Europe’s Highest-Flying Covid Unicorn, Hopin, Experiences Crash Landing

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Do you remember Hopin? It is a British virtual events company that achieved a remarkable $7.8bn private market valuation in 2021, just two years after its launch. This incredible success can be attributed mainly to the global pandemic. Sifted, our trusted colleagues, have declared it as “officially Europe’s fastest growing startup of all time”.

Today, the founder, Johnny Boufarhat, is thrilled to share some exciting news on the company blog. Hopin has established a strategic relationship with RingCentral, a renowned name in global enterprise cloud communications. RingCentral will be acquiring Hopin’s Events and Session products, including its technology assets, customer relationships, and talented engineering, product, and go-to-market teams.

The deal’s financial details have not been disclosed.

Boufarhat, who was once Britain’s youngest self-made billionaire (at least on paper due to significant stock sales), will step down as the CEO. He will be succeeded by Badri Rajasekar, the current chief technology and product officer. Boufarhat’s role will now be to rebuild Hopin around Superwave, a stakeholder engagement and monitoring tool that is currently in beta testing. Additionally, he will focus on developing media streaming products such as StreamYard and Streamable.

At the time of writing, Ringcentral shares experienced a 4.3% decline, valuing the equity at $3.85bn. In its recent financial results, Ringcentral reported cash holdings of less than $275mn and long-term debt totaling $1.6bn, implying that the acquisition will not reach the $7.8bn valuation.

Further reading:
– Virtual events start-up struggles as gatherings return (FT)
– Hopin founder nets £100mn in share sales (FT)

Reference

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