Britain's Youngest Billionaire Bags Another £100 Million From Viral Business
The UK's youngest billionaire has just bagged another £100 million ($134m) from selling a share of his company.
Johnny Boufarhat became Britain's youngest self-made billionaire after he launched a video conferencing app, Hopin, just as the country went into the first coronavirus lockdown.
Despite getting off to a flying start, the 27-year-old doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon as he's just got another £100m from selling part of his stake in the business.
Back in August 2021 it was revealed that the company had raised $450m (£335m) in Series D funding co-led by investors.
Hopin planned to use the money to accelerate growth to further scale the platform and invest in the development of its multi-product platform technologies, including building new product suites.
At the time, Boufarhat said: "Hopin started with the goal of giving people more options for meaningful connection. We continue to up-level with the priority to become accessible to all, and offer the optimal solution to seamlessly connect people to experiences for live events and beyond.
"Hopin plans to be wherever important conversations and connections happen. We are grateful for the ongoing support and confidence of our investors to actualise this."
Boufarhat, who studied at The University of Manchester, said his idea for the app Hopin came two years prior to coronavirus but, unfortunately, he wasn't able to get any money to start things moving.
The Zoom-style app enables staff to communicate remotely and speak via video calls. It also lets companies stream live conferences over the internet.
He set up the company from his girlfriend's bedroom after a lightbulb moment. From there the amount of users sky-rocketed across 80,000 organisations.
After being placed on the Sunday Times Rich List, Boufarhat - who technically lives in Barcelona but his company is registered in the UK - said: "I'm very, very work-focused. I just want to be as impactful as I can, in a positive way for the world... I'm boring - I don't drink, I don't do anything like that.
"I make sure all my food is organic. That's the biggest change I've made. I'm very, very work-focused."
Rebecca Shepherd