Lagos-born Tope Awotona now tech billionaire in U.S.: Forbes
Tope Awotona of Calendly
Forbes has featured and profiled the exploits of a 40-year-old Nigerian Tope Awotona, the Chief Executive Officer of $3 billion worth Calendly, a meeting scheduling platform.
Awotona started Calendy nine years ago by commiting his life savings of $200,000 into it after which he quit his job selling software for EMC.
Today, calendy can boast of 10 million users and counts Lyft, Ancestry.com, Indiana University and La-Z-Boy among its customers.
Its generated last year was in excess of $100 million, double what it booked the previous year. There are prospects that it could double that figure this year.
The company, which was founded in Atlanta but no longer has any physical offices, has been profitable since 2016.
Last year it raised $350 million in funding from OpenView Venture Partners and Iconiq Capital at a price that values the business at $3 billion.
That means Awotona’s majority stake is worth at least $1.4 billion, after the 10% discount that Forbes applies to shares of all private companies.
Awotona is one of just two Black tech billionaires in the United States, along with David Steward, the 70-year-old founder of Missouri-based IT provider World Wide Technology.
“Tope could be the most successful African-American tech entrepreneur of his generation,” says David Cummings, founder of Atlanta Ventures, which led a $550,000 seed investment in Calendly seven years ago.
But Calendly has gained traction with its sleek, consumer-friendly design and its freemium model that lets it gain paying customers with no marketing.
“In my life, I’ve benefited from not taking the conventional wisdom,” Awotona says. “It’s benefited me personally, and I think it has benefited the business.”
Awotona was born in Lagos, Nigeria, into a middle-class family.
His father was a microbiologist and entrepreneur; his mother worked at the Central Bank in Lagos, a city of 15 million.
When Awotona was 12 he witnessed his father get shot and killed in a carjacking.
“There was a part of me, from a very early age, that wanted to redeem him,” he once said.
In 1996, when he was 15, he moved with his family to Atlanta.
He studied computer science at the University of Georgia, then switched to business and management information.
“I loved coding, but it was too monotonous,” he says. “I’m probably too extroverted to be a coder.
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