Hopin

Johnny Boufarhat founded Hopin in London in 2019 with a straightforward observation: events — conferences, trade shows, corporate summits — were fundamentally constrained by geography. Attending meant booking flights, reserving hotels, and carving days out of a schedule. For smaller organizers, reaching a global audience was economically prohibitive. Then the pandemic hit, and what had been a promising niche product became one of the fastest-growing startups in the world within months. Hopin built a complete platform for virtual and hybrid events — not simply a streaming tool, but a digital environment designed to replicate the experience of attending a physical conference. It included a main stage for keynotes, breakout session rooms, a sponsor exhibition area, and — the feature that users praised most — a networking room that matched attendees in random video calls, recreating the spontaneous hallway conversations that make conferences valuable beyond the main sessions. Growth was extraordinary: within less than two years, Hopin reached a valuation of 7.75 billion dollars, becoming one of the fastest European startups to achieve that scale. The business model combined SaaS subscriptions for event organizers with per-event pricing. Customers ranged from startup conferences and healthcare trade shows to Fortune 500 corporate summits and developer community gatherings. But Hopin's story is also a case study in the fragility of growth built on an exceptional moment. As the world reopened after the pandemic, companies and organizers returned to in-person events, and the explosive demand that had propelled Hopin's ascent faded sharply. The valuation contracted dramatically, and the company went through significant restructuring, divesting business units acquired during the boom period. The broader contribution Hopin made to the events industry is nonetheless real: it normalized the concept of digital-first events and pushed the entire sector to rethink how it could serve audiences that extend beyond a single physical location.