As one of just two Black tech billionaires in the U.S with a net worth of at least $1.4 billion, according to Forbes, Awotona’s success has drawn attention not only to his personal achievements but also to the potential for African and Black talent to contribute significantly to the global tech industry. For Awotona, the opportunity to create Calendly in 2013 was born out of his own experience as a business professional trying to schedule meetings with multiple people at once. He realized that there was a gap in the market for a simpler, more efficient way to do this, and set about creating a solution.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Awotona explained his motivation for creating Calendly: “I decided that I was going to look for scheduling products that existed on the market that I could sign up for, but the problem I was facing at the time was I was trying to arrange a meeting with, you know, 10 or 20 people. I was just looking for an easy way for us to easily share our availability and, you know, easily find a time that works for everybody.”
Calendly which is a cloud scheduling app has since gained millions of users globally and has been valued at $3 billion by some investors. However, this is not Awotona’s first venture, and he attributes his eventual success to the lessons he learned from previous failed startups, including a dating website and a platform for home and yard equipment. He told TechCrunch, “Each of those experiences were immensely valuable… every one of those experiences, they taught me something that I would later need to know to make Calendly successful.”
Calendly’s functionality allows users to integrate the platform with their calendars and create custom availability settings. This makes finding a mutually convenient time for appointments as easy as sending out a link. Awotona contacted over 100 investors before receiving his first round of funding in 2013, collecting a mere $550,000. While gaining a $350 million investment by OpenView Venture Partners and Iconiq Capital in 2020.
In a world where the lack of diversity in the tech industry has come under increasing scrutiny, Awotona’s success is a powerful reminder of the potential for Black talent to thrive in the sector. As he told TechCrunch, “I hope [my success] can be an inspiration… that more people from diverse backgrounds can build these big, successful companies.”
