Lifestyle

Man Narrate His True Life Story On How He Became A Billionaire After Lagos Armed Robbers Killed His Father When He Was 12 (Details below)

Published

3 years ago

April 7, 2022

Tope Awotono who lost his father in the hands of armed robbers in the bustling city of Lagos has now been confirmed a billionaire by Forbes.

The young Awotona was said to have witnessed the killing of his father when the criminals wanted to hijack their car.

The 40-year-old Awotona is the founder and chief executive of $3 billion worth Calendly, a meeting scheduling platform.

According to the magazine, Awotona was born in Lagos, Nigeria, into a middle-class family. His father was a microbiologist and entrepreneur; his mother worked at the Central Bank in Lagos.

In 1996, when he was 15, he moved with his family to Atlanta. He studied computer science at the University of Georgia, then switched to business and management information.

According to David Cummings, founder of Atlanta Ventures, which led a $550,000 seed investment in Calendly seven years ago, Tope could be the most successful African-American tech entrepreneur of his generation.

Meanwhile, Nigerian startups started the year 2022 at the same pace, it ended in 2021, as more foreign investors back their ideas and dreams with billions of Naira. Seven Nigerian start-ups in the tech space raised combined cash of $343 million in the first three months of this year.

In late January, a Nigerian tech start-up with an investment platform that allows Nigerians to trade in United States (U.S.) stocks in real-time from their mobile phones or computers, Bamboo, raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by American venture capital firms Greycroft and Tiger Global.