This morning Hopin, a virtual events platform and video-focused software service, announced that it has closed a $400 million Series C. The new capital values Hopin at $5.65 billion. Both numbers match prior TechCrunch reporting that the company was targeting a $400 million raise at a valuation of between $5 billion and $6 billion.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and General Catalyst (GC) co-led the round, as TechCrunch reported was likely. Prior investor IVP also took part in the round.
For Hopin, the round is another rapid-fire funding event in a string of such transactions. The company has seen scorching revenue growth in recent quarters, reaching $70 million ARR today, its CEO and founder Johnny Boufarhat told TechCrunch in an interview.
As part of the transaction, recent a16z hire Sriram Krishnan will join Hopin’s board. According to Boufarhat, Hopin had hoped to hire Krishnan before he took his job at the venture firm.
Hopin has scaled rapidly from its now-dated $20 million ARR milestone that it announced in Q4 2020. But not all of that growth has been organic. Hopin recently bought StreamYard, a company that brought $27 million worth of ARR to the combined entity. Hopin spent $250 million on that deal, a transaction that was announced in January of this year.
The company has raised $565 million since February of 2020, it said in an email.
According to Boufarhat, Hopin intends to invest heavily in its product and engineering functions. The CEO stressed during a call that he intends to keep his company’s product spend high as a percentage of revenue; TechCrunch’s read of the sentiment is that Hopin has no intention of letting other companies carve into its core market while it solidifies its virtual event service and adds other capabilities.
The StreamYard deal may provide some guidance as to where Hopin is headed. The acquisition brought to Hopin a company that was already in use by some of its own users, but also added a business line to its collection not wholly component to the event work for which Hopin is best-known. Boufarhat told TechCrunch that his company is open to making more acquisitions.
Perhaps we’ll see Hopin extend its reach to other products that fit into its video-first perspective. It certainly has the capital and equity value to buy a plethora of smaller companies.
At $70 million ARR, Hopin is worth around 81x its current annual recurring revenue. When the company last raised, a $125 million round in November of 2020, the company had $20 million in ARR and a valuation of $2.125 billion valuation. At the time the company was worth a little over 106x its ARR. In light of the company’s recent growth, investors in that round now paid a far-smaller 30.4x ARR multiple, contrasting the company’s new revenue mark and its now-dated valuation.
Provided that Hopin can continue its rapid growth, its current ARR multiple could appear closer to norms in a few quarters.
Closing, Hopin does not appear ready to answer the siren-song of the SPAC. Boufarhat told TechCrunch that he receives regular outreach from SPACs, something we’ve heard from a number of late-stage technology CEOs. Hopin’s founder, however, noted that great companies can go public regardless of the market, and that his company intends on being operationally IPO-ready next year. It appears that a more traditional IPO for Hopin could be in the cards for 2022 or 2023.
Hopin buys livestreaming startup StreamYard for $250M as it looks to expand its product lineup
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