MFM x Trends - How Johnny Boufarhat Took Hopin from 0 to $1b+ in Less Than A Year

Sam interviews Johnny Boufarhat about scaling Hoping to rapid unicorn status. They discuss how being a fully remote team impacted their ability to move fast, how they're hiring hundreds of people, and the future of the events industry. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sam Parr?

  This next episode is kind of mind blowing because this guy, his name's Johnny, started this business that went from zero to over a billion dollar valuation in something like 10 or 12 months. I think that's the fastest it's ever been done. So let's get to the story or the background. It's basically, this episode is an interview with Johnny Boufarhat. He's the CEO. He's the founder of this company called Happen. And Happen started before the pandemic. And what they were trying to do was bring in-person events online. So just like to dumb it down, a virtual event platform, but COVID hit. So you can imagine

• 0:41Sam Parr?

  that it just like took off. So this company, it's just been astounding to watch these guys because one of, some of their founding team wrote for Trends and we were friends with them at our company. So we got a little bit of an inside track or an inside view of how this business works. But Johnny is the CEO, he's the founder, he's in his mid twenties and he's got a very, very, very amazing story, a very interesting outlook. He was sick at a young age and that kind of changed how he started looking at the world. And he looked me in the eye when we were doing this interview and he goes, "My goal is to make this a hundred billion dollar company. That's all I'm going to do." And it's really weird and strange and odd to be around people who are so blunt with their ambitions and frankly, it's quite

• 1:24Sam Parr?

  inspiring. And I don't think that that's the right move for everyone, but I respect people who know what they want and they get after it. So today's episode is with the CEO of Happen. He's going to talk about how he grew the business from zero to something like, I think, 300, 400 employees in only 12 months, how he's done it all remotely, how he's handling just the personal weight about going about this at such a young age. And it's very fascinating, very interesting. I asked him about some of the stuff that kind of seems boring, but it's really important. Like, how do you create a brand guideline document that your whole team can use and onboard them so quickly? How do you even recruit that many people? I mean, if you recruit 200 people in a year, that means you're going to talk to tens of thousands of people. That's so hard. So I talked to him all about that. This is for

• 2:09Sam Parr?

  Trends members, but the first bit is free. If you want it, the whole thing and a lot of other interviews like this. So just go to trends.co. It's a dollar. Check it out. So let's get to it.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Honestly, I was already saying in November, we're going to be the one of the fastest growing companies in the world next year because of how much demand there was for the product. And basically, what happened was February hits, coronavirus is happening. We have tons of companies on the waitlist that are like, hey, this isn't funny anymore. Like, we actually need to move our events online. Can you let us in, sort of thing? And we were like, we're six people, we've been very selective. And I realized that, you know, probably the right thing to do, not only from a business perspective, but also like a humanitarian was at the time, you know, was like, let's try and launch this and go as fast as possible. And that was my plan anyways, but from November of that year. So literally now, we would have been launched, which would be funny, but considering what's happened in that time.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  So we pushed out in February, and you know, since then, we've, you know, let's just say, you know, we're 230 people now. From an employee size perspective, sorry, a size perspective, and we have, you know, over 50,000 companies using the platform, organizations using the platform.

• 3:24Sam Parr?

  Almost 300 employees in, in six, or wait, since like March, right?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  That's correct, yeah.

• 3:31Sam Parr?

  So what's that, like eight months, nine months, or whatever it is? I mean, that's pretty phenomenal in itself, no?

• 3:40Sam Parr?

  I mean, how on earth does that even work? How like, so when, when you started, it was just like you and Dave and a handful of other people?

• 3:47Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 3:47Sam Parr?

  I imagine, like, it was small. Did you have any money before this?

• 3:50Speaker 01

  We had raised from Axel Ventures, we had raised, I think it was $8 million, $8 million at about 32 million valuation or something like that.

• 4:00Sam Parr?

  In what month?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  That was, I mean, we had agreed that in January, or not in January, in November, but the, by the time the lawyers were done, it was January and the start of February.

• 4:13Sam Parr?

  Wow. And how, what would your hire, what's your hiring look like in order to make that happen? Did you just go out and hire like three recruiters? Are we using outside recruiters? And how on earth do you even make an org chart from nothing to?

