This is the greatest comeback story in history:

At 12, This Man witnessed his father’s murder.

Later Lost his life savings on 3 failed startups.

Bet everything on one last idea.

Today, his company is worth $3 billion.

This is the story of Tope Awotona, the Nigerian-born tech. entrepreneur, founder of Calendly

and the 3 lessons his journey teaches us about failure, resilience, and success:

At just 12 years old, young Tope witnessed his father’s murder during a carjacking in Lagos.

That moment shattered his world.

But little did he know, this tragedy would ignite a fire within him,
a drive to build something extraordinary.

After his father’s death, Tope moved to America as a teenager.

He studied computer science at the University of Georgia but found himself drawn to sales roles.

Yet, something was missing.

He wanted to create something that mattered.

So, he took the leap into entrepreneurship.

His first venture? An e-commerce site selling projectors.

It failed

His second startup? A garden tools business.

It failed too

His third attempt? A dating website.

That also crashed and burned

Each failure cost him time, money, and confidence.

But each one also taught him something invaluable:

His first failure exposed the importance of supply chain management.

His second failure showed him the value of operational efficiency.

His third failure taught him about market timing and the need for proper funding.

By 2013, Tope was out of money, out of ideas, and out of options.

But he wasn’t out of the fight.

He had one last idea, and he went all in.

Invested his entire life savings, $200,000, into a scheduling tool called Calendly .

Friends thought he was crazy.

Investors called the idea "boring" and "unscalable."

But Tope had discovered a universal pain point: the endless back-and-forth emails just to schedule a single meeting.

He knew this wasn’t just an annoyance, it was a productivity killer.

With no external funding, Tope hired Ukrainian contractors to build the first version of Calendly.

He kept it simple:

A clean interface.

Easy functionality.

One core problem solved perfectly.

And it worked.

Calendly spread like wildfire.

Freelancers loved its simplicity.
Sales teams appreciated its efficiency.
Recruiters shared it with their networks.

By 2020, Calendly was generating over $70 million in annual recurring revenue.

Then, COVID hit.

The world shifted to remote work, and virtual meetings became the norm.

Calendly became essential.

In 2021, investors who once dismissed Tope’s idea poured in $350 million.

Calendly’s valuation skyrocketed to $3 billion.

Today, Tope Awotona is worth over $1 Billion dollars become the few Nigerian-born Entrepreneurs who has crossed the billionaire line

The boy who witnessed tragedy in Lagos had built a tech empire.

But His journey revealed three profound truths about success to Us:

- Rejection is redirection

Every failed startup taught Tope something critical.
The lessons from those failures became the foundation for Calendly’s success.

- Solve real problems

Calendly didn’t chase trends, it solved a pain point Tope experienced firsthand.
The best ideas come from personal frustration.

- Constraints breed creativity

With no funding, Tope focused on simplicity.
That constraint became Calendly’s greatest strength.

Tope Awotona’s story is proof that success isn’t about avoiding failure it’s about learning from it.

So, the next time you face rejection, remember Tope Awotona’’s journey.

Your greatest comeback could be just one idea away.

#TechStories
#calendly
#tope

On this day in 2016, Microsoft made its biggest move at the time: acquiring LinkedIn for $26.2 billion.

The platform kept its name and CEO, Jeff Weiner, but became central to Satya Nadella’s broader vision to push Microsoft beyond software and into the heart of professional life. While the Activision Blizzard deal eventually surpassed it in size, LinkedIn remains one of Microsoft’s most strategic assets—fueling its growth in enterprise tools, cloud services, and AI-powered learning.

Today, it has over 1.2 billion members and draws nearly 1.8 billion visits each month. It counts over 234 million users in the U.S. alone. Nearly 43% of all consumers have a LinkedIn profile, and one in four engage with brand content daily. Most users are 25–34, with Gen Z quickly joining as they enter the workforce.

Almost a decade after the deal, LinkedIn has grown far beyond a digital résumé—it’s where careers are built and business happens.

