That means routing meetings to the right person at a large company and adding relevant documents, such as agendas and budgets, that are needed to make the meeting run more smoothly in the invitation itself. But Calendly has gained traction with its sleek, consumer-friendly design and its freemium model that lets it gain paying customers with no marketing.Īwotona is now moving beyond scheduling meetings to creating tools that help recruiters, salespeople and other white-collar workers manage those meetings before and after they occur. Square, Microsoft and Zurich-based Doodle offer competing products. “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.Ĭalendly doesn’t have the scheduling business to itself. 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. 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. 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. While we considered outside investment an unnecessary distraction, we made the decision to partner with OpenView and Iconiq because of their insight and extended network within the tech industry,” Awotona told reporters in Atlanta where the company is based.The company, which was founded in Atlanta but no longer has any physical offices, has been profitable since 2016. “ 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. In 2020 alone, Calendly scheduled over 100 million meetings and is becoming increasingly synonymous with scheduling and calendar management.įounded in 2013, Tope Awotona, Calendly has gained about 10 million users monthly and has reported revenues of $70 million in subscriptions in 2020 with projections of about $1 billion in the near future. With COVID-19, Calendly has a unique ability to penetrate this global market opportunity for virtual meetings and appointments. It even expands outside the professional realm to address my personal and prosumer use cases,” Bartlett added. This universal pain point leads to a massive global market opportunity because meeting scheduling touches so many industries, use cases, and business processes. Everyone hates the back-and-forth emails it takes to schedule a meeting. “ When we began working with Calendly’s Founder/CEO Tope Awotona, we were compelled by the sheer size of the opportunity. We’ve been consistently impressed by Calendly’s performance, and we’re beyond excited to deepen our partnership with this significant investment,” said Blake Bartlett, Partner at OpenView. “ Calendly has been a part of the OV family since our original investment in August of 2017. Calendly works simply by allowing users to access all your event types and available times to meet in just a few clicks.Ī user chooses specific time slots to display in emails to quickly set up ad hoc meetings and add notes to your event types that only you and your team can see. Tope Awotona’s cloud scheduling platform Calendly, has raised $350 million from OpenView Venture Partners and Iconiq capital, making the Atlanta-based company valued at over $3 billion.Ĭalendly had earlier raised around $200,000 from OpenView Venture Partners and Iconiq CapitalOpen to help users connect with their personal and business calendars to save time and simplify the tasks involved in meeting with people outside your company.Ĭalendly allows users to connect and agree with your invitees on the best time to meet and schedule your meetings without the back-and-forth emails.Ĭalendly allows users to schedule meetings without the hassle and it works with your calendar to automate appointment scheduling so you never have to get double-booked. Calendly has closed a $350M Series B, led by OpenView to fuel its growth during this pandemic putting its value at more than $3 billion.
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