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Well, Sam, I'd say there's quite a few parts to this. I think nowadays there's so much information online. It's kind of like why universities have a hard time keeping up with online courses. There's so much information online and so many ways to get knowledge. On top of that, the other benefit that we had is we're a fully remote company. And when you're fully, a lot of the rules that were set beforehand in how fast you can scale were not the same as online. If you're hiring 60 people in a month from four in an office, you're gonna have to, in real, in real life, you're gonna have to change offices like 10 times. Plus, there's a limited pool of people that you can find, plus the notice periods. You can't get people that can come within, so all these variables go away when it's remote. You can attract amazing talent from across the world.

• 5:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but not like the biggest, the biggest variable is the fact that if you're gonna hire 250 people, that means you're probably gonna need like 10,000 applicants or some thousands of applicants. And then you're gonna have to, to interview, to hire 200 people, you're gonna have to interview like a thousand plus people, right? And then you gotta figure out like, what are these people even gonna do? How do they know like, how do they know like what our design, our branding guidelines are? Healthcare, like there's way more, I mean, yeah, the office thing isn't there, but there's so much of the normal stuff.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  I could go through each part with you. I mean, but it's, it's deep and it's ugly. Like, it's, it's deep and it's ugly. I mean, if you're talking about the healthcare and all those plans, the US is the most complicated place I've ever seen for getting that done, coming from when we were, when I was in the UK. But, you know, there's our agencies. So it's nowadays, you know, I would, I would explain the example that'll, you know, you use a lot of cloud technologies, you know, if you had to build your own CRM and not use Salesforce, it would take your company forever to start selling. But we used a lot of things that pre-existed. That was the company mindset for this last nine months. Anything that exists. So if we can use an agency that allows, that does that for us, all the, all that sort of stuff, let's do it. You know, with applications, we're remote. When you put something online and you say we'll hire you wherever you are, you get it to applicants from everywhere.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  So we were kind of very lucky in that sense. And that's why I think remote drove it. If you were, if we were a physical office, genuinely, I've said this quite a few times. I think there would have been no way that this would have been done. No chance that we would have been able to scale this fast.

• 6:45Sam Parr?

  But what about, so how did you set up your hiring? So you, did you get a recruiter? And then did you let leaders, were you like, all right, you are responsible for five people. You're responsible for filling this org chart. I mean, how's that look like?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Referrals was key and then so referrals was number one. So it was like every single person in the company was expected to bring three people. And that was genuinely like, it wasn't like you had to do this or else it doesn't work. But people did it and that's what we were pushing for. We said, you need to bring in three people as quick as possible. And so three of the best people you've ever worked with specifically. But from there, you know, we hired engineering managers. So I'll speak, we hired managers and then as we got past 60 people, you realize you need a director. Well, you know, I spoke with enough CEOs who've done this because I have no idea what I was doing. And so, you know, partially don't. So, you know, then you hire directors and when you have enough directors, you hire VP.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  And then, and then the system is built and you hire people that have done it before and then they make everything else work.

• 7:49Sam Parr?

  And yeah, this is just pretty crazy to me. Like just because, you know, we're at 30 people and we're going to grow. We're going to add, we'll double, but I'm like, oh, I gotta go and talk to all these people. I gotta send all these cold emails on LinkedIn. Like it's a pain in the ass. It's not, I mean, it's needed, but it's hard. It's really hard work.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 8:09Sam Parr?

  And when I think of, but then when I think, so our company is four years old. When I think of going in the first nine months, I'm like, What the fuck? What is a application tracking system? Like, you know what I mean? Like, you know, you don't know anything. And so it's just hard to comprehend. Did you? What were you doing? You're young, though. You're really young. You're in your mid twenties, right?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:30Sam Parr?

  What were you doing before this?

• 8:31Speaker 01

  I was sick. And before that, I was in university. I had a small app. Uh, I, I sold it for a little bit of money in my second year. And before that, I was, uh, in high school. But for about two, two to three years, I was just sick. Building apps for five and for freelance.

• 8:48Sam Parr?

  You're a noob still. I mean, it's not like you're, you've even had a job.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Um, no, just literally contract work for development, essentially.

• 8:57Sam Parr?

