The pandemic-related shutdown of conferences could make one startup a tech unicorn in a fraction of the time it normally takes to pass that $1 billion valuation milestone.

Only four months after Hopin, a startup that powers online events, was valued by investors at around $350 million, the company has held discussions with venture capital firms about raising a new round at a valuation of as much as $2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. Should it succeed, the new valuation would represent an extraordinary transformation for a company that is only a year old, one that has seen its business skyrocket as conferences and other events move almost entirely online. It typically takes startups an average of five years or more for companies to become unicorns.