https://designerup.co/blog/10-amazing-digital-product-companies-that-happened-to-be-black-owned/
Lately, I've become more and more interested in the people and founder stories behind some of my favorite digital product companies.
What I started to realize is that some of the most innovative and brilliant product companies and startups out there right now happen to be headed by black founders.
Tech, especially here in Silicon Valley, is notorious for being melanin challenged and often times shouting empty equality buzz words, while publishing diversity reports whose efforts have barely moved the needle.
Underrepresented minorities still only make up single-digit percentages of the workforce at many major tech companies. Even less when you look at leadership statistics.
But these following companies and founders, quietly grinding away, are forging a new path ahead; not because they are black-owned, but because they are driven by a deeper mission to serve, to solve and to see change in their lifetimes.
I've chosen to highlight these 10 companies not only because of their lofty pursuits, but because of the ingenious products they are building, the complex problems they are solving, what they are bringing to their communities and how they are pushing tech forward to new and exciting (read; long overdue and colorful) heights.
Being a woman of color in tech myself and the founder of a school that teaches Product Design, I also selected companies who invest in design and recognize the importance of crafting meticulously thought out and intentional user experiences.
Calendly homepage
First up is Calendly.
What is it: Calendly is a free online appointment scheduling platform.
HQ Location: Atlanta Georgia
Who owns it: Tope Awotona, CEO & Founder.
Born to ambitious and inspiring parents (a microbiologist dad, and pharmacist mom) in Nigeria, Tope moved to the US when he was a teenager. After graduating from the University of Georgia, he landed a job at IBM as a sales rep. Tope spent seven years there growing strategic accounts and territories for some of the most successful software companies in the world including IBM, Perceptive Software, ImageRight/Vertafore and EMC. After 3 failed startups (A dating website, and 2 Ecommerce businesses), Tope decided to focus on working on a problem he was really passionate about. Out of his own frustration with the cumbersome and inefficient volley of emails required to setup a simple meeting time, Tope built and grew Calendly to $30 million dollars with over 30 million users in just 6 years!
"I realized that, to scale the business and make it all very successful, I couldn't just be a mercenary. I truly needed to care about the problem, and be motivated to solve it."
What's amazing about it:
I've been using Calendly for many years now and it's just a perfect, elegant, frictionless product that puts an end to the "Are you available at 1pm on Thursday?" string of emails. It's one of my can't live without SaaS apps.