Prompt Cast
Success Story of Tope Awotona and the Creation of Calendly
TLDR Tope Awotona, founder of Calendly, overcame personal tragedies and business failures to create a successful scheduling software, investing his own money and eventually raising funds to grow the business exponentially. Calendly gained popularity through word of mouth, leading Tope to leave his day job, focus on the company full-time, and introduce a premium plan for monetization.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
Tope Awotona founded Calendly after struggling to schedule meetings, turning his frustration into a successful multi-million dollar business with minimal outside investment.
06:31
Tope Awotona grew up in Nigeria, in a close-knit neighborhood, excelled in school, and faced the tragic loss of his father at the age of 12, which deeply impacted him.
12:42
Tope Awotona moved to the US to live with family in Marietta, Georgia, attended high school there, and later went on to study computer science at the University of Georgia before transitioning to a degree in business.
18:21
Tope Awotona found fulfillment in sales, influencing people's decisions, and quickly increasing his income, which led him to seek an accelerated career path in smaller, faster-growing companies after working for IBM.
23:44
Tope started dabbling in small businesses and eventually got into e-commerce based on the idea of starting a high-growth business around keywords with high traffic, leading him to consider selling projectors.
29:51
Tope started a projector business called projectorspot.com, but quickly realized the margins were thin and the business lasted less than six months.
35:18
Tope tried to start an e-commerce business selling grills but realized that the lack of focus on educating customers and building a brand led to its failure.
40:46
Tope realized the need to design a product that focused on creating a great experience for both users and recipients of invitations, leading him to identify a gap in the market and decide to pursue building a scheduling software.
46:55
Tope struggled to find a technical co-founder for his scheduling software startup, leading him to outsource the initial product development to a company in Ukraine that showed genuine interest in his idea.
52:25
Tope invested over $200,000, emptied his 401k, savings, and maxed out credit cards to develop the first version of Calendly, despite facing personal challenges and the loss of his mother during the process.
58:11
Tope's product, Calendly, gained traction through word of mouth starting with a software company in San Francisco and K-12 schools, leading to organic growth across various industries and roles.
01:03:33
Tope felt compelled to leave his day job to focus on Calendly full-time due to its growth potential and his ownership stake, despite initial skepticism from others and challenges in raising funds.
01:09:14
Tope Awotona raised $350,000 in 2014, introduced a premium plan to monetize Calendly, and focused on generating revenue while planning to acquire larger customers in the future.
Categories:
Business
