Hopin以2.5亿美元收购livestreaming初创公司StreamYard，以扩大其产品阵容

今天上午，一家快速成长的初创公司Hopin宣布，它已经收购了StreamYard，这家公司出售一种用于举办数字活动的技术平台。这家被收购的公司将保持其品牌和市场上的产品，这家公司已经将自己提升到了实质性的收入规模。

这笔交易价值2.5亿美元，现金和股票混合支付。霍平在2020年6月底筹集了4000万美元的a轮融资，去年11月筹集了1.25亿美元的B轮融资，估值为21.25亿美元。1

在最近一轮的时候，Hopin告诉TechCrunch，它已经在大约9个月的时间里把每年的经常性收入（ARR）从零增长到了2000万美元。在一封电子邮件中，霍平告诉TechCrunch，StreamYard在没有外部资本的情况下，其自身规模已达到3000万美元。在一次有关StreamYard交易的谈话中，Hopin首席执行官约翰尼•布法哈特（Johnny Boufarhat）表示，合并后的实体将拥有约6500万美元的ARR。

从这些数字可以推断，霍平自推出B系列以来，一直在快速增长。

如果觉得奇怪的是，一家B系列公司几乎达到了IPO规模，那么回想一下，Hopin的技术受益于COVID-19大流行，在这期间，世界各地的活动从会议中心进入浏览器，创业融资轮的系列划分已经失去了其历史规模和成熟度。（TechCrunch利用Hopin的服务在2020年举办了几次活动。）

这项交易不会将StreamYard的整件布料并入Hopin产品。相反，StreamYard将保留其品牌和产品，以便继续服务于现有的客户群。Hopin确实打算将StreamYard的流媒体技术更好地集成到公司的marquee产品中，尽管它的平台仍然与流媒体提供商无关；然而StreamYard将成为Hopin的默认流媒体选项。

StreamYard的联合创始人Geige Vandentop告诉TechCrunch，大约15%到20%的客户将其服务用于与活动相关的活动。其余的来自创造者经济和小企业。

作为一家公司，StreamYard决定在成长过程中避开外部资本，保持团队的骨架，同时关注客户反馈，帮助其做出产品选择。范登托普在一次采访中说，StreamYard将保持目前每周livestreams的节奏，以征求客户的意见，同时成为Hopin产品阵容的一部分。

关于同一主题，Boufarhat告诉TechCrunch，Hopin正致力于建立一个以客户为中心的多产品阵容，StreamYard将是其中一个关键部分，大型公司将因此而闻名。

如果StreamYard能够在不需要外部资金支持的情况下，成功地扩展到8位数的ARR，那么它为什么要卖给Hopin呢？范登托普说，这笔交易对他目前的客户和他的团队来说是最好的，并补充说，这一合作将使他的初创企业能够更快地发展。

TechCrunch对这笔交易的解读是，当我们将StreamYard的收入规模与收购公司的收入规模进行对比时，Hopin通过这笔交易以相对适中的成本成功地将自己的规模扩大了一倍左右。然而，StreamYard将部分股权交易给了合彬股份，考虑到该公司2020年的快速融资步伐，合彬股份的价值可能会迅速增长。正如范登托普在我们与这两位高管交谈时所指出的，霍平的成长速度甚至比他自己的创业公司还要快。

原文：This morning Hopin, a quickly growing startup that sells a technology platform for hosting digital events, announced that it has acquired StreamYard. The acquired company, which bootstrapped itself to material revenue scale, will retain its brand and in-market product.

The deal is worth $250 million, paid in a mix of cash and stock. Hopin  raised a $40 million Series A in late June of 2020, and a $125 million Series B last November at a valuation of $2.125 billion.1

At the time of its most recent round, Hopin told TechCrunch that it had grown its annual recurring revenue (ARR) from zero to $20 million in around nine months. In an email Hopin told TechCrunch that StreamYard  had itself scaled to $30 million ARR without external capital. And during a conversation regarding the StreamYard deal, Hopin CEO Johnny Boufarhat said that the combined entity would sport around $65 million in ARR.

You can infer from the numbers that Hopin has continued to grow rapidly since its Series B.

If it feels strange that a Series B company is nearly at IPO-scale, recall that Hopin’s technology benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic during which events around the world went from conference centers and into browsers, and that series demarcations for startup funding rounds have lost their historical size, and maturity tethers. (TechCrunch used Hopin’s service to host several of its events in 2020.)

The deal will not subsume StreamYard whole-cloth into the Hopin product. Instead, StreamYard will retain its brand and product so that it can continue to serve its existing customer base. Hopin does intend to better integrate StreamYard’s streaming tech into his company’s marquee product, though its platform will remain streaming-provider agnostic; StreamYard will become the default Hopin streaming option, however.

StreamYard co-founder Geige Vandentop told TechCrunch that around 15% to 20% of its customers use its service for events-related activities. The rest comes from sources like the creator economy, and small businesses.

As a company, StreamYard decided to eschew external capital during its growth, keeping its team nigh-skeletal while focusing on customer feedback to help it make product choices. Vandentop said in an interview that StreamYard will keep up its current cadence of weekly livestreams to solicit customer input while part of the Hopin product lineup.

On the same theme, Boufarhat told TechCrunch that Hopin is working to build a customer-first, multi-product lineup, of which StreamYard will be a key piece for which the larger company will be known.

Why would StreamYard sell to Hopin, if it had managed to scale to eight-figure ARR without requiring booster shots of external cash? Vandentop described the deal as best for his current customers and his team, adding that the tie-up should allow his startup to move more quickly.

TechCrunch’s read of the deal is that Hopin managed to roughly double its own size through the transaction that came at a relatively modest cost, when we contrast StreamYard’s revenue scale compared to the acquiring company’s own. However, StreamYard partially traded its equity for Hopin shares that, given the company’s rapid 2020 fundraising pace may indicate, could rapidly grow in value. And as Vandentop noted during our chat with the two executives, Hopin was growing even more quickly than his own startup.