Tope Awotona was named by Forbes as the richest immigrant and Nigerian American residing in the United States.
This is coming two years after he made Forbes billionaire list, nabbing the 2,076th spot.
Like many businessmen, the road to success was not smooth at the beginning for Awotona. His life was defined by tragedy. He immigrated to the United States as a teenager after watching his dad get shot and killed by a criminal who stole their car. His mom wanted a better life for him and his siblings and so moved the family there. He fell into deep depression and could not eat or sleep for months as a result of the tragedy of seeing his father murdered. While it was a hard transition for him, he was driven to become successful for his dad.
Awotona is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Calendly, a scheduling software company, worth $3 billion. The 42-year-old, born in Lagos, Nigeria, and relocated to the US during his teenage years, holds a net worth of $1.2 billion. He previously worked as a salesman for tech firms like EMC (now Dell EMC).
Forbes notes that he initiated Calendly in response to his own frustration with the time-consuming back-and-forth emails needed for meeting scheduling,.
He built its first product by hiring a Ukrainian firm for programming help. He moved to Kyiv during anti-government protests eight years ago for a while to ensure his dream saw the light of day.
Prior to establishing Calendly, Awotona ventured into other businesses, such as a projector-selling venture and a garden tools enterprise, both of which did not succeed. The majority of his wealth, however, comes from the software he created. Calendly, the software company he founded, specialises in a business communication platform designed for teams to efficiently schedule, prepare, and follow up on external meetings.
Awotona started Calendly, after investing all his life savings of $200,000 into it and later quitting his job selling software for EMC.
As part of the success of his initiatives, the company has 10 million users and counts Lyft, Ancestry.com, Indiana University and La-Z-Boy among its customers.
A graduate with a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Georgia, Awotona resides in Atlanta, Georgia, with his family.
The American business magazine said Awotona’s revenue last year passed $100 million, double what it booked the previous year.
It further said that the company, which was founded in Atlanta but no longer has any physical offices, has been profitable since 2016.
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.
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.
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.
Attesting to his success, David Cummings, founder of Atlanta Ventures, which led a $550,000 seed investment in Calendly seven years ago, said, “Tope could be the most successful African-American tech entrepreneur of his generation.”