Calendly founder Tope Awotona discusses the company's five-year product roadmap and vision beyond basic scheduling with Guy Raz.
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“Our overall vision is to take the work out of meetings, right? So we really think about our mission as not just removing the back and forth of scheduling, but how can we really automate the entire meeting experience, right? So, you know, too often, not only are meetings difficult to schedule, people sometimes forget to show up. When they show up, they're not prepared. There's no clear memorialization of the key decisions that are made and, you know, action items that are open. Those are the things that we're looking to fix, and there's a lot there, and that will keep us very, very busy for five years.”
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More from Tope Awotona
Insight
Awotona: Scheduling software requires a great recipient UX for mass adoption
“If this would gain mass adoption, you really needed to build for both For all participants, you needed to make it a great experience for every for all the users of the product, whether they were your own registered users or the people who were receiving invita…”
Awotona: Entrepreneurial engineers prefer building their own ideas over joining yours
“Most engineers that are entrepreneurial, they would rather pursue their own ideas, or if they're going to take their risk, they're rather, you know, like bet on themselves and kind of go after it.”
Awotona emptied his 401(k) and maxed out credit cards to fund Calendly
“So cobbled together my four one K and my savings and then and then some debt and maxed out all my credit cards and put it all in on on this on this idea that at the time didn't even have a name.”
Awotona: Coastal VCs prioritize growth, while non-coastal VCs value revenue
“I think that the farther you are away from the coast, the more they the more investors value revenue. Whereas when you're on the coast, I think they care more about growth.”
Awotona: Selling Calendly to an acquirer like Salesforce is not an option
“Absolutely not. I'm very excited about what we're doing, and I feel like we're just getting started, and there's a lot to do, and so that's not remotely on my radar.”
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