Tope Awotona

CEO & Founder, Calendly

Search every verified Tope Awotona interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Tope Awotona, founder and CEO of Calendly, discussed his journey from emigrating from Nigeria to the U.S. for college to building the scheduling platform. He described working as a door-to-door salesman and launching several e-commerce businesses that he said failed because he lacked passion for them. In 2013, he said he cashed in his 401k, used his savings, borrowed from Lending Club at a high interest rate, and maxed out his credit cards to fund Calendly, which he described as an idea that "at the time didn't even have a name." Awotona stated that he believed the key to success was "the execution of it, not so much just the idea," noting that others had the same concept but he planned to execute it differently. Calendly was reportedly doing over $100 million in annual revenue as of a 2020 interview, and the company later took on outside investment with a valuation of $3 billion. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company reported that small business owners set 13 million more meetings through the platform compared to the same period before lockdowns. Awotona attributed success to a combination of "hard work, skill, resilience, and an appetite for risk taking."