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[electronic warbling]
[mysterious music]
♪ ♪
- It's time beat the clock.
- Are you tired of linear, non-interactive television?
- As you've won this game, you now have a chance
to answer the jackpot question, Dave Hodgson.
- Don't even know what linear,
non-interactive television means?
- You're right for $32,000. [applause]
[upbeat orchestral music on TV]
- Are you tired of the sort of television
that just happens at you?
- Well, let's see what you've won.
It's a honeymoon trip to Hawaii
on your 50th anniversary. [applause]
- That you just sit in front of like a couch potato?
- Hello. What's this? Something wrong?
- Come on. Interact with me.
[mysterious musical crescendo]
[notification chimes] - This is HQ, baby!
The trivia game show on your phone
where you answer questions to win cash!
[all screaming]
- So, $11.30.
- Correct. I was just excited to win.
- To win.
- You're our winners, baby!
- So many people,
they're dropping everything to play this game.
- Oh, my God!
- We are talking about... both: HQ Trivia!
- Joining us now are the co-founders,
Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov.
- These guys in charge are smart.
They've invented Vine, they've invented HQ.
- We grew up watching "Jeopardy"
and "Wheel of Fortune."
- I mean, who doesn't want to be a contestant on a game show?
- Let's get this show on the road.
- Yeah, baby! - Liftoff.
[bouncy upbeat music]
- Houston, thrusters go. You're looking good.
- It was both just a game
and also an attempt to revolutionize television.
- Yes! - Yes!
- 2.3 million-plus of you.
The most HQ players ever in a single game.
- With viewers in more than 80 countries...
- Tech entrepreneurs are the new rock stars.
- Can we give away $1 million one day?
I think so.
- We went from a valuation of nothing
to $100 million in six months.
We had a Super Bowl commercial,
billboards in Times Square.
Couldn't walk down the street
without getting mobbed for selfies.
- I have never seen this level of fandom.
- It can be a little overwhelming.
- It is overwhelming.
[gong chimes] - Now we're talking.
- And ignition.
- I don't know what happened with HQ.
- It's a lot of mystery. One big question mark.
- Now it was a weird thing 'cause you're co-founders.
You'd think you do start these things with your friends.
But... they didn't seem like friends.
[cheers and applause]
- It wasn't a good relationship.
It was 150% pure and utter business and that's it.
- Colin Kroll's behavior was described
as "creepy" at times, also "egregious."
- Colin's speculating
that Rus is orchestrating this whole thing.
- You got a real sense
of "Game Of Thrones" with the infighting.
- These men in the tech industry will steamroll you.
- If you show sign of weakness,
that will impact your fundraising.
- What do you love about yourself?
- Everything.
- There was a lot of anxiety.
- Is this going to exist? Am I going to have job?
- Someone lost their life at the end of this.
- Some people come into our lives and leave too soon.
- We may have an
instrumentation problem, flight.
- Roger.
- The way technology firms
approach their operations is ready, fire, aim.
- Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here.
- And if there's a little collateral damage,
you know, so be it.
[dramatic music]
[mysterious music]
♪ ♪
- Can we show the technical difficulties graphic?
That's always a fun time, right?
- Oh, wow, glitch, glitch, glitch!
- Oh!
[clocks ticking musically]
♪ ♪
- Okay! Winston is here right now.
A bunch of tech news as well
as what we have coming up a little later on.
Let's start, first of all, talking about Vine.
- Twitter's Vine app is making YouTube
feel so six seconds ago.
- Are you a Viner? - Yes!
- I'm not a Viner, but I know all about it.
♪ ♪
- [exhales quickly] That was a close one--
- Vine started in 2012.
Instead of Instagram,
where it's like a feed of just still photos back in the day...
- Yeah! - Vine was short videos.
- Who wants to get crazy for New Year's?
[all screaming]
[glass shatters] - Yeah!
- Vine was most interesting in the fact of its limitations.
You could only have a six-second video
and you only get one shot to record it.
- It had created this cultural phenomenon where,
because the videos were so short,
that let people make whole storyboards
inside this tiny little time frame.
- Whoa! Oh! - Y'all felt that turbulence?
- Yeah. - Is everything all right?
- Hey, I don't know.
Text me if you make it though. Whoo-hoo!
- It had that comedic timing
of everything ending right at its own climax
that made it so addictive and you'd just scroll for hours.
- Stupid.
- Officer, I got one question for you...
- People shared video memes...
- [shouting] What are those?
- That other people would share their own remixes and spins on.
- [shouting] What are those?
- They are my Crocs.
- Creating this chain of inside jokes.
I've even made a few very terrible Vines myself.
- D-D-D-D- DJ Hand Dryer.
[moving air whipping rhythmically]
It's what pioneered the concept that powers TikTok today.
- To me, it's like a video tease.
I don't quite-- I'll have to watch.
- Six seconds. It's an art form.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- So the founders of Vine were Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov.
♪ ♪
Colin Kroll, the engineer, was the big visionary,
the one that saw the opportunity for this app
and this long-term vision
for how social media could change...
- We run in EC2.
We're written in Python
and we use a slew of open source technology.
- And Rus was product designer and kinda the manager.
- I was just, uh... writing a bit of a bio.
- He was the one who could actually make it all happen,
get all the pieces moving in the right direction
and make sure the infrastructure was ready
so people could share their creativity.
- If you see me now, tap on your screen.
Let me know that you guys are here.
- Around May of 2012, we set out
to make creating and sharing videos on mobile really fun
and really easy 'cause at the time,
it was dreadful and we knew there was a better way.
- Twitter bought Vine for a reported $30 million.
- Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov--
- Sold Vine to Twitter for 30 million.
[overlapping chatter]
- And they actually sold Vine before it even launched,
which was a very big surprise,
'cause most startups want to get big first
and then get acquired.
- The video sharing app, Vine,
was launched just in January by Twitter.
- When Rus and Colin sold Vine to Twitter,
they went to work for Twitter building out
and popularizing this product
and they helped it go from zero to 60 million-plus users.
- Girl, he's so Vine! He's not yours, he's Vine!
- You should follow me on Vine. [cheers and applause]
- Perhaps when they were in the quiet before,
now being a part of Twitter, everyone was like,
"Well, who are these guys?" You know?
And they were like, accepting awards
and they were at, like, every industry event,
really being celebrated as founders.
- I mean, you guys have grown so much
and so many people are using it in creative ways.
Like, where do you see it going?
- Oh, I think we had no idea when we started
and we're just holding on.
- NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman
sent the first Vine video from Earth orbit
out to his Twitter followers.
- Roger, 11.
It certainly looks like you're well on your way now.
- But when you get acquired, you give up control.
all: ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday, dear-- ♪
- [laughing]
- Unfortunately,
when Vine wasn't quite growing fast enough
and Twitter, its parent company,
was in a cash crunch, it shut down Vine...
- Twitter is shutting down
the Vine video app and laying off 350 people.
- Which shocked the internet and stranded tons of creators
who had built their livelihood on the app.
- Hey, bud. Heard about Vine.
- [crying] Vine's shutting down.
- Thank you, guys, for following me
for the last few years.
- After Twitter shut down Vine,
founder Rus Yusupov famously tweeted...
[dissonant notes]
- I think Rus' tweet, it just showed,
you know, instant regret.
[soft dramatic music]
Like, you know, what if?
Like--right?
Like, if he hadn't sold the company,
what would have happened to Vine?
♪ ♪
- Vine was TikTok before TikTok was TikTok.
So you gotta think that every shareholder and manager
at Twitter has really reconsidered--
[chuckles]
The decision to shut that thing down
and even though they only sold it for $30 million,
let's assume that Rus and Colin each got 10 million.
The difference between 10 million
and a billion is meaningful.
- And I think that meant
that they always had a bit of a chip on their shoulder
of wanting to take another shot
at building something truly big.
[dissonant tones]
[notifications chiming]
- I got a call from a friend of mine and said,
"Hey, man, I'm working these guys who started Vine
"and they want to do this trivia show on the phone
"and we're looking for a host
"and, you know, I thought of you.
Do you want to come in and audition for it?"
- Please give it up or Scott Rogowsky!
- I never booked anything in New York, really,
you know, when it came to auditioning for things.
This is very exciting. This is my club debut.
Maybe you saw the full page ad my mother took out
in the "Westchester Jewish Chronicle"?
[laughter]
Honestly, I put a decade into the comedy scene
in New York, grinding it out.
- Do you mind my laughing at you?
- I don't mind at all!
I wish the audience would join you, though.
- I had the subway book cover video.
So that was, like,
I had a little bit of recognition from that,
but I had certainly not reached the point
of getting offers from Comedy Central
or network TV or--
so I had decided to give up on New York and move to LA.
"Maybe I'll be discovered." That was my romantic ideal.
Gave up my apartment
But what the hell? One last audition.
- Take one. Marker. - [chuckles]
- Scott, whenever you're ready, man.
Just roll. Have fun. - All right.
- Do whatever you want.
- Hello, there! I'm your host, Scott Rogowsky.
We're live from New York City,
and we have a full house here in the studio--
I showed up looking pretty unkempt
in this moth-eaten sweater with my glasses,
which I don't normally wear when I do those things.
The first round of Hype Q starts
in just a couple of minutes.
No one really knew what this was.
"Come up with a little intro for yourself."
[sighs] Where am I? What is this place?
"Come up with some jokes up top
and then just read the questions."
First question of the day.
Where was the viral video titled "Double Rainbow" filmed?
I just went in--
I went into it with a confidence
that only comes from not giving a shit.
More cards, more cash tomorrow. See ya there!
Nicky Balls!
- Yo! Cut! This is good. Thank you. Great.
[upbeat music]
- Well, good morning to you on this Friday.
Have you ever heard of this? It's called fidget spinners.
- The hottest new toy.
- The toy is banned by some schools in Minnesota
and Massachusetts.
- Even though I work in the app world,
I'm not very in-the-know on what all the cool apps are.
I don't even know
if I would have ever played HQ if I didn't work there.
I think what made Rus and Colin special
is that they were able to see the future
before everyone else could see it.
- My co-founder, Colin and I, we thought, "Hey,
let's combine some of our favorite elements
of mobile gaming, live video and TV production,
mash 'em together.
We grew up watching "Jeopardy"
and "Wheel of Fortune."
We thought, "Hey, if we build a game show
"that we would actually play ourselves,
that it just might work."
- I mean, who doesn't want
to be a contestant on a game show?
♪ ♪
- The entire job of both a startup founder
and an investor is to predict the future...
- More and more of the video viewing
that has historically happened on TV
is happening through other channels now.
- And Jeremy Liew,
famous for making a huge early investment in Snapchat,
was HQ Trivia's first big investor.
- Because he saw it, really, as this new form of media
really changing the game.
♪ ♪
- Went in on the first day to start generating graphics.
What I really learned from Rus was...
the art of minimalism.
♪ ♪
They handed me a sheet with about six colors,
a circle, an X, or the triangle
and Rus was basically, like, "All right, now,
your job is to make this a whole universe."
