HQ Trivia's Rise and Fall
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A story about the rise and fall of HQ Trivia, a mobile game show app that reached massive success before failing due to founder issues.
"HQ was a mobile app game show like Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy. At 6 PM every day, they would do a game show. You'd get a notification, open the app, and there's a live game show host streaming. He would ask trivia questions - you had 10 seconds to answer by pushing a button. If you got all 10 or 12 questions right, you'd win the prize.
When it started, there were 400 players and the prize was $500. This thing grew like crazy - they had games with over a million concurrent players. They got $10 million in funding at a $100 million valuation. Big brands like Nike would sponsor games, doing shoe releases live on HQ.
But it was kind of a fad, which everyone knew because games have this hype cycle and then decline. The company ultimately died because of the founders. One founder died from a drug overdose. The other founders were always fighting. They were both founders of Vine - brilliant guys, but there were problems. Russ got removed as CEO because he was difficult to work with. The game show host Scott even tweeted when it shut down that the company died for one reason alone: the incompetence and arrogance of the founders."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.