Neither the company has a headquarters nor does he own a house… A young man becomes a billionaire because of “illness”

When a young man from Lebanon, Johnny Bouvarat, traveled with his girlfriend around Southeast Asia in 2015, he contracted an infection that left him bedridden for several months, but it came as a big surprise.

Born and raised in Australia, before moving to London as a teenager, Povarat was inspired by the idea of ​​a company that became worth billions during his illness that left him homebound.

According to the billionaire’s list published by the British newspaper “Sunday Times”, the 27-year-old with a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Manchester, is now the youngest self-made billionaire in the UK, what did he do?

The infection that afflicted him during the aforementioned trip, made him suffer from immunodeficiency, so that he began to believe that his death would come after a year of severe illness and bedding, until a wonderful idea came to his mind.

The sick young man found that he could not meet people and make new connections, and attending webinars and video conferences was one of the things he could do successfully, and that was the key to his progress after that, as he created the “Hobin” application that was designed as an interactive experience that allows participants Communicate with other attendees, through messages and other online communication rooms.

“There may be 1,000 people in the webinar, but only two people are talking, and you can’t even see who was watching the webinar with you,” he says.

Houben started out in 2019 with just six employees, now 500, but it has grown exponentially during the pandemic, as lockdown measures have made organizing online conferences incredibly efficient.
Hoppen stepped in and offered an alternative for companies that wanted to work online. As with Zoom, the technology released by Hoppen came at just the right time.
Hoppen has hosted more than 80,000 events since 2020, and works with organizations and companies such as the United Nations, NATO, Slack, and Unilever.
Aside from not having a permanent headquarters for the company, Bouvarat himself does not have a permanent home either, he is a nomad who moves from one rental property to another, and runs his company from wherever he is.

Every month a video meeting of all 500 employees is organized on Houben’s private platform, a meeting which Bouvarat describes as “like a TV game show”.