No Idea, No Skills, No Problem. How a Nigerian immigrant bootstrapped a software biz from 0 to $3 BILLION

In less than 6 years, this Nigerian immigrant bootstrapped a software biz from 0 to $3 BILLION The crazy part?

He has no idea how to code.

Here's how he did it ????????????????????????????

Passion and determination can outweigh technical skills.

Tope Awotona founded Calendly in 2013 through sheer grit, perseverance, and the complete and utter emptying of his personal savings accounts.

Tope was born in lagos to a business family.

His grandma built a very successful textile import/export business.

His mom co-owned a pharmacy with his Aunt.

His dad was a microbiologist turned chemical distributor

Their life was good, but then tragedy struck...

At the age of 12, Tope was relaxing in his house when he saw his dad pull onto the driveway. Out of nowhere, several men rushed the car, forced him out, and despite no resistance, they murdered him.

Tope watched the whole thing and still has insomnia to this day bc of it.

That incident left a deep imprint on Tope.

He resolved to build a dream success for himself and his father Shortly after the tragedy, his mom moved the family to Georgia.

They moved in with relatives and set off to realize the American Dream...

He went on to the University of Georgia

At 17 he had his first biz idea.

He invented a device using optical character recognition to see and count.

After patenting it, he cold-called the National Register.

They offered to fly him out, but he froze up...

This experience motivated him to learn sales.

And he also kept up his side hustles.

And he started building a framework for what he needed his life's work to be:

1) It had to be software

2) He had to have a passion

3) It needed a growth channel he could understand

It took a few more years of sales jobs before he found that magic combination while working at Dell.

At the end of 2012, he realized how much time it took to schedule calls!

Dozens of emails for a single meeting

Scheduling software sucked Calendly was born!

But...

Tope had NO CLUE how to build software.

So he did the classic first-time entrepreneur thing: he outsourced it overseas.

It's not how, its who.

WHO CAN HELP HIM?

But this was a disaster.

It took 1+ year to build and he put all his life savings into it.

in 2014, he almost lost it all…

His dev team was in Ukraine and they were going through violent riots.

Undeterred, he flew into Kiev and stayed with his team through the riots making sure they shipped.

That risk paid off with a top-notch product and during his time there, they cracked something special...

The "Upside Down Funnel" - or said differently, the inherent virality in the product.

I send you a calendly link and its like marketing and product built into one.

Tope was building a social network + software

He calls it the "Instagram of Scheduling."

Whenever someone sent a link, they shared the product along with their schedule - UX was the #1 goal

The MVP was so good, the CLIENTS of beta users asked if they could roll it out to their entire 80+ team

The MVP was so good, the CLIENTS of beta users asked if they could roll it out to their entire 80+ team

They began building new automation and integrations to start boosting paid conversions

By the end of 2015, they had tripled growth and were adding $75K ARR every month and broke $1MM ARR

They were already profitable.

They found a cash cow.

Growing $1MM to over $70MM meant increasing profits - without increasing the price for everyone

In 2017, they released a Pro plan for 50% more for Salesforce users And 2018, Calendly narrowed focus to their 6 most profitable customer segments and have stuck with them since!

In 2021, Calendly raised $350MM at a $3B valuation.

$200M used to give liquidity to the team and early investors…

Tope's Net Worth is >$2BN!!

The company has bootstrapped to over $270MM ARR and 20MM+ monthly users

How?

By staying maniacally focused on ease of use, a strategy that fed the viral experience built into the core of the scheduling app

MAIN POINT: Provide solutions

I write newsletters on CashCow stories like this every week.

Stories that can give you the Entrepreneurs Edge.

My future prediction: Most future tech startups will come from people that have “no idea how to code”.

The best ideas can come from our own problems. The hard part is executing.