Introduction
Atlanta-based Calendly, an online scheduling and appointment software company, has achieved a valuation of $3 billion following its latest round of funding. In addition, the company just announced that it closed a $350 million investment from OpenView and ICONIQ Growth. This is Calendly’s first external investment after raising over $20 million in the past two years through carefully planned acquisitions.
The new funds will accelerate product innovation and expand the team. It will also enable Calendly to move quickly in emerging markets, such as Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific, where more customers seek efficient tools to manage their appointments.
The Atlanta-based startup has experienced tremendous growth since its launch in 2013. The company now serves millions of users across 135 countries with a powerful suite of features that automate scheduling meetings between customers and businesses.
Overview of Calendly
Atlanta-based scheduling software company Calendly has announced a $350-million round of investment. This has valued the company at a staggering $3 billion, five-fold increase from just two years ago. So what is Calendly and has caused this steep rise in its valuation?
An overview of Calendly will help us understand this in more detail.
History
Calendly is a cloud-based scheduling platform founded by Tope Awotona in 2013. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Calendly provides businesses and individuals an automated way to coordinate meetings, interviews, lectures and more. In addition, the platform enables users to book appointments with their customers and colleagues while considering time zone differences.
Within its first year of launch, Calendly was already helping over 10,000 users in 151 countries book 2 million monthly meetings. In 2016 the company received its first round of venture capital funding and raised its series A round in 2018 bringing total investment up to $18 million. This led to significant growth for the firm including; 4x user growth within the same year and a 60% revenue increase from 2017 -2018.
The company’s rapid success led it to receive yet another large fund this year from OpenView Partners, pushing Calendly’s current valuation up to $3 billion, making it one of Atlanta’s quickest tech unicorns ever created. With this new found capital Calendly plans on expanding into yet more markets while staying focused on driving product innovation and customer success.
Services
Calendly is an integrated web-based digital platform that enables users to easily coordinate appointments, interviews and events. The company’s mission is to streamline the sharing of scheduling information between customer-facing teams and customers, using Calendly’s all-in-one digital calendaring platform. In addition, calendly integrates with over 40 external apps and tools so users can work more efficiently without switching between various services.
Calendly offers several services to make scheduling easier for its users. This includes automated emails sent out with persuasive messages, templates for invitation emails and customizable questions asked on the booking page. It can connect events across different email accounts and offer remote video integration. Other features include automated reminders, real-time synchronizing across multiple calendars, analytics for tracking meeting attendance, multiple event types (such as interviews), and a mobile app for on-the-go scheduling. Calendly also allows team members to give feedback about opportunities and features proactive recommendations for optimizing their calendar events.
Atlanta-based Calendly valued at $3 Billion following $350-Million round of investment
Atlanta-based Calendly, a company specializing in appointment scheduling, recently reached a valuation of $3 billion after a round of investment totaling $350 million. This places the company in the upper echelons of the tech industry, as few companies reach such a high valuation. It is interesting to consider the factors behind this valuation.
Let’s take a look.
Investment round
Atlanta-based Calendly, an easy-to-use meeting scheduling platform, has announced a $350 million investment to increase its total valuation to $3 billion. The series F round, led by ICONIQ Growth, included participation from Sapphire Ventures and existing investors Kleiner Perkins and KPCB, who were the company’s early backers.
The new capital will support the continued growth and development of Calendly’s products for consumers and businesses. This includes expanding its list of integrations with existing applications like Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Slack and Salesforce to create a more unified view of every user’s calendar. Additionally, the funds will allow Calendly to explore more powerful AI capabilities for smarter scheduling recommendations and focus more on product experience and security for customers.
The company has grown exponentially in just four years – it has over 20 million meeting bookings per month across over 85 countries globally. Its products are used by some of the biggest technological names such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. With this latest investment it plans to further expand its presence in the enterprise space while continuing to make its simple yet powerful scheduling tools accessible to everyone around the world.
Valuation
Valuation is a process of determining the current worth of an asset or a company. It can be used to estimate what its worth might be in the future and therefore helps inform business decisions. Valuations are conducted using specific approaches such as Cost, Market, and Income. Each method has advantages and disadvantages, depending on the situation and available information.
