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Here's a Trivia for you.
Why did HQ Trivia fail?
A. Bad Business decisions, A. B: peculiar personalities.
C: Products that were too good to be true.
If you chose A, you'd be right!
If you chose B, you'd also be right.
And C, all of the above, as well as a business model that would never scale.
HQ was wildly successful.
It rose to the top, hovered there for a very short period, and then crashed and burned
in a fireball of controversy and champagne, in just three years.
HQ Trivia, a seemingly innocent game where you earned money by answering
general culture questions, against the clock.
Millions downloaded the game and got hooked.
Experts called it the revival of the TV Quiz show.
But behind the scenes, there was drama, tales of abuse, addiction and much more.
I bet you’ve never called your ex-boss a clinical sociopath to his face. Or on Twitter.
Welcome to a crazy episode of Company Forensics.
HQ trivia was the product of Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll.
You might remember them as the creators of another failed startup, called Vine.
After the failure of Vine, Yusupov and Kroll ended up working for Twitter but were let
go in rapid succession.
AND I NEED YOU TO REMEMBER THIS FOR LATER.
The pair were obsessed with user interaction.
For them, the most valuable product a customer can provide is ATTENTION.
They were right.
And to get it, they aimed at games.
Yusupov told CNN Business.
And HQ Trivia was just that.
12 questions, each with a ten-second timer for a cash prize.
With just 10 seconds, cheating was practically impossible.
It made the game much more interesting.
Like the gameshows of the past, the questions were presented by a charismatic host and winners
would be placed in a leaderboard for the entire world to see.
Those who won the round claimed a jackpot which varied in size, ranging from a couple
of hundred dollars to thousands.
But it would be split evenly between all the winners, so the payout could either be very
big or very small.
The trivia sessions were scheduled; every workday, there was a 9 pm session and weekends
had a 3 pm session.
And they lasted just over fifteen minutes.
This meant coffee breaks had a whole new meaning.
Because playing against the clock, having a chance to make money and knowing that you
are better than someone else was an almost perfect combination.
And to this combination, you had to add Scott Rogowsky, the host.
Rogowsky worked in improv and standup before HQ Trivia and he eventually became somewhat
of a celebrity.
He was, after all, a likable dude that added a fun vibe to the game.
The game launched in August 2017, and by March 2018, MILLIONS OF PEOPLE logged into each
game, every day.
HQ Trivia was a hit.
We used to play it down at the office.
So successful that it raised $8 million, THEN another $15 million against a $100 million
valuation, from none other than Peter Thiel.
Google him.
He’s peculiar.
So, at first, the model seemed to catch investors’ attention.
And it had the evidence to prove it.
‘Twas Christmas 2017, when 730 000 people chose to play HQ Trivia instead of talking
to their weird relatives about uncomfortable topics.
The total jackpot of that day?
$2000.
The payout for winners?
$5.16 each.
But, still, people wanted more.
By January 2018, it was the number 3 game and number 6 app in the Apple App store.
At its peak, 2.38 MILLION players join every single game.
The game was popular, yes, but it was also very flawed.
Livestreaming an interactive game through a mobile phone is hard.
Very hard.
Interactivity needed to be instant, especially if the questions are timed.
But sometimes, as many users complained, clicking on an answer did nothing and time ran out.
Which meant that users were kicked out.
Other times, the quiz just didn’t work at all.
So, when it crashed, which it did often, the hosts worked hard to keep the frustrated players
from leaving before the problems were solved.
This was tiresome but not the only red flags around.
There was the question of money.
Where did it come from?
Though each game had a prize, at first, there was no subscription and no evident ad placement
or revenue from advertising.
Yes, HQ Trivia had investors, but nobody knew if and how it was going to be sustainable
in the future.
Money runs out fast.
When asked about this, the host Rogowsky was pretty secretive.
Rogowsky said.
But, to the world, that didn’t seem to matter.
The game was popular enough to get sponsorships, which helped in some of the funding.
HQ Trivia worked with big brands, such as Chevrolet and Nike.
Things were going great.
At least so it seemed.
People began to notice that some of the trivia was very tricky, badly written and sometimes,
senseless.
Also, there were the glitches and delayed payouts.
Some winners claimed they didn’t receive their prizes for months and even more people
claimed that they were automatically kicked out.
And then, in April 2019, HQ Trivia took a big hit.
Beloved host Scott Rogowsky parted ways with the company.
He wanted another job and was willing to work on weekend shows.
But HQ Trivia wanted full commitment.
So, they split, and the breakup seemed normal.
Not a lot of drama.
But just wait.
Then HQ Trivia hired Matt Richards, who had a tough job on hand.
