Hoppin

Johnny Bafferat built Hoppin starting before the pandemic with a simple vision: bring in-person events online through a virtual event platform. A former app developer who had sold a previous app for around $300,000 while in university, Johnny was recovering from a two-year illness when he decided to pursue Hoppin full-time. By November 2019, he'd already raised $8 million from Excel Ventures at a $32 million valuation, convinced the product had viral potential based on a remarkable 5% conversion rate where event attendees would become event organizers themselves.

When February 2020 hit and COVID-19 forced the world into lockdown, Hoppin's timing proved perfect. Companies that had initially been on the waitlist suddenly came knocking, asking to get access immediately. What had been a small, selective six-person team made the decision to launch aggressively. Johnny felt it was the right call "not only from a businessperson but also like a humanitarian." The startup was ready.

The first customers came directly from the waitlist—companies desperate to move their events online during the pandemic. What began as pent-up demand from a waitlist exploded into viral adoption. The 3-5% conversion rate from attendees to organizers became the fuel for exponential growth. Each person who attended an event on the platform had a meaningful chance of becoming a host, creating a self-reinforcing loop that didn't require traditional sales.

Referrals became the hiring backbone. Every single employee was expected to bring in three people—the best people they'd worked with previously. Combined with being fully remote, Hoppin could access global talent without office constraints. If they'd remained a physical office, Johnny believed "there would have been no way that this would have been done. No chance." Instead of building custom systems, they used existing tools like Salesforce and cloud technologies rather than building a proprietary CRM. Hiring managers, then directors, then VPs created the organizational structure to support explosive growth. Within nine months of launch (by November 2020), they had scaled from 6 to approximately 300 employees, onboarded over 50,000 companies to the platform, and had raised $180 million total. The valuation exceeded $1 billion—making it one of the fastest paths to unicorn status ever.

At just mid-20s, Johnny operates on a grueling schedule, working London and European hours while covering San Francisco morning meetings. He sleeps at 2 AM and wakes at 8-9 AM, immediately jumping into Slack messages and back-to-back meetings. Physically exhausted at times but mentally energized, his motivation stems from his post-illness perspective: "life is short" and "go at it at full speed." He no longer codes—his days are consumed by leadership. His ambitious goal remains unchanged: make Hoppin a hundred-billion-dollar company. The event industry itself is massive and fragmented—conferences, fundraisers, concerts, CEO dinners, book clubs, weddings—giving Hoppin an enormous total addressable market to pursue.