The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 27 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Lemkin: Hopin founder's $140M secondary cash-out was abusive and unethical
“The hop in story is abusive. I'll take a hundred and forty million out for myself. F you VCs. That's Writer. I know a lot of folks think that's a hero story. I think it's abusive.”
Stebbings: I avoid reserves after losing money on Hopin, Clubhouse, BeReal
“I do not do reserves, and I don't because I was in Hopin, I was in Clubhouse, I was in Be Real, all lost money, and then I've got a load of companies which were much slower In enterprise and a phenomenal investments.”
Hulme: Virtual event platform Hopin had product-COVID fit, not product-market fit
“Is Hopin, does Hopin have product market fit or product COVID fit? It clearly had product COVID fit. It was, you know, no one was excited to do events online. They were forced to do events online.”
Stebbings: Hopin founder Johnny Boufarhat cashed out $200M in secondary sales
“And so Johnny took two hundred million off.”
Stebbings: Reserving capital would have caused bad investments in Hopin and Clubhouse
“If I had done reserves, I would have put money into Hopin, Clubhouse, and be real. That would not have been a good set of events.”
Boufarhat: Corporate events will stay online post-COVID while mega-conferences return in-person
“Now well, what my opinion is from intuition and some of the data we have is that these big physical events, the ones that need a fire breeze are there to get you to pay 600 dollars, and that's the revenue thing. They're probably going to move back to physical …”
Stebbings: Linear will be the primary fund returner for 20VC Fund 1
“My fun one could have been, which you're an Alpean, and I'm very grateful to you for supporting me when I was 1819 but it could have been at one point the Hopin Fund, it could have been the Clubhouse Fund and it turns out that it will most likely be the Linear…”
Stebbings: Hopin, BeReal, and Clubhouse failed to be 20VC's top returners
“With my first fund, after 18 months, I predicted my top five fund returners, and you had your hop-ins, you had your B-reels, you had your clubhouse, and none of the five outperformers ended up being the outperformers, and the five outperformers I always had in…”
Stebbings: I should have sold secondary positions in Clubhouse, Hopin, and BeReal
“Truth be told, honestly, Nick, I've been in some rockets that then turned out to not be rockets. Your clubhouse to your hop in to your be real. And they are portfolios with assets in, whether you like it or not in terms of naming. And I should have been much m…”
Stebbings regrets passing up secondary sales in BeReal, Hopin, and Clubhouse
“My biggest mistakes in the last few years, honestly, Kevin, were be real, hop in, a clubhouse. I could have sold in all of them, and I didn't.”
Lixandru: Hopin was likely the fastest-growing company in the world in 2020
“I believe Hopin was probably the fastest growing company that year.”
Boufarhat: Hopin will expand to multiple non-virtual products and a hybrid mobile app in 2021
“Today, Hopin is mainly virtual events, but I've always had a multi-product approach to things. I expect next year, Hopin wouldn't have just one product. We'd be moving into a, quite a few different markets based on what we've already built, and markets that ma…”
Boufarhat: Hopin prioritized early hiring speed over maximum quality
“When we were nine people, our customers didn't care how slowly we hired. So I was like, we need to bring good people in very quickly, as good as possible. So really, the speed thing was more important. Quality needed to be there, but it was not of total import…”
Boufarhat: Hopin Could Not Have Scaled Rapidly Without Being Fully Remote
“I don't think it would have been possible two to three years ago, and if we were not a remote business.”
IVP invested heavily in Hopin without meeting founder Johnny Boufarhat in person
“I spoke to Jules and Alex at IVP before, and they said, we've invested a lot of money into Hopin, never met Johnny.”
Boufarhat: Data Should Only Inform 10% to 40% of Startup Decisions
“So for me, I think data should always be to 10 to 40% of every decision we make happen.”
Lixandru: Hopin's seed round was among Europe's most expensive at the time
“With Hoppin at the seed, I think it was one of the most, quote unquote, expensive seeds in Europe at the time.”
Boufarhat: Hopin aggressively required initial hires to refer top candidates
“The initial people that we hired, we did spend a lot more time hiring them and making sure the quality bar was met, and we asked them to do referrals to the three best people we'd met, and we were very aggressive on this”
Boufarhat: Hopin Was Built Purely on Intuition, Not Industry Data
“Hopin was purely intuition. There was no data from someone, or else someone from the webinar industry probably would have built Hopin, because they would have been able to realize that people were after more networking.”
Boufarhat: Hopin lacks a clear direct competitor to monitor
“Hopin doesn't have a clear, direct competitor today in terms of one that I'm much more closely monitoring”
Boufarhat restricted VCs from contacting Hopin's executive team directly
“For me, it was important that, hey, you can call me at any time, especially after midnight when there's less things going on, but I don't want you bothering the team, essentially, or having the rights to do that.”
Stebbings: Hopin Raised $174M+ in 13 Months
“In just 13 months, Johnny's raised over a hundred and seventy four million dollars for Hopin, from the likes of Excel, IVP, Slack, North Zone, Co-Two, Salesforce, and of course, TwentyVC fund disclaimer.”
Harry Stebbings notes losing momentum as an investor in Clubhouse and Hopin
“As an investor in Clubhouse and Hopin, I have felt momentum go the other way, my friend.”
Hopin uses automated Slack API triggers for remote employee onboarding
“Hopin operates in a way for recruitment. We operate it with, like, almost like a set of APIs that pin off when someone joins. It's like, okay, the line manager. It becomes super clear who it is because they get connected via Slack, and we do a few other things…”
Boufarhat: Hopin Assigns Every New Hire Two Onboarding Buddies
“So the buddy system is essentially what we do is we connect one person with two buddies in the company. One of them is usually in their team, and one of them is on a completely different area that we think it's relevant that they need to work with.”