You know, 'cause the idea is you're gonna stare
at this tiny screen for a long time.
It's gotta feel like it's really big.
♪ ♪
Then, kind of as a favor,
because Scott's, you know, one of my best friends,
out of all the people that auditioned,
I took Scott's footage and used it to develop the prototype.
- All right! First question.
- Once the people in charge saw that,
they couldn't separate him from the app.
- Yosemite National Park, the correct answer.
It's so beautiful!
Congrats to those of you who made it to the next round--
I think I auditioned for HQ in April and in May,
they said, "Hey, man, like, you got the job."
♪ ♪
I said, "Great, okay. Let's do this."
So, I came into the office.
♪ ♪
In that first meeting, my impressions of Rus and Colin
were they had very much of that tech guy vibe.
There was a Vine pillow.
I remember they put the Vine pillow on the couch.
I didn't use Vine. I didn't have a Vine account.
Six-second video!
That, to me, spelled the death of show business.
[applause]
I've always been an old soul.
I have books about Jack Benny and George Burns
and the Marx Brothers in my libraries.
- Welcome, welcome to "You Bet Your Wife--"
eh, "Bet Your Life."
- I loved the old comedy and... so, yeah,
this new-fangled, new age live-streaming on an app,
like, to me, I didn't have high hopes for it.
Okay. All right. I think we're all locked in here.
And the very first shows were just,
you know, internal tests...
First question of the day.
Just to make sure that you could,
you know, tap an answer and it would register...
The answer is space.
And the chat would work...
Let's see.
And then it was time to go live.
This is live! This is not recorded.
I'm talking to you right now!
The first beta shows were catching on
among, like, the New York tech community.
Thank you, again, for signing up.
Tell your friends about this.
- When I started, HQ hadn't yet launched.
It was still in beta.
My husband signed up, we played every night.
- I'm gonna ask you questions,
you're gonna answer the questions.
If you get them right, you win 50 bucks.
- Like, what's the catch, right?
But there was no catch.
You could actually win real money.
- Next question.
What is the most popular emoji used in France?
I mean, you know, I was trying
to make the questions funny and...
The heart emoji!
...a little risqué.
You know, it's funny,
Bill Gates named his company after his penis.
Microsoft.
[laugh track laughter]
♪ ♪
- We were shooting out this, like, makeshift closet.
[chuckles]
- It's a trivia game, live, from this very warm studio.
- I was really excited to be there,
just watching this thing go live, like, from a room.
Everybody wanted to just, like--
I call it, like, "Watch the baby grow."
- And we're back, baby! HQ-cumbers.
Still working on that.
It's Scott, coming at you live on this Monday.
Rus and Colin, from what I understand,
they were co-founders and they were, like, co-CEOs.
- Rus Yusupov, co-founder of HQ,
thanks for being here.
- Rus is the designer and so,
he's supposed to be the more charismatic one
and, you know, he's got his Tesla
and, you know, had a vanity plate,
"VINER" and just, like,
you know, talking about Bitcoin.
- I look up to the great entrepreneurs of our time.
This is a controversial response,
but I think Mark Zuckerberg has done an incredible job.
I am an Elon Musk fanboy.
- You know, like, just one of these guys who's just,
like, so into the whole status of being in tech.
- What do you love about yourself?
- Everything.
- Of course. "Ring around the rosie, pocket full of--"
I mean-- - Pocketful of what?
- Diapers. No. - Diapers!
- Rus, he was very hands-on.
He was doing the PR, doing the design...
- Fact checked, verified.
- He was doing the wardrobe.
- Scott's wardrobe.
It was kinda comical.
I was sent to go find suits for Scott
and Rus asked me to just like, take photos of every outfit.
[laughing] I have so many photos of him!
And then, Rus was the one that ultimately, like,
made the call to keep it or return it.
[soft dramatic music]
- Rus and Colin, they were almost polar opposites.
♪ ♪
I always got a sense from my very first day
that Colin was a little socially awkward.
I've been in tech so long that, like,
[laughing] Most engineers are awkward.
♪ ♪
He was a genius at his craft, but he didn't want to be seen.
All he cared about was the product.
- Joining us now are the co-founders,
Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov.
- Colin did not enjoy being on camera.
- Where's the prize money coming from now?
- From us, for now. - And investors?
- Very nervous.
- And what's your background?
- Well, I've been doing comedy--
Like, you know, palms sweaty nervous.
I auditioned for this. You know, I go on--
Colin was so uncomfortable.
[laughing] He never wanted to be on camera again.
- And we realized that we've created
a new category here--
- Rus was definitely more like, you know,
he wanted the limelight, he wanted to be on camera.
- You don't need a team of a thousand people.
You know, sponsors and advertisers are reaching out--
We do have the flexibility to grow.
- So fairly early on,
some cracks started to form, you know,
especially in the relationship between Rus and myself.
But for now, someone thinks I'm dumb.
The guy who owns this app thinks I'm dumb.
Great. The guy who hired me thinks I'm dumb.
I don't think Rus loved the fact
that I was becoming the face of the product he created.
You know, very early on,
we had some awkward interactions over Slack,
in person, over text.
This might be my last show
because my boss thinks I'm dumb, so.
It was nice knowing you, good playing with you.
[sighs]
But we started growing.
[energetic music] - Three, two, one!
♪ ♪
- HQ launched in August 2017
with a few hundred people in the first game.
We made it! This is HQ. I'm Scott, the host.
This is a live trivia game that you play from your phone.
Every show had more viewers than the previous show.
We got a long weekend coming up, people,
and there's big money on the table today.
50 bucks!
It was definitely a snowball coming down the mountain.
