Calendly, founded by Tope Awotona; scheduling made simple
23 June 2022; Tope Awotona, Founder & CEO, Calendly, on Centre Stage during day three of Collision 2022 at Enercare Centre in Toronto, Canada. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Collision via Sportsfile. Collision Conf - SZ9_1364
Calendly is automated scheduling software that removes the friction of booking meetings, appointments, and events. Users share a personalized link that displays real‑time availability. Invitees pick a slot that works for them; Calendly then places the event on all participants’ calendars, triggers confirmations and reminders, and can start a Zoom or Teams session automatically. It syncs with multiple calendar providers (Google Calendar, Outlook/Office 365, iCloud and others) to check for conflicts in real time and integrates with video platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, and with payment systems like Stripe and PayPal.
Calendly has grown from a simple scheduler into a widely used business tool. As of 2025, Calendly reported tens of millions of users worldwide and serves hundreds of thousands of companies — a customer base spanning startups to large enterprises. Those numbers reflect broad adoption across sales, recruiting, professional services, and internal operations where scheduling efficiency directly improves productivity and conversion rates.
Tope Awotona founded Calendly in 2013, drawing on his own experience with inefficient scheduling while working in sales and customer operations. Born in Nigeria and later moving to the United States, Awotona worked in technology and sales roles where he repeatedly faced the frustration of losing time and momentum to scheduling delays. He built the first version of Calendly to solve that everyday pain point: a lightweight, elegant tool that took human calendars and made scheduling predictable and automated.
Awotona’s story is one of perseverance and product focus. He chose to prioritize a simple, highly usable product that could integrate seamlessly into existing workflows rather than forcing users to change how they work. That user‑centric approach helped Calendly spread virally: individuals share links that introduce the tool to colleagues and clients, creating organic growth. Over the years, Awotona has steered the company from a one‑person startup to a global business with a strong remote culture, emphasizing customer experience, product reliability, and design clarity.
Visit > https://calendly.com/