HQ Trivia's Rise and Fall

A discussion about the rise and fall of HQ Trivia, a mobile game show app that achieved massive success before failing.

"HQ was a mobile app game show, like Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy, but on your phone. At 6 PM every day, you'd get a notification, open the app, and there'd be a live host asking trivia questions. You had 10 seconds to answer, and if you got all 10-12 questions right, you'd win the prize.

The app grew incredibly - from 400 players competing for $500 to over a million concurrent players with prizes reaching over $1 million. They raised $10 million in funding at a $100 million valuation. Big brands like Nike were sponsoring games, doing shoe releases through the platform.

But the company died for several reasons. One founder died from a drug overdose. The other founders were constantly fighting. Both founders had previously created Vine and were brilliant but difficult to work with. Russ, one of the founders, got removed as CEO because he was problematic. The game show host, Scott, tweeted when it shut down that the company died for one reason alone: the incompetence and arrogance of the founders.

It was ultimately a fad, which everyone knew because games typically have this hype cycle and then decline. When you build this much hype and start to fail, you death spiral way faster because the pressure of expectations will crush you."