calendly at the Atlanta Tech Village, a startup incubator started by serial software entrepreneur David Cummings, according to Atlanta Business Chronicle.
Awotona was raised by his pharmacist and microbiologist parents in Lagos, according to a Twitter thread posted by Ankith Harathi, co-founder and CEO at Macro, a customizable meeting interface built on top of Zoom.
As a 12-year-old, he saw his father shot and killed during a carjacking. Devastated, Awotona focused on his school work and excelled. He received an offer at age 15 to attend a U.S. college, but his mother thought he was too young. Instead, she moved the whole family from Lagos to Marietta, Georgia, so he could attend a U.S. high school for two years before going to college.
Before his death, Awotona’s father had quit a nine-to-five job to run a startup, according to LegitNG. After he died, Awotona vowed he would make his dad proud by becoming a successful entrepreneur.
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Now, Awotona has hopes for earning $1 billion in revenue, he said in the announcement. Calendly has a chief people officer and chief revenue officer to help with this goal, Atlanta Business Chronicle reported.
Jeff Diana, a former Calendly advisor, is its new chief people officer charged with doubling Calendly’s team of 200-plus employees. That’s the same title he had at software companies Success Factors and Atlassian.
Patrick Moran is chief revenue officer and leads strategy for marketing, sales and partnerships. He has 15 years of experience in cloud companies, including at Quip, which was bought by Salesforce.
