#2805

Tope Awotona

United States 45 years old Self-Made

Overview

Source of Wealth
Software
Industry
Technology
Residence
Atlanta, Georgia
Organization
Calendly
Education
The University Of Georgia (Bachelor of Business Administration)
Marital Status
Married

Biography

Tope Awotona is the founder and CEO of scheduling software company Calendly.

Awotona, a former salesman for tech firms including EMC (now Dell EMC), founded Calendly out of his own frustration with the back-and-forth emails required to schedule meetings.

He bootstrapped Calendly for years before taking on a $350 million investment in 2021 that valued the firm at $3 billion.

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Awotona immigrated to the United States as a teenager.

Before founding Calendly, he had started a few other businesses, including one that sold projectors and another that sold garden tools, that flopped.

About

To build its first product, Awotona hired a Ukrainian firm for programming help and was in Kyiv during anti-government protests in 2014.