(h/t Sprout Social, Statista)

BREAKING:
The Alliance of SAHEL States (AES) has introduced its national anthem, marking a significant milestone in the establishment of a borderless nation comprising Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali. This integration enables the free movement of people and businesses, supported by a single, unified army. The three heads of state simultaneously launched and sang the AES national anthem. As an African, do you think the AES embodies the future and the principles that Africans stand for?

Your thoughts on Africa time

Are Brands Shortchanging The Southeast?

We pride ourselves on having a large market in the Southeast. Numbers and statistics support this claim. When I was in the telecom industry, Onitsha was a big revenue center for the telcos.

However, we cannot say that brands benefiting from the huge Southeast market have shown enough good faith in their social investments decision-making and this is baffling.

Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt usually receive a large chunk of corporate sponsorships from major Nigerian brands, to the neglect of the Southeast market, which can be likened to the goose that lays the golden egg.

We once had MTN as the title sponsor of Enugwu-Ukwu Igu-Aro and the other associated festivals. That relationship stopped and no other brand has bothered to throw their muscle behind the rich cultural fest. Globacom sponsors the Onitsha Ofala Festival. However, other brands are yet to step in as co-sponsors to help blow the festival the same way they have done with the Ojude Oba festival in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun state.

These fliers are just a few examples of how other brands have helped to activate the Ojude-Oba festival.

Organizing world-class festivals requires a lot of resources which only brands can provide. We people of the Southeast are demanding more from brands that are generating tons of revenue from the Southeast. Fair is fair.

We are simply asking for a re-think of the corporate social investments (CSI) strategies of major Nigerian brands to also favour the Southeast which also generates the revenues for them.

The argument that insecurity in the Southeast is one of the reasons why brands chose to stay away from CSI investments is not completely true. Insecurity may have impacted social life but people are still making calls and using data in the Southeast so the telcos can’t complain. On the Mondays of sit-at-home, I can bet that data and call usages increase as people idle away at home. On weekends, and even weekdays, bars and nightclubs are still banging so beverage companies are smiling. The financial services sector is thriving despite the security challenges. POS operators are almost lined up inch after inch in our communities. Banks are still declaring trillions of Naira in profits.

During festive periods such as Easter, New Yam, and Christmas seasons when these festivals take place. It’s choc-a-block and bumper-to-bumper traffic in the Southeast. So a bit more CSI gaze towards the Southeast by the brands won’t be a bad idea. The tokenism approach should be discarded because it’s good business for them.

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Stop shouting that it is the "bad economy that makes ShopRite empty".

It is change and development that affect ShopRite in Nigeria

Take Ibadan for example,it is hardly you drive three kilometers that you will not see a Mall, either big or mini Mall that are being owned by individuals

For example, from the University of Ibadan main Gate to Ojoo,there are three different Malls.

So, automatically, those that reside both Ojoo and University of Ibadan may not have any reason to go to ShopRite again.

You as a person, when did you go to ShopRite last?

If you Reside in Dugbe axis, Pinnacle Mall is already satisfying people around that area,and which may reduce the number of people that would be patronizing ShopRite at Dugbe

ShopRite is empty doesn't mean economy is bad generally, but individuals are already venturing into Mall businesses, which is reducing the number of customers that would be patronizing ShopRite.

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WOW

Zlatan revealed that Davido supportted his business with over 20 million Naira . He bought his $1500 merch for everyone in 30BG gang .

It didn’t end there , he went with it to America and wore it almost everyday . He promoted Zlatan’s clothing line despite being a PUMA Ambassador

001 is a man with the Heart of Gold .

Make him buy one for Shatta abeg .

Imagine FBI or MI5 don dey into the business of building churches and mosque for America and UK instead of intelligence gathering centres . Nigeria na very anyhow country. Nothing Una fit tell me.

Your attitude is louder than your prices.

No matter how affordable your product is, if you're rude, slow to respond, or full of excuses—customers will run.
Politeness + Good service = Repeat business & referrals.

“The $100 million we invested in Iroko TV was a mistake. If I had another opportunity, I would not do it again.”