The Cost Approach involves valuing an asset or business based on its tangible book value, including physical assets like land, buildings or equipment; intangible assets such as intellectual property; potential future profits; and company debt liabilities, among other things.
The Market Approach assesses an entity’s value by comparing it to similar businesses that have recently been sold in the market to arrive at more accurate valuation figure. This approach considers factors like location, economic conditions, recent sales trends among competitors in the industry and any qualities specific to that business that make it unique.
Finally, the Income Approach values a business based on how much money it will generate. This method looks at factors such as historical profit levels, likely capital expenditures required and estimated cash flows over various points in time from operations or investments — all of which helps assess what a prospective buyer should pay for the company in question today.
Each approach requires judgment calls from analysts about which variables are most important and which valuation method will reflect fair market value most accurately for individual entities or investments with different risk levels.
Impact on Atlanta
The recent round of investment that resulted in the Atlanta-based firm Calendly being valued at $3 Billion has caught the attention of the local and global tech community. This is a big win for Atlanta and its tech ecosystem, and it has the potential to bring more investments and opportunities to the city.
Let’s look at the impact this investment could have on the Atlanta area.
Economic impact
The announcement of a $350-million round of investment in Atlanta-based Calendly has brought some positive news to the Atlanta economy. The online appointment-scheduling company closed the deal on Thursday, valuing the company at $3 billion. The financial milestone makes Calendly one of a select few privately held “unicorn” startups in the South. In addition, it reflects business leaders’ confidence in the power of Atlanta to attract and foster businesses that draw in world-class talent and resources.
In addition to substantially boosting Calendly’s valuation, the investment provides tangible benefits for communities across greater Atlanta, including job creation, economic development, and increased tax revenue. Moreover, this infusion of capital allows the company to pursue additional investments in research, technology and expansion into new markets. As part of this agreement, CPP Investment Board Ltd. and existing Calendly investors Iconiq Capital and Susa Ventures will join Charles Rivers Ventures to complete an ownership trifecta for Calendly LLC — showing how critical venture capital can be as a driver for growth and innovation.
The city also stands to benefit from additional job growth experienced by Calendly. The increased funds will ensure its continued ability to procure top talent from around Atlanta –– especially within communities that have been traditionally underrepresented or underserved within tech circles –– ensuring its workforce maintains its diversity moving forward. In addition to welcoming new employees into its ranks, this financial influx opens other avenues of growth such as expanding current product offerings or increasing customer acquisition initiatives that could bring further economic expansion throughout greater Atlanta area businesses.
Additionally it is designed to fuel other innovation efforts throughout the start-up industry within Georgia’s economy given that nearly 80% of venture capital placed by Investors usually goes towards high-growth tech startups requires significant financial investments due their needs for scalable teams & advanced technologies which could result an influx of jobs & economic progress fueled by heavy Venture Capital investments like what is being seen today with Caandlys reported partnership with CPP Investment Board Ltd.
Job creation
The $350-million round of investment secured by Atlanta-based Calendly has the potential to create more jobs and fuel economic expansion in the Atlanta metropolitan area.
As part of its funding, Calendly agreed to hire a new team of 600 workers over the next two years and quadruple its engineering team size by 2023. With this rapid growth, there will be increasing opportunities for experienced professionals and up-and-coming job seekers looking to build their careers in various fields, such as software development, marketing, customer service and finance. Moreover, an influx of highly skilled technical professionals will further strengthen the force behind Atlanta’s growing tech sector.
In addition to creating new jobs, Calendly plans to use some of its funds to expand operations within a 75K square foot building in Atlanta Tech Village which can accommodate up to 600 workers. This news demonstrates the ongoing commitment from business leaders towards propelling the economic growth of Georgia’s capital city and wider state regions.
Conclusion
The $350 million round of investments into Atlanta-based Calendly drove the automated scheduling and appointment software maker’s valuation up to $3 billion.
This investment round will help the company rapidly expand its suite of services and reach even more users worldwide. With existing partners such as Salesforce, SAP Concur and Slack, and new collaborations with leading total rewards companies, Calendly is well positioned to become one of the leaders in automated scheduling market.
This is good news for both customers and investors alike who can now benefit from an improved choice of services and a higher return on investment.