I'm Scott, your host. We are live.
Looks like we have some people playing right now
from Forest Hills High School in Queens.
[quirky upbeat music]
♪ ♪
- I had heard about it from some of my students
and rather than try to fight for their attention,
I decided that it would be, maybe, be fun to,
"Well, okay, let's play this.
Let's see what this is all about."
And then we all kinda got hooked on it.
- What school are you representing?
Let me know in the chat there.
- Apart from live sports
or the Oscars or something like that,
there are very few live events that people commune around.
- Now, if you answer this question correctly, madam,
you'll win $50.
- Originally, game shows on radio and television
were broadcasted live...
- Who was the father of our country?
- These were live events.
Is someone gonna answer the $64 question tonight?
- W-Washington? - Right!
Give that lady those 50 crisp dollar bills.
- And those were immensely popular.
- She put everything she had on a horse.
- Lady Godiva.
- Lady Godiva is correct
and you get $64 and congratulations!
[cheers and applause]
- And then we had that leap
from radio to television where what used to be
"The $64 Question" goes on to TV
as "The $64,000 Question."
- Yes, "The $64,000 Question."
- And they were so popular to the point
that almost one quarter of NBC's
broadcasting slate were game shows.
- Look what you can win now! - A new car!
- You're watching what is
more or less a rags-to-riches story.
There's that vicarious thrill that seems to come
from watching someone else
receive a life-changing amount of money instantaneously.
- He just won $1 million! [cheers and applause]
- I think there's also a desire to become a player.
- Ready, Eugene? One, two, three!
Let's--[groans]
[sad horns]
[cheers and applause] [theme music playing]
- My name is Eugene Byon and I've been a huge fan of HQ
for the last, goodness, four, five years.
There's this shirt here,
originally offered on the HQ store, limited edition.
There's this shirt here,
which I got for winning the co-hosting contest
and co-hosting a game of HQ.
Q-umero numero uno!
But there's also--[chuckles]
Oh, yes, this option.
This is the very outfit that I wore on
"Who Wants To Be A Millionaire: Second Chance Week"
where I won $20,000 and so,
I thought maybe that might be a good option for today.
Oh.
So I've played about 2,000 games.
- ♪ Three, two, one! ♪
- After I played the first game,
I knew that every time HQ had a game,
I would do everything in my power to play that game.
- Is this your first taste of the HQ Trivia pot pie?
Let me nutshell the rules.
- One of the things that really
set HQ Trivia apart from your traditional TV game show
is the interactive nature of it.
- Did y'all have a nice Thanksgiving?
- Scott Rogowsky is constantly interacting with folks.
There is that sense the host is aware that you're there.
- It's Friday night, the feeling is right.
There's a party going down on the West Side.
- And Scott Rogowsky was incredibly charismatic.
It wasn't, like, "Oh, I'm gonna go play HQ Trivia."
It was also like, "Oh, I gotta watch Scott."
- We've gathered up a bunch of leftover questions,
threw 'em together in the microwave for ya.
JK! We got a fresh batch! Piping hot! Ready to serve.
- Every weird synapse in my brain that would fire off...
Freddie Mercury is in retrograde.
Whether it was a "Simpsons" reference
or a Phish lyric-- the band, Phish.
You know, things that I loved.
"Seinfeld," baseball, all these things,
I just kinda, like, put out there.
Say "What up," give me some emojis--
A lot of it was just improvised
and when you're rolling, you're rolling.
I'm your host with the crab toast, Scott Rogowsky,
AKA "The Woke Woolery."
"Walt Quizney."
"The Semitic Sajak."
"The Quizard of Oz."
"The Great and Powerful Schnoz."
AKA, "The Trap Trebek," AKA, "Regis Trilbin,"
"Quiz Markie." "Rupert Pupkin."
- "Edward Quizzerhands." - "The Quiz Daddy."
- "Quiz Daddy."
- That's what you thought of, right?
You know, you're like,
"Oh, 9:00 p.m., time to spend time with 'Quiz Daddy.'"
- Shake 'em up, shake 'em up, shake 'em up, shake 'em!
It became pretty obvious to me fairly quickly,
that there was some professional jealousy
seeping into this dynamic between Rus and myself.
[quirky dramatic music]
I honestly think Rus had some scars from the Vine days
and I mean, he created a platform
that allowed all these Viners to become megastars...
[cheers and applause]
And Rus was still fairly anonymous behind the scenes
and here he was, seeing another guy get famous
off another one of his products
and it wasn't sitting too well with him.
I remember him very clearly telling me,
"This is not 'The Scott Rogowsky Show,'
you're just a host.
In fact, when this show gets bigger,
I want to get a celebrity host, like Jim Parsons,
you know, maybe Jamie Foxx and this was Rus telling me, like,
"Yeah, you're replaceable. We're gonna replace you."
[dissonant tones]
♪ ♪
But I was having fun with the show.
♪ ♪
Bah! Pow-pow-pow, pow-pow-pow-pow-pow!
Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya!
You want to get down to the nitty-gritty
and get this show on the road?
- It's a live trivia game that happens twice a day.
- The trivia game show you play on your phone
where you answer questions to win cash.
- It's hosted by the very charming Scott Rogowsky.
- Sit back, relax and let yourself go.
Don't sweat what you heard, act like you know.
It's a tribe called Quiz. May the best brain win!
- Scott is the icon of HQ.
- Yeah, baby!
- Let's go!
- And he's become a magnet for selfies.
- There you go.
- Who's your favorite host? - Scott, definitely.
- He's cool, he's cool. It's fun to watch.
- All my little Rogowsky urban achievers.