  Did you, getting into, so we have a lot of people who listen, who have really awesome companies that do two or three million dollars a year with only two or three people. And it's a very nice lifestyle. And then we definitely have like the hub spots and I've said them and like the VC funded folks. My company, we've never taken funding, but I'm, I'm in that world. Did you think from the beginning? I'm gonna go hard and I'm willing to own a small piece of this and I'm gonna go hard for five or 10 years and hope this blows up. Or, uh, like, I'm willing to, like, risk it all in order to be big? Or, um, where was your head when you were starting? I mean, did you make that decision early on? I guess it's all, it's still early on, but.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Super interesting question. I'll say that, uh, in November of last year, when it was around the time when I did the first, when I decided I was gonna do it. So I had two, two decisions in my mind. I said, do I want to bootstrap this company? Uh, and that was before November of last year, when I saw that there was a high, high growth potential. Uh, it was, do I want to, uh, do I want to bootstrap this company? Um, and, uh, the, I realized that there was too high a conversion rate between attendees to organizers. Too many attendees, like, attendee has a good experience to say, oh, let me host an event. We had a three percent, well, at the time it was five percent. Now it's three, three to half, three to four, three to four percent conversion rate. I said, this is incredibly viral. So if, if I launch this in, uh, so.

• 10:19Sam Parr?

  So that's the conversion rate of, of organizers who come to your event, or organizers who land on your sales page and.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  No, that's attendees who attend an event and then realize they want to host an event themselves, or over time decide to host an event themselves.

• 10:34Sam Parr?

  So three percent of people who attend someone else's event become hosts?

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. That was, and so that's what, that's that at that time was the thing that made me realize I needed to get venture funding. Cause I said, this could explode in terms of if, if, if, if the product quality is higher. So, um, you know, it could really, really be fast growth. So I, that, at that moment I realized,

• 10:57Speaker 01

  um, I wanted, I wanted to push something out very quick. And honestly, uh, the, I know that they say things happen for a reason. Uh, for me, I'd sold an app after university, uh, in university and I kind of always wanted to live that remote work lifestyle of like, I'm going to go to Bali, work from there and just live a very comfortable life. But because of, after I was sick for two years, I kind of like, and just kind of stay at home, listen to podcasts, listen, read, read the hustle, you know, the, the stuff like that, you know, that you do. Um, you know, I, I, I came out of it and I, uh, really it was the perfect time for me to get out of the sickness because, uh, when it was through the remission, because I'm like, I kind of felt like I needed to do something very quickly. I, I, I honestly, I, I don't know, the pace changed, let's say in my life.

• 11:45Sam Parr?

  How much did you sell that app for?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Uh, around three hundred thousand dollars.

• 11:51Sam Parr?

  So that's really good money for a, uh, twenty something.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I should, I, I should have kept going, but, uh, yeah, it was, uh, it was a ton of money to be in university for.

• 12:02Sam Parr?

  Why should you have kept going?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I had parents, uh, strict parents that were very like, you know, I wanted, they wanted me, I studied mechanical engineering. I was like, try out, you know, normal life, don't quit uni. And I was like, okay. And that was about it. That was the discussion. So, uh, so.

• 12:20Sam Parr?

  Didn't, you would think like, look like, guys, I probably made more money than you did. What are you talking about? Like?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  I, again, very different person when I was in university than to, uh, uh, before sickness, after sickness, you know, only thing I didn't change is my girlfriend and, uh, she will tell you that I'm completely utterly different person. I was just thinking about, uh, you know, how much, uh, alcohol that could buy me with my friends and stuff like that. That was literally my thoughts.

• 12:48Sam Parr?

  What motivates you now? And so I, I'm really just fascinated because I don't know if you view it this way, but from an outsider's point of view, it's someone, how much have you, how much money have you guys raised?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Um, oh, a total about one eighty, I think, total.

• 13:04Sam Parr?

  A hundred and eighty million dollars?

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:08Sam Parr?

  So you've raised $180 million. So this business, the way that I think you'd have to run it is like, it's gotta be huge, or it's probably gonna die. Is that right?

• 13:20Speaker 01

  I mean, die is strong, but yes, it's, yes, we have to be huge. I mean, it's difficult to say because we're also SaaS. So I don't, SaaS, I mean, they can die, but I see it differently as, I don't see it as plain and simple, like, you know, Apple came back from the dead, but yes, yes.

