London-based virtual events platform Hopin, valued at over $5.6 billion, has acquired Ukrainian startup Attendify, according to its cofounder Michael Balyasny.
Hopin is widely considered one of the best virtual event platforms in the world.
Based in the U.S., Attendify develops websites and mobile apps to organize online conferences, exhibitions and meetings. Among its clients are big names like Google, Harvard University, PayPal, Uber and Lufthansa.
Hopin didn’t reveal the cost of the acquisition, but according to the company’s statement, it purchased Attendify to improve its event marketing tools. These tools can help event managers that use the platform “to reach the broadest possible audiences for their events,” Hopin said.
For example, with the help of Attendify, Hopin plans to launch a data analytics platform that will assess whether attendees clicked on sponsored ads, voted in a poll, or participated in a session. The companies will also work on email tools that simplify the process of registration for online events.
Both Hopin and Attendify are operating in a time when the global virtual events industry is going through “an incredible transformation,” said Balyasny. When business, art and education went online during the pandemic, the market size of the digital events industry surged from $77 billion in 2019 to $94 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $404 billion by 2027.
Amid the pandemic, Hopin raised at least $670 million from big investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst and LinkedIn. The number of its employees grew from six in 2019 to over 400 in 2020. Among its clients are the world-famous streaming platform Twitch, The Atlantic magazine and the New York Jets.
Attendify, founded by Ukraine-born entrepreneurs Balyasny and Artyom Yaremchuk, made over $1.3 million in revenue in 2020, and received $400,000 in economic assistance from a U.S. government program that helped small and medium-sized businesses pay salaries to their employees during the pandemic, Forbes reports.
The number of employees working at Attendify halved to about 45 people during the pandemic but the company nevertheless managed to attract big clients. For example, U.S. space entrepreneur Elon Musk used Attendify during the annual Mars Society conference, according to Masha Polikhun, payment specialist at Attendify. Overall, the company’s product has been used by over 2,500+ organizations in 86 countries.
Attendify has one office in Kyiv and two in the U.S., one in Arizona and another in California’s Silicon Valley. The company has attracted investment only twice, raising $400,000 in 2013 and then $1.7 million in 2016 from a Ukrainian venture capital firm called Digital Future.
“This was the biggest investment of Digital Future VC fund,” said its founding partner Oleksii Vitchenko on July 7. “I’m very excited to see exits of Ukrainian entrepreneurs.”