- Scott! Scott!
- Oh, my God! [crowd clamoring]
- I'm gonna take a selfie. - I am a god!
[cheering]
- So I write about tech in culture
and I write a lot about kind of the human side of technology
or these kind of culture stories
that are adjacent to the more hard tech stories,
I guess you could say.
- The trivia game show you play on your phone.
- I came across HQ Trivia
kind of like everyone else on the internet.
- You won! - You won!
- People in the newsroom were, like,
meeting at 3:00 to all play.
- Shabbat Shalom, HQ-ties!
I'm your hoost with the moost, Scoot Rogoose.
- The host, Scott Rogowsky,
I had noticed that nobody had done a profile of him,
about this person that, you know,
thousands of people were tuning into every day
and was becoming this beloved cult figure online.
- Warning. Tonight's quiz has two horns.
Are you ready for a quarter of an hour of mirth,
trivia and mayhem?
This was mid-November 2017.
"GQ" wanted to do a shoot,
"Interview" magazine, newspapers and I...
had been dutifully forwarding all these requests to Rus
and everything disappeared.
- I started hitting up Scott on social media.
I noticed that we had some mutual friends on Facebook.
- It was a couple of friends saying,
"Hey, my friend, Taylor, writes for the 'Daily Beast,'
would like to interview you."
I said, "You know what? Screw it.
I'm going to do this for a friend."
- I'm not gonna say it was a puff piece,
but it was a puff piece.
I did, you know, try and see
if there was any kind of controversy around him.
There was nothing.
- I did the interview with Taylor.
Ten minutes on the phone, thought nothing of it.
- The original headline said something about his eyelashes.
Let me go grab the computer. Hold on. It's just right here.
♪ ♪
"The next huge app star is a man with great eyelashes
"who lives with his parents.
"Meet Scott, the most beloved host of HQ,
"the live trivia show
"that hundreds of thousands of people tune into every day.
"Fans call him 'Quiz Daddy' and on the few days
"when he doesn't host HQ Trivia,
"people beg for his return.
"'Everyone needs 15 minutes of Scott in their lives,'
"said one fan, recently.
"'If you don't live Scott from HQ, we can't be friends,'
said another."
And then, I continued on in, like,
the nicest piece I've probably ever written about anyone.
I filed my draft and at 6:00 p.m.,
an email comes in from Rus.
[dramatic music]
He's like, "This is unauthorized profile.
You can't write this story."
And I'm like, "I'm a journalist
"and we don't need your approval to write stories,
"so, sorry, just let me know if you want to comment.
And feel free to call me."
I get on the phone and Rus starts yelling
and he's pissed and I immediately start
transcribing everything because I'm like,
"This is crazy."
And I also want to make sure that I write down any quotes,
so I'm in my notes app.
It is so hostile.
I mean, yelling at me and saying he was gonna fire Scott
if I ran this profile and I was so taken aback and confused.
Like, this is bizarre.
Like, does he understand how positive this story is?
And I, essentially,
start to read him, kind of, quotes that Scott gave me.
- Taylor had asked me what I eat for lunch before the shows.
I said I like to go to Sweetgreen.
This was the particular part of the interview
that Rus really took exception to.
Rus is like, "He cannot mention Sweetgreen!
We don't have a sponsored relationship with Sweetgreen!"
I'm like, "Well, dude, what are you talking about?"
and he's like--basically, the call is done.
♪ ♪
So I rewrite the story
around all of this stuff that happened.
That night, I was having a panic attack.
I could not sleep. [laughs]
I really just remember feeling like, "Oh, my God.
"Being a journalist is too stressful
and I fucked this up," and the next morning,
I get into work and Ben Collins, my editor,
is like, "We need to formally let the company know
"that we are including all of this.
All right, let's go, let's get Rus on the phone."
[suspenseful music]
- So, I'm preparing to do the 3:00.
I'm in the studio. I just put my suit and tie on.
Ten minutes before I'm supposed to go live...
- Rus gets Scott. - Knock on the studio door.
Rus says, "Can you--can you step out?"
♪ ♪
We enter a small conference room.
♪ ♪
Rus has his phone on speaker.
"I've got the 'Daily Beast' on the line.
"They are telling me that I threatened to fire you.
Why don't you tell 'em that that's not true?"
There was Taylor and her editor.
"Hi, Scott, here.
"Yeah, I don't know where you're getting that from,
"that's totally crazy.
"Rus never threatened to fire me.
Never heard that."
- I think that Scott realized that Rus was lying.
- And I look at Rus...
who's looking at me going...
like, "Not true."
- It was so clear that Rus was lying.
- My heart just sunk in that moment.
It was such a shock and, like...
you--you really said this?
You were like, you were gonna fire me?
Like-- I looked at Rus, I was like,
"Listen, man. I gotta host your show, so...
you know, you deal with this"
and I left the conference room
and went back and hosted HQ.
- ♪ Three, two, one! ♪
I hope your socks are securely fastened,
because we're about to knock 'em off
in another game of HQ--
20 minutes later when the show ended,
I step outside, the story had been published.
- It blew up. - And shit hit the fan.
♪ ♪
- The headline that we ran was something like,
"HQ Trivia Founder:
If You Run This Article, I'll Fire The Host."
Which Ben wrote. Genius headline.
♪ ♪
I was at my desk-- [laughs]
On Twitter, glued for, like, hours, like, refreshing,
and other journalists were like, "Holy shit."
- This became a whole scandal of its own.
All this media coverage,
laughing about how sensitive this founder was.
- Hashtag "Free Scott" was trending.
I mean, people thought that I was being held captive,
that I couldn't eat at certain places without permission.
