Founded in 2019, Hopin is a live online events platform where attendees can learn, interact, and connect with people from anywhere in the world.
The virtual event provider recently raised $125 million (approx £94.3 million) in Series B funding led by existing investor IVP and new investor Tiger Global and joined by Coatue and DFJ Growth, along with Hopin’s returning investors Accel, Northzone, Salesforce Ventures, and Seedcamp.
With the latest round, the London-based startup has escalated from four employees to a £2B valuation in 8 months after its launch, and has scored the title of one of the fastest-growing startups ever.
“Hopin is the fastest-growing company we have seen at this stage and has meaningfully exceeded its plan since our last investment in June,” said Jules Maltz, general partner, IVP. “We have been fortunate to invest in early hyper growth companies like Slack, Snap, and Twitter. Hopin is one of those rare companies with a similar growth trajectory — they have built an extremely customer-centric organization, with an ambitious innovative roadmap that they can scale quickly — a sure recipe for success.”
Based out of London, Hopin will use the funding to scale its platform, expand its team, and continue bringing innovations online. To date, the company has raised more than $170 million (approx £128 million).
Stephen Kelly, Chair of Tech Nation said: “Launched last year, events platform Hopin’s series B fundraise today ($125m) follows their summer raise ($40m) and takes them to a record raise of $165 million this year. It makes them the UK’s fastest ever double unicorn.
Hopin demonstrates the strength of the UK’s ecosystem, both before and during the pandemic. It represents a whole generation of UK companies that we think have the potential to become global leaders as the world emerges from – and learns to adapt to – Covid-19. These companies include the likes of events platform Hopin, virtual doctor platform Push Doctor, food delivery service Deliveroo and money transfer service TransferWise.
This year, Tech Nation has been using Hopin to keep the scaleup community connected. It has been a vital component in maintaining proximity throughout social distancing, ensuring tech clusters continue to thrive – online”
Hopin Explore
On the other hand, Hopin also announced the launch of Hopin Explore in its Beta version. This platform allows people to search and find events across a variety of themes — technology, entertainment, education, business and entrepreneurship, lifestyle and health, and more. There are currently 15,000 monthly events available on Hopin Explore and growing.
For organisers, Hopin Explore helps attendees connect with people — interacting face-to-face, networking, doing business, or just learning. Notably, sponsors can also utilise the marketplace to easily identify partners that reach their target audiences.
Witnessed an immersive growth
Hopin, the first all-in-one live virtual events platform lets users create live virtual and hybrid events that are interactive and immersive. As per the company claims, Hopin has experienced impressive growth scaling from 5,000 registered users and 1,800 organisations hosting events on the Hopin platform to 3.5 million users and over 50,000 organisations hosting events.
200 people across 38 countries.
Right now, the company employs around 200 people across 38 countries and planning to hire 150 more by this year’s end. In the past few months, the company has added around thousand clients including The Atlantic, Miro, NATO, The Next Web, TechCrunch, Twitch, UCLA, The University of Notre Dame, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
“Hopin has proven its ability to make virtual events a central part of the way we interact with each other, and we’ve been eager to introduce Hopin Explore as a way for communities, companies, organizations, and friends to discover more opportunities to connect,” said Johnny Boufarhat, founder and CEO of Hopin. “Not only will this new investment allow us to improve the platform and bring new features to our community, but it will help Hopin amplify the diverse range of features and events on the platform and attract even more attendees from around the world.”