I recently came across Hopin and wanted to share some thoughts on what’s driving its rapid growth.

What is Hopin?

Hopin is a virtual events platform founded in 2019. It caters specifically to people hosting online events - e.g. conferences, cultural fairs, job fairs.

It’s an end-to-end platform that helps you with setting up an event, registration, ticketing, all the way to video streaming and managing smaller breakout sessions. There’s also a lobby where you can meet other attendees for 1:1 chats.

Why not just use Zoom? It’s a different use case. Zoom is good for meetings, and is okay for webinars. It isn’t so good for hosting content (e.g. presentations) and encouraging interaction between participants.

Hopin

Business model

Their latest revenue numbers are an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $70m. Where is it coming from?

  • Monthly fees: Organisers pay a monthly fee from $99 for the limited ‘Starter’ package or $799 for the ‘Growth’ package. Larger businesses pay a lot more. It doesn’t look like there’s a one-off event option - that’s part of their great pricing model driving recurring revenue

  • Ticket commission: This is around 5% of ticket sales, but depends on your plan

Structural changes

So how has it been able to grow so fast? And what do investors see in it?

Hopin’s growth has been kick-started by the pandemic - events have shifted online rapidly. In addition to the boost from the pandemic, there are three long term trends helping Hopin – increased online interaction, a culture of choice, and decentralisation

  1. Increased online interaction One drawback of online events is the lack of interactions and socialising between attendees. That’s going to change though - younger generations are comfortable interacting and making friends online (usually through games). It’s relatively normal for them, and they’ll take these trends with them into the business world in the future. Hopin does have a 1:1 meeting space within its events platform at the moment, but the shape of this is likely to change in the future.

  2. Culture of choice Everything is driven by choice now (usually on-demand), and it shouldn’t be any different with events. People usually attend conferences for a handful of sessions (e.g. keynotes). Online events give attendees more choice to attend specific parts they’re interested in.

  3. Decentralisation People with large audiences will start hosting and monetising their own events. With Hopin you can now host a professional event without booking venues, dealing with logistics or all the other coordination that goes in between. All you need is engaging content and an audience – something that most creators and influencers have already.

Threats

Every great startup has another one just a few steps behind it - in Hopin’s case there’s a company called Airmeet (also founded in 2019 and have raised $15m vs Hopin’s $672m). They have a similar platform, but do have a free tier for small events - try it next time instead of just using Zoom.

Talking of Zoom - this is a space they’re moving into with the launch of OnZoom. They’ll offer the option to host and monetise events - they’re starting with fitness classes and smaller scale events (so it’s slightly different to Hopin’s use case focusing on business users).

There are countless technology solutions out there. Hopin is differentiated by their smooth user experience and the fact that it’s made specifically for events.

Outlook

Hopin describe the future of events as hybrid (rather than purely digital). People can choose to attend online (through Hopin’s platform) or in-person, giving attendees more choice. They’ve set themselves up well and are going to benefit from some long term trends. I think it’s an exciting business - and I’m looking forward to following their journey.