• 13:40Sam Parr?

  Maybe, maybe, maybe from the venture, from the investments point of view and the type of biz, like, I would imagine you've got to run it like, this has to be a massive thing. Like, people are betting that this is gonna be huge. They're not betting that it's gonna be a mild success. And a mild success, if you own the whole thing, is like, a huge deal. Like, if you sold the company for $50 million and you owned all of it, that's just like, massive, massive, massive. If you sold your business for $100 million, they'd be like, oh, fuck that, you really missed the mark, right?

• 14:06Speaker 01

  100%.

• 14:08Sam Parr?

  Right, that's what I mean. Um, do you think that, I'm just fascinated by that, the idea of the decision to, what motivates someone to make that decision to go that route? Particularly when you have options.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  For me, it was purely after, I mean, I would have probably not taken that decision had it been me, pre-illness, post-illness, for sure. It was that life is short and, you know, go at it at full speed. And that was genuinely the mindset that I've taken in almost everything. I try not to, you know, anything that doesn't need to be done sequentially, I try to do it at the same time. And if, you know, if it doesn't have to be. And, and so that's really the mindset that I've taken after. And who knows, you know, because focus is a key and, you know, you can burn and all that sort of stuff. But I was just being super, I don't know, it was super exciting. Like, I still live today. I'm super excited about everything that just life is moving at this pace. It's, it's fun.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  And so that is definitely the key motivation for me was post-illness.

• 15:17Sam Parr?

  Are you tired at all? It's only been nine months, but it's been a crazy nine months for you. Are you worn out at all yet? And what's your, what's your work week looking like?

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Um, okay. I always hate when these questions are asked because every CEO says they work super hard and da, da, da, da, da. Yes, uh, long, like, yes, like for me, it usually starts because I work, uh, I've been working in London and, uh, European times, but I have, we have a lot of people in San Francisco. So usually it's, and customers and such. So usually I'll sleep at two, wake up at, um, wake up at eight, nine and really, but I like, as soon as I wake up, I'm, I'm at work. And I think a lot of people in coronavirus feel the same way. It's like you just get up and get on your laptop and start answering Slack messages and moving things. And, uh, most of the day is filled with meetings. Uh, I don't get to code anymore, which that's something that I used to have a lot of enjoyment from.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Um, what else is there? Uh, you asked about, uh, if I'm tired now, I would say, uh, like physically sometimes yes, mentally no.

• 16:24Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it can be exhausting. I think that like, uh, my friend, I have a friend named Jason Lumpkin, who's this, you know, Jason, uh, like Saster guy. He's awesome. And he was, he's always like, year five is when it hits you where you're like, uh, I need a, like a three month vacation. I'm worn out. And, uh, I definitely, well, I, I had experienced that as well. It was earlier than year five. Um, but when I think of hiring 250 people and doing it during 2020, which has been a very hard month. Um, I just think like, I would be exhausted if I were you. And I wanted to hear how that, how that has played out, but you've answered it.

• 17:07Sam Parr?

  So we host events. So we had this thing called HustleCon where we would have like collectively about 10,000 people a year come to our trade show, our event. What do you think's going to happen in the next two or three years for the event industry?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a really good question. And I think the event industry is such a gigantic industry that I can't generalize it. It's like, I think, one of the world's biggest markets. It's huge. I mean, an event can be a conference. It could be a fundraiser. It could be a concert. It can be 20 people going for a CEO dinner. Like, it literally ranges. It could be a book club. So, and a wedding as well. Yeah, point is, there's tons of different types. Now, if you're asking specifically about business and conferences specifically, let's, I mean, if that's what you'd want to go into, conferences and expos.

• 17:59Sam Parr?

  Well, what do you think is the most interesting opportunities? Oh, that's a tough teaser, isn't it? I'm sorry, but that's what we got to do to pay the bills around here. So, go to trends.co if you want to hear the rest of the episode. We've got a bunch of interviews like this, as well as a group with a bunch of CEOs and founders, similar to Johnny. So, sign up to trends.co. It's a dollar. If you don't like it, just cancel. And then, join the group, see our research. It's awesome. You're gonna have fun. It's a dollar. Change your life. Dollar. Easy. See you there.