It kind of--you know, the internet went wild with it.
♪ ♪
- When the Sweetgreen article dropped,
Rus was on the phone, like, in the middle of the office.
Kind of like a PR, like, crisis control situation.
[laughs]
♪ ♪
- Rus called me that night and he said,
"This is what we're gonna do."
- After the story came out, Rus took Scott
on, like, a date to Sweetgreen, to, like, ease things over.
- And then, I see that Rus has actually tweeted
something like, "Who's an out of touch startup founder? Me."
Like, basically, "Sorry about all that."
And I did think that was, like, masterful PR response.
It deescalated tensions but it also made it,
like, ten times more viral.
[quirky upbeat music]
♪ ♪
- I was on vacation and I called Scott up
and I said, "Did Rus do this on purpose?"
'Cause I was thinking, you know,
there's no such thing as bad press.
This is gonna be great for us.
- That's when the hockey stick accelerated.
♪ ♪
- HQ Trivia was everywhere.
- It is that time once again. The quizzing hour is upon us.
People played it on the subway...
Oh, HQ-nicorn!
At home, at work.
- No! - In the bar.
- Three winners, baby! - HQ winners!
[all cheering]
- I remember going to an Astros game.
I whipped out my phone and started playing.
- Greeting you on this late autumn day.
It just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
- You could see how many people were watching,
which made it cool, too, because as the company grew...
[cheering]
We would get more excited about the viewership.
- The media requests started coming in.
- And it's the FOMO element, the fear of missing out,
that's so prevalent in society now.
We were doing talk shows.
I was doing "Good Morning America,"
"The Today, Show," Colbert.
- Are we in the Matrix right now?
- All of this is science fic-- no, but I liken it
to the Wright Brothers building the first airplane.
I mean, they-- - What?
- Yeah! [laughter]
[peaceful music]
- Thank you.
What's your racket, kids? Now, come clean now.
Are you one of the extortion mob?
- It's exciting when people are excited about game shows.
- Do you mind kissing any of these people?
- Oh, I wouldn't mind, for a change.
[laughter]
- There's nothing else like it.
- Now, do you wish to select a category?
- It's not the same thing as live sports.
It's not the same thing
as watching some kind of stunt performance.
It's a unique kind of pleasure.
- With $100 a week, every week for the entire year!
- The game shows that we remember
are the ones that run for a long time.
- The host of "Jeopardy," Alex Trebek!
- "Jeopardy," "Wheel of Fortune,"
"Who Wants To Be A Millionaire."
- He's won $1 million!
[cheers and applause]
- There are plenty of other game shows...
- Hello, and welcome to "Star Face"!
- That most people barely remember.
- I'm putting $5,000 of my money on the line.
- They seem to be chasing something
that could become the next "Millionaire."
- Final answer? - Yes.
- They're looking to find their unique twists
in that formula and capture people's imagination...
- Shaggy and Scooby Doo. - Whoa!
- And HQ was able to scratch that itch...
- You won, Nan!
- In a unique way that it hadn't happened before.
- You won! Well done!
[cheering]
- HQ was both just a game and also an attempt to,
you know, revolutionize television.
[upbeat music]
Do I have anything in my teeth?
I'm Drew Patterson and I was an investor
and advisor and consultant to HQ Trivia.
Colin and Rus had different and complementary
kinds of skill sets.
♪ ♪
They met at Jetsetter.
- My next guest, Drew Patterson--
- I was the founder and the CEO
and we had a great time together.
Lots of late nights. Beers afterwards.
Those kinds of experiences created lots of camaraderie
and deep relationships and friendships.
♪ ♪
Colin's an introvert.
You know, I suppose, maybe I am, as well,
and so we connected around that.
Rus, you know,
I had a professional relationship with,
but we weren't friends
in the way that Colin and I are friends.
♪ ♪
Colin was a world-class engineer.
You're looking at what HQ had to accomplish,
Colin was one of the few people
in the world able to do that.
- Yeah, we'd definitely like to connect you closer
with the people that you know in the game.
And then, I mean, Rus was an incredibly talented designer.
- With HQ Trivia,
both Colin and Rus started as just co-founders.
Eventually, Colin fell into the role
of the Chief Technology Officer
and, effectively, Rus started to be the COO,
the Chief Operating Officer.
But the problem was that they were both
kind of competing to be the CEO,
the face of the company,
the one who controlled the money.
[tense music]
- Colin had very clear ideas
about what he wanted to create in the world
and his ambition was to reshape culture.
[chuckles] Right?
Like, to build the next version of television.
That's a gargantuan undertaking.
And so I think he felt the pressure
to try to live up to that.
♪ ♪
He was an awesome collaborator.
He was also really challenging.
I mean, it was not a picnic to work with Colin.
He had strong ideas,
he was not shy about sharing his ideas.
He drove the people who worked for him incredibly hard
and, you know, he didn't suffer fools.
Uh--uh... [chuckles]
He's a total pain in the ass.
[sniffles and clears throat]
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Yeah.
[clears throat]
♪ ♪
Why don't we-- why don't we grab lunch
and we can do this after lunch?
- Perfect. Okay, let's cut.
[horn honks]
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
- Prince Harry officially engaged
to American actress, Meghan Markle.
- We now know, though,
they actually got engaged earlier this month.
The Queen's delighted,
Prince Charles is delighted,
Prince William's very excited--
- HQ Trivia, you know,
had gotten all this, like, positive attention, right?
But it was clear that if they wanted to build
and realize their dream, they needed more money.
- Looking to raise more money? - If it's right, sure.
- As a startup, you need capital to grow the company.
