Phil Soar, chairman, CloserStill Group and Nineteen Group, details the fall of Hopin and how the platforms descent signals the end of the “pivot to digital”.

On 11 August, 2020, I wrote a piece in EN about “Hopin” and have followed this up with occasional health reports since. Hopin was, according to The Times, the future of events, a future which would be almost all online and digital.

On 10 August 2023 it was announced that Hopin had, de facto, closed down and sold its video events business for USD$15 million (more details follow below). In August 2021 a correspondent from The Times had breathlessly reported that Hopin was worth USD$7.75 billion (yes, billion). I should stress that it was Hopin’s video events business which had attracted all that investment (there may be other small parts which survive).

For those who missed all the fuss, Hopin was one of the top companies tipped to change events business. Tired, sad, face-to-face trade shows would be replaced by video meetings, video conferences and digital selling and no-one would ever need to travel to the NEC again. That was the hype which led to perhaps a billion of cash investment and a “valuation” more than Informa’s.

“Is the party over for corporate events?” (The Times)

So, when The Times chose to run two pages on 11 August 2020 (“Is the party over for the corporate event?”) I was vaguely hopeful that we might read something noteworthy or even interesting. The writer must surely have spent ages, one assumed, interviewing numerous players across the industry, well, actually, no. He seems to have spoken to just one person, the marketing director of Cannes Lions.

This is a typical example of what we all know – that newspapers have now run their staff down so far that they don’t have the time or resource to do serious stories and what they tend to print is PR fluff.

So enthused was The Times that they told us it took pathetic old UBM over 100 years to be worth £4 billion, while HOPIN founder Johnny Boufarhat achieved that and more (USD$7.5 billion) in just 30 months. I commented that Stephen Carter must be kicking himself that he bought UBM when he could have had profit-free Hopin for roughly the same price.

I said in August 2020, and I quote: “I don’t believe that the basis of trade shows and many conferences, of touch and feel, of meet and greet, of seeing old friends, of doing PR, of wanting to be part of an industry gathering, that any of that has fundamentally changed. We may see some fall out – but I don’t believe Hopin changes human nature. I will bet heavily that Hopin will not be worth USD$7.5 billion in five years’ time. I will also bet that newspaper reporting on our industry will not improve much.”

“The Times” changes tack on Hopin

On 11 August 2023, one Robert Miller (I don’t know whether he wrote the earlier breathless pieces) wrote in The Times: “A video events company that was Europe’s fastest growing start up in history…with a value of $7.8 billion…has sold its video conference business for just USD$50M.” (The last figure is not actually correct, buyer Ring Central said USD$15 million had been paid up front with a maximum price tag on the deal of USD$50 million – in “city speak” that means the price is usD$15M but there might conceivably be more if certain targets are met.)

An article in the Financial Times in April 2022 noted that Hopin’s “explore” tab, for discovering virtual confabs that one might want to attend, listed fewer than 500 events, down from more than 15,000 in November 2020. Which simple fact rather tells the whole story.

Hopin’s founder, Johnny Boufarhat, 29, had previously been reported as having sold shares to the tune of nine figures and moved to Switzerland. Mr Miller reported him as saying: “While the Hopin events platform has played a pivotal role in our journey, we recognise that our events business and the immense talent behind it could grow to its fullest potential within the Ring Central ecosystem.” Mr Miller did not explain what these words actually mean.

Hopin also said that it “maintains a strong and growing balance sheet, large capital balance, profitability and positive cashflow.” That is perfectly possible. Venture capital investors poured at least USD$450 million in cash into Hopin in 2020 and 2021 (and probably a lot more) and if that money was not all spent it can happily sit in a bank account.

Invest £1 million, end up with 20p

To go from a supposed (and quoted on several occasions by The Times) value of USD$7.8 billion to one of USD$15 million in less than two years is probably something of a record. It means that Hopin shareholders nominally lost 99.9% of their investment in that time. To put it into a more comprehensible form – if in 2021 you had somehow been persuaded to invest £1m in Hopin, today your shares would be worth 20p.

There is usually a symbolic end to business fantasies and shooting stars. The end of Hopin is surely the cremation of “pivot to digital”, a touchstone held firm by many in the industry in 2020 when there were regular Zoom calls pronouncing that at least 25% of our industry revenues would be “digital” by 2025.

Nothing lasts forever, and nothing stays unchanged forever. So, this may not be the end of the story – but as stories go in the staid world of trade shows, this was a doozy.