Former £4 billion tech unicorn Hopin has liquidated its UK business as it moves its headquarters to the United States.
The London firm was once the darling of global VCs which pumped hundreds of millions into its virtual events platform during COVID.
However it sold off its virtual events units, the core of its business, to a California tech giant seven months ago. The UK business remained operational with its streaming platforms StreamYard and Streamable, acquired during its boom years, and also launched a new ‘community’ platform called Superwave.
Founder Jonny Boufarhat stood aside as CEO, replaced by chief technology and product officer Badri Rajasekar.
A filing with Companies House revealed that Hopin Limited has entered liquidation. PwC is overseeing the process.
Rajasekar confirmed that Hopin was moving its HQ to Delaware, while claiming that “the business continues to exceed growth expectations”.
In the voluntary liquidation filing, he wrote that “the company will be able to pay off its debts in full”.
Hopin, founded by Boufarhat in 2018, grew at an incredible rate when COVID brought in-person events to a standstill.
Several rounds of funding culminated with an astonishing £288 million Series C round in 2021 – led by Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst – which valued the company at around £4bn.
Hopin hosted hundreds of thousands of events on its platform and counted the likes of American Express, The Financial Times and Hewlett Packard as customers. Barely a year after launch it served 85,000 organisations, becoming the fastest-growing startup in Europe as it grew its fully-remote global team to 400.
A string of executive hires and high-profile acquisitions followed, including $250m for live-streaming platform StreamYard as well as video hosting firm Streamable and attendee engagement firm Jamm.
However the rapid decline in virtual events post-pandemic led to several rounds of staff layoffs.
In August cloud communications firm RingCentral acquired its Events and Session products: Events was the platform for planning and producing virtual and hybrid events, the main portion of the business, while Session developed from Jamm and was used to manage interactive engagement during events.
Writing candidly in 2020 after a £32m Series A round, Boufarhat revealed how a rare and severe reaction to medication made him “allergic to the world” – and led ultimately to Hopin, which at one point was on course to achieve $100m annual recurring revenue.
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