You need engineers.
In the case of HQ, you need prize money.
- Today's jackpot: $1,000.
$5,000.
♪ ♪
50,000!
$100,000!
You can actually buy love
and happiness with that kinda dough.
- So, clearly, they were fund-raising...
but it was clear that, like, something was stalling that
and this report comes out...
which answered the question of, like,
"Why haven't they raised more money yet?"
♪ ♪
- What I wanted to do was break news about
who was investing in this really buzzy startup
called HQ Trivia,
and I kept getting a version of the same answer back,
which was, "Super interested, but we have our reservations."
♪ ♪
And what I learned was that Rus and Colin
had a reputation from their time at Vine and Twitter
that was catching up to them.
♪ ♪
- There were rumors of bad management by Colin at Twitter,
but nobody was really sure
if it had strayed into something more serious
until this article came out.
- I spoke to over a dozen former colleagues
and employees and the experiences they had
were not positive.
Colin would show up late to work,
hungover, disheveled,
he was kind of verbally aggressive towards people.
- And what Kurt wrote is that he was fired for being
a "bad manager", but in addition to that,
there were female employees at Twitter
that spoke out that Colin made them uncomfortable.
Kurt describes "creepy" behavior towards women.
- He would maybe make a joke or he would talk
about something that happened over the weekend in a way that,
especially to his female colleagues,
it made them feel weird.
[soft dramatic chords]
- I thought the "Recode" article,
it played into a cultural moment, right?
And it was easy to read the story in a certain way.
You know, it was the height of MeToo.
- The MeToo movement growing this morning.
Millions of women sharing their own stories online--
- All these bad things were happening in tech.
There was sexism,
there was not a meritocracy like they promised.
There were new types of harassment.
There was a moment where it was
just like article upon article upon article.
- Suddenly, there was a reckoning around bad behavior
by men, sexual politics in the workplace that,
you know, really had not been reckoned with and it--
like, long overdue reckoning.
Unfortunately, I think Colin got caught up in that.
- Colin Kroll,
whose behavior was described as "creepy at times",
also, "egregious."
According to Rico, though,
it doesn't appear formal complaints
were actually filed against him.
- That, as far as I know, was not why he was fired.
He was fired because he wasn't doing a good job
managing the staff,
but Colin's behavior and his history mattered
because it was now directly impacting
his current business.
[dramatic music]
- Colin pulled me into the phone room
and asked if he could chat with me and he said,
"This article talks about me having a...
"unprofessional relationship with somebody,
"and I wanted to share my side of the story with you
and I want you to feel comfortable here."
- In Silicon Valley,
you have a lot of young people,
young, white men managing big teams
that are growing really quickly.
There's a lot of ego,
you have "Move fast and break things" mentality.
You work long hours, you code, you don't take off.
You can't show any sign of weakness.
- It all goes into this myth of
"the Silicon Valley founder", right?
Think of the Steve Jobs model.
You know, to be a true creative genius,
yeah, you're gonna hurt some feelings.
Your underlings are gonna fear you,
but that's good, that's what it takes
and as we know now, that's not what it takes.
In fact, it actually usually hinders innovation
because people don't feel comfortable,
you lose talent, and you end up
building a very non-inclusive workspace.
- When I got there, like,
it was definitely kind of a boys' club.
I would come in in the morning and there might be,
like, you know, beer cans
that they had left behind from the night before
that I was like, "I guess I'm cleaning this up".
Or, like, "Rachel, like, we need more coffee!
Like, can you make some?" You know?
I'm like, "Can't you?" [laughs]
I never really spoke up.
Probably because I felt insecure.
Um...I was young, you know?
I was very young and... and...
I think, inherently, like, as women,
we are afraid to speak up, especially young women.
[soft, uneasy music]
- Rus and Colin had built a hit,
and this report comes out.
It just was like, "Oh, gosh, is this it?"
You know, like, "Is this--
who wants to invest in the company now?"
[soft, edgy music]
- There was a lot of speculation
around why this article came out when it did.
The instance they were to be talking about were years prior,
when he was at Twitter.
Why is this coming out now,
right when the fund-raise is happening, right when...
they're figuring out who's gonna run the company?
As co-founders, you can run things
pretty loosely in the beginning...
but once other investors start coming on board...
you have to sort of formalize things and, well...
[small laugh]
if there are allegations of creepy behavior
on one of these guys,
it's probably best if the other founder
leads the company now...
and Colin believed that, you know,
Rus was involved in this story getting out there.
- When you have a lack of trust
between the two people running the company,
it leads to chaos,
especially if you're raising money at the time.
A lot of folks are irrational, there's a lot ego,
there are all of these moves, the power moves,
there's a lot of money changing hands.
So I think you probably had a lot of dynamics
happening at the time that were, I think,
probably really toxic.
- I knew from, like, my second day,
that Colin and Rus didn't see eye to eye.
That was forementioned to my start
so that I could be well acclimated in the role.
They needed a third party to sit in with them
when they had meetings to delegate a conversation
between the two of them, unfortunately.
- You know, it was a weird thing
'cause you're co-founders, you'd think you do start
these things with your friends...
but they didn't seem like friends.
- They had been collaborators for so long,
I think they both knew
that they were better together than apart.
But maybe it wasn't a perfect relationship.
- There was a public reaction to the article.
It certainly caught some attention,
at least in the tech world.
- When you're a company and you're growing really fast
and things on the outside seem like they're going great,
it's really hard to take that step back and say, like,
"We've got to work on our relationship."
- Rus, as far as I know, felt sort of betrayed.
Like, "Hey, you're putting our company in a tough spot
from your past behavior, and I wasn't aware of that."
