Somewhere in the world right now, someone is sending a Calendly link. It happens millions of times a day, in corporate boardrooms, startup pitches, doctor’s offices, job interviews, and podcast bookings. A short link that removes the back-and-forth of scheduling entirely. What most of the people sending that link do not know is that it was built by a boy from Lagos who watched his father get murdered in a carjacking when he was twelve years old.
That is where this story starts.
Tope Awotona was born in 1981 in Lagos, Nigeria. His father was a microbiologist and entrepreneur. His mother was the Chief Pharmacist for the Central Bank of Nigeria. It was a comfortable, ambitious household, the kind where hard work was not discussed so much as demonstrated. Entrepreneurialism ran in the family. His father left his job as a microbiologist to start a company of his own. He never got to finish it. When Awotona was 12 years old, his father was shot and killed in a carjacking. 
“I felt like he didn’t get a chance to complete his work,” Awotona told Inc. “There was a part of me, from a very early age, that wanted to redeem him.”
That sentence explains everything that came after.
The Long Road to the Right Idea
In 1996, as a teenager, Awotona immigrated to the United States with his family and settled in the Atlanta area. He went on to earn his degree in Management Information Systems from the University of Georgia. After graduating, he spent his early career in software sales for companies including Dell, IBM, and Perceptive Software.
But he always wanted to build something of his own. The problem was finding the right thing.
His first idea was a dating website, but it never launched. His second was an e-commerce site selling projectors. His third was a site for grills and outdoor equipment. All three failed. Each one taught him something he would only understand in hindsight: he was chasing profit rather than solving a problem he actually cared about.
The shift came from frustration. In late 2012, Awotona was tired of the endless back-and-forth emails required to schedule a simple meeting. He researched the tools that existed and found all of them outdated. He became obsessed with the gap and how he could fill it.
According to BetaBoom, in September 2013, he launched Calendly from Atlanta Tech Village, a coworking space for entrepreneurs. He put his entire life savings in, pulled from his 401k, and maxed out his credit cards. There were no investors. No safety net. Just a man who had finally found a problem worth solving.
SEE ALSO: The Nigerian Man Quietly Running One of America’s Most Powerful Drug Empires
What He Built
Awotona bootstrapped Calendly for eight years, funding it entirely himself until he took on a $350 million investment in 2021. Today, Calendly has over 10 million users in 116 countries and it is valued at $3 billion, making Awotona one of the wealthiest immigrants in America.
As reported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, He is one of only two Black tech billionaires in the world. His net worth sits at $1.4 billion as of recent estimates.
But what he says about all of it is the part that sticks. “There are a million Topes in Nigeria,” he said in an interview. “The difference for me was my parents. I’m not a diamond in the rough, and I want to get involved in some way to help with that full potential.”
Awotona did not build Calendly to prove something to America, he built it to finish something his father started.
The next time you send that link, you know the story behind it.
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