The standup comic came at a time when the game was no longer popular: the novelty of
online trivia was wearing off.
By April 2019, when Richards came in, the show was already out of the top 1500 apps.
Downloads HAD DROPPED BY 92%.
While all of this was going, behind closed doors, there was A LOT MORE going on.
Remember that we talked about how the creators, Kroll and Yusupov, worked for Twitter but
then were let go?
Well, it turns out that they were let go because they were “difficult to work with”.
Now, a lot of people might be difficult to work with but, apparently, these two were
different.
Many former employees at Vine and Twitter reported that Kroll and Yusupov were toxic.
Yusupov was labeled as abusive to employees and disinterested in his work.
Kroll was reported as constantly arriving late, hungover.
By the way, he was even accused of sexual harassment.
And HQ also went through A LOT of drama.
The world came to know this through, out of all places, Twitter.
In Oct 27th, 2016, Yusupov tweeted Don’t sell your company!
This simple tweet didn’t sit well with some.
And, oh, boy, did former host Rogoswky rip Yusupov a new one.
“As much as the HQ employees didn’t care for your leadership which twice drove the
company to the ground, we are about you as a fellow human.
Please seek treatment from a mental health professional…”
And he didn’t stop there.
“HQ didn’t die of natural causes.
It was poisoned with a lethal cocktail of arrogance, short-sightedness and sociopathic
delusion.”
So, wait.
Did Rogowsky just summarize this entire episode?
Well, it doesn’t stop here.
Co-founders Kroll and Yusupov clashed constantly.
In fact, in September of 2018, Kroll and another board member forced Yusupov out of his position
as CEO, and Kroll took over.
But then, in December of 2018, Kroll DIED of a drug overdose in his NYC apartment so
Yusupov took over again as CEO.
Times were TURBULENT.
Rogowsky’s departure led to inside sources leaking information that showed there was
mutiny within the company.
Tech Crunch reported that:
So Yusupov did what he believed was best.
He fired them.
This is some Game of Thrones stuff right here.
Minus the dragons and decapitation.
But you get the idea.
Because of this, staff’s morale and interest in the game plummeted.
And HQ Trivia fell off the ranks in the App Store.
Plus, the bank account was drying up.
Yusupov was dishing about $1 million per month in prizes.
But there was very little income.
And, back when he HAD money, sources said that Yusupov was slow to improve HQ Trivia.
His efforts weren’t great: he made different versions of the game, which were pretty much
the same, he gave users the chance of buying extra lives and he added another game on weekdays.
But nothing really special.
So, users just weren’t excited anymore.
HQ Trivia guzzled cash and it needed MORE of it.
LOTS of it.
And it’s not like Yusupov didn’t try.
He had been looking for funding since early 2018 but hadn’t been able to secure any
investment.
Why?
Well, Yusupov.
He was still there and it’s all about reputation.
Employees complained about Yusupov.
Users complained about the game.
HQ Trivia wasn’t appealing to investors.
And some efforts were made to spike interest.
New ideas like HQ Photos in which users rated photographs and HQ Tunes, where users had
10 seconds to guess multimedia questions.
Major networks like NBC and CBS helped in promoting the game.
Even Jimmy Kimmel guest-hosted the trivia show, but all of this wasn’t enough.
Because Yusupov still ran the ship.
A ship, mind you, that was sinking FAST.
So Yusupov decided to sell and apparently, he found a buyer.
He assured the world that an “established business” was willing to HQ Trivia.
But it never happened.
That “established business” pulled out of the deal and Yusupov took to his media
to communicate the inevitable end, with an intriguing choice of words.
(It’s not much of mystery, actually).
But still, in the day of love and friendship, when the 9 pm trivia started, host Matt Richards
was…honest:
“Not gonna lie.
This f*cking sucks.
This is the last HQ ever!”
He then produced a big bottle of champagne and began to drink with co-host Anna Roisman.
It was one hours of alcohol and despair, they cursed and lamented HQ Trivia’s demise,
the chat erupted in chaos and insults and then this happened.
It’s the only way HQ Trivia could go out: in flames and in vice.
Why go out quietly when nothing about HQ Trivia was ever quiet?
And, even after its demise, Yusupov wasn’t silent.
Just four days later, he announced that an “unnamed company” was purchasing HQ Trivia.
In only a way he could say it:
“We have found a new home for HQ, with a company that wants to keep it running.
All employees, contractors, and players are top priority.
Severance will be paid, and you will be able to cash out.
NOT A DONE DEAL YET, BUT I’M OPTIMISTIC.”
Yeah, we’ll see about that.