Calendly, the scheduling platform founded by Nigerian-born Tope Awotana has raised $350 million from Open View Venture Partners and Iconic capital. This has raised the company’s valuation to over $3 billion.
According to the founder, the company made the decision to partner with the two investment companies because of their insight and extended network within the tech industry.
The company intends to use this new funding to add some new tools that will enhance their customers’ appointment scheduling experiences and to provide liquidity for early shareholders, employees and continue product innovation.
What Awotana is saying about the funding
Speaking about the funding, Awotana said, “Our profitable, unique, product-led growth model has led to Calendly becoming the most used, most integrated, most loved scheduling platform for individuals and large enterprises alike.”
“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 continued in the announcement,” he added.
What you should know about Calendly
- Calendly was founded in 2013 at the Atlanta Tech Village, a startup incubator started by serial software entrepreneur David Cummings.
- Awotana who moved to the United States when he was a teenager started the company with his savings and struggled to get funding over the years.
- In 2016 the company started becoming profitable and raised $500,000. Later in 2019, the company started expanding with at the time growing to almost one million users and was thriving.
- However, as soon as the pandemic hit, its customer base increased to about 10 million as more people began to embrace remote working with new sets of users, including health workers, teachers, contractors, entrepreneurs, and freelancers now using the app.
- In 2021, the company doubled its subscription earnings to $70 million.