In this episode of the GrowthTLDR, we talk to Johnny Bourafhat, the CEO and founder of Hopin.
Hopin is a virtual events platform and has grown a lot over the past four months. After launching the product in private access in March, they've gone from 6 employees to over 93, with tens of thousands of customers.
We talk to Johnny about how being a remote company has helped them grow so fast. We also dig into why Johnny as chosen to keep the company in private access, how he thinks about navigating growth during COVID, and what's been the hardest part of being the CEO of such a fast-growing company.
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Time Stamped Notes
[2:30] - Hopin now has 93 employees, tens of thousands of customers, and $8 million in ARR.
[3:30] - Hopin officially launched their product in March; they had six employees; they've grown to over 90 by July.
[4:30] - Being a remote company has helped Hopin hiring talent so fast. Most of their early hires came through referrals from other employees.
[6:45] - Johnny has tried to ensure all teams are in a similar timezone, plus or minus 4 hours from each other. However, he also knows it's not always possible to keep that structure, so they want to ensure asynchronous work is possible so people can live wherever they want.
[9:05] - The Hopin team is currently only able to service about 2% to 4% of the demand coming in to use the product, so Johnny doesn't worry about growing to fast and then having to re-adjust post-COVID.
[12:45] - Hopin is still in private beta because they don't currently have enough customer support to manage all of the demand for their product. They also need some time to rewrite the first version of the software to handle millions of events.
[16:25] - Each event ran on Hopin is part of how people discover the product. That's why Johnny has kept the company in early access because they want to ensure events run on the platform are excellent quality, and people don't have a bad experience.
[18:30] - Johnny and his team are currently trying to work out Hopin's go-to-market. They're discussing if freemium can work for the company, and how self-service might work for customers, particularly how to price those tiers.
[21:50] - The most important part of Johnny's role at present is hiring.
[23:00] - Something that's surprised Johnny about doing hyper-growth as a remote company is how easy it's been. Remote work has made it a lot easier.
[24:20] - Hopin does something called ConnectFest twice a month. Using their software, they provide different game rooms so employees can connect outside of doing work. They do think it's important employees have the opportunity to meet in person if, in the same city, they're currently thinking through how that could work.
[28:10] - Johnny has started to think about building out Hopin's marketing team to help grow awareness for the brand.
[30:15] - Johnny talks about what its been like learning to be the CEO of a hyper-growth company. One of the hardest things for Johnny is having less time for coding, which he loves doing. His goal is not to be the blocker of Hopin's growth.
– Johnny on Twitter / LinkedIn
– Kieran on Twitter / LinkedIn / Medium
– Scott on Twitter / Linked / Medium
