We talk about Hopin:- becoming a double unicorn worth $2.1bn in less than 18 months- hiring 800 people at 40 new people per week- the StreamYard acquisition and integration- the potential threat of Clubhouse if any?On 3rd February Johnny Boufarhat and Geige Vandentop will host a Hopin event for free to discuss the acquisition and their plans for Hopin 2021.

Join here: https://hopin.com/events/hopin-2021-kickoff

Sam Sethi had the pleasure to interview Martin Steers the station manager at NLive Radio and Chair of Community Radio Awards.

We talked about how NLive is continuing to run their station through COVID and what software Martin is using to enable remote broadcasting.

We talked. about the upcoming Community Radio Awards and what has changed and whether there will be an awards ceremony later this year.

We also talked about the newly formed UK Community Radio Network that Martin has formed with a number of station managers across the UK to lobby government on our collective behalf.

We ended up talking about some of the hot topics in radio. Bauer making 260 presenters redundant this September and what that means for local radio. Will DAB+ ever come to community radio and finally are podcasting and streaming services a challenge to radio audiences?

Sam talks with Nigel Eccles about his new company Flick. A companion app for sports fans who want to watch a game while chatting online with likeminded fans and friends.

Nigel talks about how Flick has raised £4m and was growing nicely until Covid-19 put a stop to all live sports. He believes Flick will return to growth once live sports like football return. In fact with stadium bans it could see ever greater demand for Flick as fans try to recreate the stadium atmosphere while at home.

Prior to Flick, Nigel, his wife and three engineers started Hubdub that soon pivoted into FanDuel. Nigel recalls how a WebMission to Silicon Valley in 2008 helped Fanduel grow. Some of the other companies that joined them included edocr, huddle, skimlinks, mydeo, WAYN and TrustedPlaces.

Nigel talks about how FanDuel went on to raise $450m+ and experienced hyper-growth in customer acquisition. Sadly the story did not end up with Nigel and his wife growing a Unicorn, selling it and riding off into the sunset. Nigel talks at length about how the Private Equity company engineered to remove him, the executive team and all the staff who held ordinary shares from benefiting from their growth and success. In fact they ended up with zero while the board that consisted of the PE Equity partners engineered it to make themselves millions.

The story does not end there. Nigel and 90 of his original staff have filed a class action suit against the PE company. We await the outcome.