Two unexpected health episodes became a multimillionaire. because when Johnny Boufarhat, the young protagonist of this storyhe had barely turned 21 years old, he had an allergy attack that changed his life.
As usually happens with allergic diseasestheir origin is not always known but the truth is that Johnny loved it. severely affected his immune systemleaving him very vulnerable to the point of secluding himself in his house to prevent contact with the rest of the people from causing a reaction.
And so four years of his life passed until in 2019 he began to develop a personal project that aimed to being able to interact with people online and recover the links with the outside world that the disease was taking away from him, while he awaited his recovery.
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Y created a virtual events platform that began to support his social life and that allowed him, without knowing it, to become a leader for the times to come: the startup he invented took a leap in popularity as a result of another health episode, which in this case was not personal but rather It was international and massive: the Covid-19 pandemic that kept many people from different parts of the world locked up for months.
An allergy attack, the pandemic and a business that made him a multimillionaire
Born in Sydney, Australia, on June 1, 1994, Johnny Boufarhat He studied in Dubai where his father had been sent to work. As the years went by, the little boy decided to continue with his father’s career, Engineering Mechanicsand he went to study it in England, more precisely at the University of Manchester.
And it was in the United Kingdom where his life changed radically, first for the worse and then for the better. He allergy attack that marginalized him socially led him to promote what would become a mega company and that would make him millions: in January 2019 founded Hopinthe online events platform.
“I wanted to meet people,” was the explanation that the young man gave, as simple as it was necessary for a life that had withdrawn due to illness. And in that desire to know, it ended up opening the door to many more in the world when the pandemic arrived.
Johnny Boufarhat founded the company Hopin in 2019, to organize online events, because he could not meet with anyone due to his allergy. Within a year, the pandemic skyrocketed the shares of his business. Photo: Instagram / @techwadi_official
In just a couple of years, Hopin had shown impressive economic growth, with investor fundraising that exceeded 450 million dollars (among his clients was none other than the powerful North American company Altimeter Capital Management).
By the end of 2021, Hopin’s valuation was around $7.8 billionwhich for its founder represented a little less than half: 3.2 billion. Thus, at 27 years old, Johnny Boufarhat had become one of the youngest billionaires on the planet.
Johnny Boufarhat: the allergy sufferer who did not stop growing until he was a multimillionaire
Health is above all and it took Johnny Boufarhat a while to recover or, at least, to control his allergy attacks enough to be able to live with them without socially excluding himself. Hopin helped him at the time Although it ended up helping a large portion of the world that for a time only had life indoors.
With his company, he grew in profits and also in volume, going on to have in a couple of years 130 times more employees than in its modest beginningswhen only six people accompanied Boufarhat at work.
And also grew up in business and investments: in 2021 bought video technology company StreamYard, Streamable and Jamm; as well as Boomset, another events platform, and marketing organization, Attendify.
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Based in Spain, the young entrepreneur who turned 30 sold a good part of his share capital in Hopin, keeping 40% of the shares of his creation. Although far from the confinement of the pandemic, virtuality is here to staywhich constitutes to this day the great business success of Boufarhat, who Last year he left his position as Executive Director of the startup.
From 2020 to this part, Hopin’s clientele included United NationsNATOUnilever and multinationals such as Poshmark, American Express and the Financial Times. The company left its corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom and moved it to the United States, having sold its business in April to Italian technology giant Bending Spoons.