Jason Njoku shares his terrible, brutal experience running Iroko TV.

Let's read him:

STREAMING IN NIGERIA. DID THE MARKET WIN?

Iroko’s first funding was in August 2011; our mandate was to build a large streaming business in Nigeria.

Tiger Global believed that one of the largest growth areas would be online entertainment, and like most content, the winners would be local content in large domestic markets.

They invested $200 million in Netflix back in 2010 and then invested in IVI in Russia, YY in China, Netmovies in Brazil, and us in Nigeria.

With super-expensive data bundles and inelegant payment options (I remember waiting for Interswitch to enable us to integrate), our market took a while to mature. In most opportunities, you can be too early or too late; only in hindsight can you gauge when the best time to strike would be. iROKOtv was very early when we launched in 2011, but we were fortunate that there was a ready-made international market in the diaspora who were willing to pay and able to overcome any technical hurdles (payment/bandwidth/devices) to enable us to at least generate a sizable income.

We actually waited until 2015 (four years post-launch), building the product, securing a sizable content library, and assembling a team to attempt to take on Nigeria and Africa. Between the revenues we generated and the venture capital we raised ($35 million) over the first ten years, we easily spent $100 million trying to win.

But we weren’t winning; we weren’t really losing either. We were just there, in full survival mode, operating in the toughest conditions possible. Streaming, even domestically, is a scale game.

Africa wasn’t immune to those costs. It’s incredibly expensive across marketing, content, delivery, and product platforms. Our largest, most serious competitors were Showmax, Netflix, Amazon, and Iflix. Collectively, they easily invested $1 billion or more from 2015 to 2023.

During that period, we often had tense board meetings about why iROKOtv wasn’t succeeding; it was challenging to feel that all my hard work and dedication were constantly reduced to “you’re not doing enough”.

We have been, and remain, the most aggressive in trying to distribute content across Nigeria—deploying hundreds of manned kiosks, teams of outbound contact centre agents, creating agency networks, adjusting our product to prioritise Android downloads, and pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing.

At one point, it dawned on me, and I finally shot back in a board meeting: if iROKOtv was losing, could they point to someone who was beating us? In the startup world, that’s usually the outcome of underperformance.

You are simply being out-executed by a better-capitalised or higher-performing startup. In this case, there simply wasn’t anything anyone could point to to establish that.

So my simple assertion was that the market was winning. In 2019, we went out to fundraise; for the first time, we used a bank, Stanbic IBTP, to support that.

We were looking for $10-20 million to keep pushing into and across Africa with our outbound, agency, and kiosk models.

I believed my tales of survival would inspire the (primarily) PE investors that we were going to be the eventual winners in a brutal, long-fought civil streaming war. Instead, they all largely concluded that perhaps there was no market there, that the unit economics were simply not viable at any reasonable scale.

What they were all interested in was the ROK content, TV channels, and distribution business. It was straightforward (fewer than 30 employees), had clear revenue recognition (billion-dollar paid TV platforms – DStv, Multichoice, SKY, etc., with 3-5 year contracts in non-local currencies), and was amassing a sizable IP library funded by the same paid TV platforms. Once we separated out ROK, it was clear where the value lay in Iroko. It represented 80% of revenues and 25% of costs. EBITA margins of 35-40% were achieved without even realising it.

The outcome of that fundraise was the $25 million partial exit (Iroko sold her shares; Mrs Njoku remains a significant shareholder in the studio) to Vivendi/Canal+.

We closed in July 2019.

Before the end of 2019, we had distributed $5 million as a special dividend and were primed to take on the world.

Then COVID-19 happened. Streaming temporarily boomed in the West (our North American business tripled in subscriber growth), while Nigeria closed borders and grappled with peculiar economic principles (devaluations, FX windows, etc.).

The local market in Nigeria simply collapsed. We saw it and stubbornly decided to keep investing and doubling down until we were all tapped out, having burnt through most of the post-exit capital. To save iROKOtv, we considered crowdfunding, an AIM LSE listing (you could raise $10-30 million easily back then) with relatively little revenue but a strong narrative.

