{"id":8615,"date":"2017-05-12T19:23:23","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T16:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/?p=8615"},"modified":"2025-01-31T19:30:58","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T16:30:58","slug":"hive53-calendly-swarm-meetup-on-building-global-business-from-scratch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/hive53-calendly-swarm-meetup-on-building-global-business-from-scratch\/","title":{"rendered":"Hive53 Calendly Swarm meetup on building global business from scratch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"intro-text\">Last week our client of three years Tope Awotona, a founder of Calendly visited us to discuss future product vision and collaborate with Railsware team in our Krak\u00f3w office. We took this opportunity and decided to share Calendly story with the local startup community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On 4th of May, a day when the force is with you, together with Hive53 and #omgkrk we organised an evening event in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/metaforma.cafe\">Metaforma Cafe<\/a>.<script src=\"https:\/\/fast.wistia.com\/embed\/medias\/3b1yf0rj6y.jsonp\" async=\"\">&lt;script src=\"https:\/\/fast.wistia.com\/assets\/external\/E-v1.js\" async=\"\"><\/script><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/fast.wistia.com\/embed\/medias\/3b1yf0rj6y.jsonp\" async=\"\"><\/script><script src=\"https:\/\/fast.wistia.com\/assets\/external\/E-v1.js\" async=\"\"><\/script><\/p>\n<div class=\"wistia_responsive_padding\" style=\"padding: 56.25% 0 0 0; position: relative;\">\n<div class=\"wistia_responsive_wrapper\" style=\"height: 100%; left: 0; position: absolute; top: 0; width: 100%;\">\n<div class=\"wistia_embed wistia_async_3b1yf0rj6y videoFoam=true\" style=\"height: 100%; width: 100%;\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For those of you who aren\u2019t familiar with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hive53.com\/\">Hive53<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/omgkrk.com\/\">#omgkrk<\/a> yet, both organisations gather and connect entrepreneurs, developers, designers and all the other growth-focused individuals, creating meetups and local events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our \u201cHive53 Calendly Swarm\u201d evening started off with a short introduction from the organisers and swiftly moved to Tope\u2019s story about the beginnings of his entrepreneurial adventure. His company <a href=\"https:\/\/calendly.com\/\">Calendly<\/a> is an online calendar tool designated for appointment making. However before Calendly was born, there were other business ideas Tope experimented with and decided to share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The beginnings<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cNo matter what you do, you have to do it in a compelling way, as there will be twenty other people doing the same thing.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/hive53-calendly-swarm-meetup-tope-photo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"575\" src=\"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/hive53-calendly-swarm-meetup-tope-photo-1024x575.jpg\" alt=\"Tope Awotona's talk\" class=\"wp-image-13733\" srcset=\"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/hive53-calendly-swarm-meetup-tope-photo-1024x575.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/hive53-calendly-swarm-meetup-tope-photo-360x202.jpg 360w, https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/hive53-calendly-swarm-meetup-tope-photo-768x431.jpg 768w, https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/hive53-calendly-swarm-meetup-tope-photo-1536x863.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/hive53-calendly-swarm-meetup-tope-photo.jpg 1996w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>It all started seven years ago when Tope was working as a sales representative in a software corporation based in Atlanta, which had acquired sixteen companies at that time. This sparked a realization: building something successful often requires stepping outside your comfort zone and taking calculated risks. Motivated, he left his corporate job to start his own business, understanding that success isn\u2019t reserved for extraordinary people but for those willing to act on their ambitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After leaving the corporate world behind, Tope&#8217;s first project was an e-commerce website selling projectors, even though he\u2019s never owned a projector before. The initial sales were coming in but he he didn\u2019t have enough knowledge and passion for this product and moved away from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Second business attempt was a website selling ceramic grills. They weren\u2019t available online and people would travel a long way to buy them. But again, Tope wasn\u2019t a product expert in this field. He shut the business down and didn\u2019t want to start anything new until he found something meaningful. This time the only way he wanted to start the business was by creating something you\u2019re passionate about which solves the real problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The light bulb moment<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In search of new opportunities Tope had a lot of meetings and looking back at his career, he realised it was never easy to schedule a one to one business meetup. He became obsessed with finding a perfect tool providing simple scheduling for everyone. Three months worth of research and about thirty scheduling tools later, he discovered that there was no perfect solution to this problem. Existing tools were mostly dedicated to specific areas like beauty professionals and they were clunky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was Tope\u2019s light bulb moment and he needed to find a tech partner to make his idea reality. He then started researching software development companies and came across Railsware.<br><em>&#8220;With Railsware, I learnt something new everyday. They\u2019re passionate about what they do and they challenge what you are thinking.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since the beginning of the collaboration Tope was very involved into product discussions. Today Calendly connects 840,000 users each month. People leave more complex scheduling tools and go for Calendly with less features because of its simplicity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/railsware.com\/services\/?utm_source=RW_site&amp;utm_medium=Article_banner&amp;utm_campaign=StartUp_articles\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"293\" src=\"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/rw-blog_banner_ads-1024x293.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/rw-blog_banner_ads-1024x293.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/rw-blog_banner_ads-360x103.jpeg 360w, https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/rw-blog_banner_ads-768x220.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/rw-blog_banner_ads.jpeg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Wrap up<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>During the Q&amp;A time, we wrapped the discussion up with some strong advice points:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Start your own business for the right reasons, be passionate<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Find the real problem and come up with the right solution<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Always do your research first<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Stay focused and follow your core values<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Be patient -success doesn\u2019t happen overnight<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Last but not least, some funny mistakes to learn from Calendly founder. The biggest screw up was sending a wrong newsletter to about 100,000 people. The content was so confusing to this group of people that about 50,000 of them replied with some questions. It took some time for the team to get back to all of the clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The evening finished with networking. Big thanks to Tope for visiting us again and sharing his story with Krak\u00f3w startup community. We\u2019d also like to say thank you to the organisers Hive53 and #omgkrk for making this event happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More information on Calendly case study can be found <a href=\"https:\/\/railsware.com\/case-studies\/calendly\/\">here<\/a>. If there\u2019s anything you\u2019d like share about this blogpost, please let us know. We\u2019d love to hear your feedback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week our client of three years Tope Awotona, a founder of Calendly visited us to discuss future product vision and collaborate with Railsware team in our Krak\u00f3w office. We took this opportunity and decided to share Calendly story with the local startup community. On 4th of May, a day when the force is with&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":9412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[365],"tags":[],"coauthors":["Ewa Sarnowska"],"class_list":["post-8615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insights"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"categories_data":[{"name":"Insights","link":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog?category=insights"}],"post_thumbnails":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/hive53-calendly-swarm-meetup-tope-photo-1024x575.jpg","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8615"}],"version-history":[{"count":75,"href":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18070,"href":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8615\/revisions\/18070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8615"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}