In only two years, Johnny Boufarhat has turned Hopin into a company valued at over £4 billion. He has more than 650 employees, but he never met some of them and none work in a central office.
The 27-year-old has become the youngest self-made billionaire in the UK, according to a Sunday Times Rich List and in a recent fundraising cycle, Hopin raised $400 million from private investors to impressive $5.65 billion worth of capital (£4.05 billion).
Johnny Boufarhat, who is from his most recent Barcelona, Spanish property, explains “being an entirely remote company enables us to do things that other companies haven’t been able to do previously.” This entrepreneur doesn’t even have a permanent home.
“You weren’t able to do this ten years ago because the software wasn’t good enough to send out emails,” Boufarhat explains. This is not an ideological choice, he added, as the company has expanded at warp speed, the remote operation has just proven efficient.
It Is All About Perfect Timing
Only in 2019, Hopin began with six employees but exponentially increased during the pandemic, as lockdowns effectively modeled the conference industry. Hopin came in to offer an alternative online. Just like Zoom, at the right time, it was in the right space for technology.
Since 2020 the platform has hosted over 80,000 events with organizations, such as the United Nations, Nato, Slack, and Unilever. The remote model which serves its start-up so well does not have immediate plans to change. Indeed, to support it, he has developed a unique digital culture.
It is an indication of how more businesses will be launched and operated in the future. For all 660 people there is a “city hall” video-meeting on Hopin’s own platform once per month, which Boufarhat describes as “more like a television games show.” Hopin uses collaborative, cloud-based software when it comes to the practicalities of working physically apart: Microsoft Teams, Slack, Loom, Figma (for design), and Notion (which allows you to share information in Wiki notes).
Slack Messaging Platform, which combines random colleagues once a month for online coffee, is patrolled There are (in a bid to replace those water-cooler moments). Hopin also conducts a monthly online survey to find out which areas of work need to be improved.
Boufarhat believes that colleagues will want to meet in person in the afterload world for social reasons, but it will not be necessary for work, because they have so good productivity instruments. “Furthermore, remote work has allowed us to employ a world talent pool,” he adds, “which is needed when you grow so quickly.”
‘It Had Transformed Me Into A New Person’
His personal narrative is gripping, and his inspiration for Hopin came from a bout of illness. His family is from Lebanon, although he grew up in Australia before relocating to London when he was a teenager. After graduating from Manchester University with a mechanical engineering degree, he traveled around Southeast Asia with his partner in 2015. On the trip, though, he caught a sickness that left him immune-compromised. He was laid up in bed for months in London.