In the end, we raised $1.1 million in convertible notes, then recapped the company a year later and paid it back.

In 2023, we finally accepted there was no market for paid premium services and exited Nigeria. We haven’t processed any Naira payments there in almost two years.

As I humbly survey the wreckage of the last 15 years of streaming in Nigeria and Africa, it’s clear our (then $2k GDP per capita) was too small to support even a $5/mo product. It’s clear this wasn’t even a question of capital.

Showmax alone continues to pour tens, if not hundreds, of millions to make it work. But the global giants tapped out last year; their costs (content and marketing) were clearly unsustainably high, and their product needed to be localised to make sense and actually work; it’s just not how platforms sustainably scale.

So I wasn’t surprised when either Amazon or Netflix rolled back their considerable investments in Nigeria. $5/mo is a luxury I doubt even 250k can reliably afford in Nigeria.

You can see the impact of what GOtv and DStv are suffering at the hands of the market. It’s okay that we tried and failed. It’s okay that we accept the limitations in the domestic market we find ourselves in. Did it need $1B+ to figure this out?

Absolutely not. I believe, with my newfound knowledge, that iROKOtv could have reached the same conclusions with $5-10 million versus the $100 million+ we ended up investing.

In hindsight, streaming wasn’t the winning model for Nollywood in Nigeria. Content, channels, and distribution were.

With the economics that business had in 2018, we could have shut down iROKOtv and her $5 million/year in losses and either listed it or just had a fantastically profitable business.

But I was a believer and walked away from millions of dollars in personal liquidity to put it all in to build streaming in Africa.

My lessons were expensive, and that’s why I am so consistent in telling founders not to over-raise.

I am not surprised by the story of Obi from Kobo360; I lobbied him pre-$30m raise not to raise too much capital or later on to seek a merger with his nearest competitor whilst they were engaged in a brutal price war.

The unit economics and payment cycles were brutal, and capital wasn’t going to dramatically change the market dynamics, and it appeared that no one was really going to win that market. It’s only with deep, lived, and expensive experience that I can glance at unit economics coldly and get a feel for whether, with the usual macro turbulence, a startup has a better chance at long-term success.

Nigeria is currently a massive drag on the entire operating business of Multichoice. Their most recent H1 reports indicate.

Reminder that this is the largest pay platform in Africa, which is currently being acquired in a $2.8B deal.

Classic business advice from Alex Hormozi that will teach sales

Wait oo, chiefpriest don abadon him business turn Davido's PA? Because he is everywhere with him at all times.

I saw a video of Veekee James making a wedding dress few hours to a wedding party simply because the one she had initially planned to wear didn’t come out as expected.

It was an orange lovely dress.

I had to watch the video thrice to see what was actually wrong with that dress she rejected for the other.

..puffed up space at the lower zip region and an uneven stitch in a slit….

I eventually saw what she was unsatisfied about.

Now, any normal Nigerian lady would have said in that lovely dress, “It’s not that bad.” And family and friends would have concurred, “It’s not even visible, unless the person comes close. Wear your thing jare.”

BUT THEN! This was VEE KEE JAMES.

Not the Ajegunle VeeKee — the Forbes VJ Brand.

When it comes to fashion, she knows now that it is no longer only about her, but now about the BRAND.

She had an image to protect and a brand to represent. It had to be excellence or nothing. And excellence never goes for better when there can be best. Never condones “manage it” when there can be perfection.

Anyone could have easily walked up to her in the party and seen that — it would have been sore. And we all know how life happens, the day you decide to manage a thing is the day it gets out unashamedly.

So, that was a beautiful value displayed there.

That video alone gained lots of tractions. It just gave people more reason to trust in that brand — if she can choose perfection in the last minute and beat it hands down, then I can trust her with my look and fit for I know now that VeeKee would do anything to make sure it fits!

You see that value?

That’s what every one should bring to the table when they are called.

In your business…in your life…in every area your prioritize .

It should be excellence or nothing.