At least, that was the idea that was kind of portrayed.
- After that story came out,
I asked the question of "Who's gonna invest in HQ?"
The answer ended up being the Founders Fund.
- They invested $15 million at a $100 million valuation,
thinking that this company
is gonna make at least $100 million
when it sells or IPOs one day.
- Good evening! - Founders Fund...
- I'm Peter Thiel.
- Was Peter Thiel's fund,
early backer of Facebook.
- I build companies
and I support people
who are building new things,
from social networks to rocket ships.
[cheers and applause]
- He had also just been the only major tech investor
to back Donald Trump
in the 2016 presidential election.
Peter Thiel kind of put a stake in the ground
in the tech world as saying,
I'm not gonna shy away from something
that I think is good business
because it might have a checkered past...
and so, Cyan Banister, one of the partners,
was going to join the board.
- I've invested in companies in my career
such as Uber, SpaceX, Postmates...
- And she was known for being
an incredible friend to founders
and actually working with them in the trenches.
- And Founders Fund's whole... managing principle is that
"We don't get in the way of founders."
Rus knows he's gonna have free rein
with Founders Fund's money...
and "Colin, you just go back
"and you keep coding and engineering
"and keep this game up and running...
and Rus will be the CEO and take all the glory."
That's the way I read it.
[percussive music]
You can go back to every article,
every interview with Rus. "What's the future of HQ?"
Rus' whole thing was, "I wanna give away a million dollars."
- Well, we'd love to give away a million dollars.
We'd love to give away a million dollars.
Can we give away a million dollars one day? I think so.
I think Rus is, in the best sense of the word,
a showman.
- I'm Rus Yusupov,
the CEO and co-founder of HQ Trivia.
- Interested in creating spectacle.
- With viewers in more than 80 countries.
- The bigger the spectacle, the better.
- Well, I'm back here at the NFL Tailgate,
joined by the man at the center of the craziest obsession
sweeping our nation right now.
- We had a Super Bowl commercial.
People dressed as me for Halloween.
- We're making things extra awesome tonight on HQ...
- We were nominated for an Emmy award.
[audience chanting]
3,000 high schoolers
screaming for me.
- It's been soaring in popularity.
Sometimes more than a million people
play it at the same time.
- With all one million plus of you--
[punchy music]
- ♪ Four-four, three, two, one... ♪
- Jimmy Kimmel, in fact...
- Wow, we got two! - We got two right!
- Loved it so much,
he finagled his way into guest hosting.
- I'm here because Scott doesn't love you anymore
and, to be honest,
I don't know that he ever really did,
so let's try to forget about him right now.
- I think the celebrities, for me...
- Awkwafina! - Oh, yeah, hi.
- Made me think, "Wow, this is big."
- "These expensive, these is red bottoms,
these is bloody shoes!"
- Success begets success.
- I don't want to do math! - 100 thou--
- As the size of the audience grows...
- Hug me. Oh! There he is!
- What's up? AKA, your boy, Ice Cube.
- You know, that makes it easier
to bring in higher profile celebrities.
- HQ is live. - HQ is always live.
- I remember when The Rock was on there.
- The Rock hosting.
- Maybe I can give you
some pointers? How 'bout that? - Yeah, okay.
I would love some pointers.
- Russ knows how to
craft a narrative that breaks through the media,
that gets people excited,
that gives them something to talk about.
- The Rock tweeted you should catch him on HQ.
- Cheers to HQ Trivia. We're gonna have a blast
tomorrow--$300,000.
- That ended up being...
two million people plus.
[background noise, indistinct chatter]
- The morale in the office was really, really high.
- Can we get some mustard for Danny DeVito
for cryin' out loud?
- Danny DeVito, he was asking the engineers
all these questions about how HQ worked.
- We were hiring engineers, writers,
and they had moved into a new office.
[applause]
It just felt like we were rapidly expanding.
- That's a wrap, Scott. This is live, Scott.
Go with it.
[folksy music]
- Russ was building international markets,
launching a German HQ.
- [speaking in German]
- An Australia HQ. - So just think of me
as your little Australian Dumbledore.
- A UK HQ... - I'm Shazza Carpenter,
your quality quizzer, and this is HQ Trivia.
- Russ came to me, he said,
"Sharon I see you in 'Cosmopolitan,'
I see you on the cover of this magazine, this newspaper,"
and I'm thinking okay, Russ,
like calm down a little bit, I don't know,
is it really gonna be like that?
But you know what?
He was absolutely right.
I've been involved with a lot of different shows,
big networks, but I had never seen this level of fandom.
[crowd cheering, screaming]
- Damn, H-cuties!
We're back at it again.
- In my wildest dreams,
I never thought for a second...
[all screaming]
HQ would become this huge.
To see the game grow in a matter of months
to 2.3 million live players...
- What a crazy game, guys.
- Was just mind-blowing.
- We started with 2.3 million--a record.
And we're gonna come back
and try to do it again tomorrow.
Yeah, that's right. Tomorrow.
- The turnout was like too good for us
because what Colin had explained as, you know,
the engineering mind behind the whole process
is you want it to slowly build
because the app is not ready to work
with too many people on it.
- Colin had a sense of like
we're not going in the right direction.
This party isn't gonna end well.
It can't just be more bigger prizes
and a bigger and bigger spectacle.
The company needs to be more than just those things,
and I think he's frustrated that, you know,
Russ wasn't, um... attuned to that.
[exciting music]
- We are back live. We are in Times Square.
Midnight is almost here.
- Okay, listen, I love games
and there's this live model trivia game
that has taken American by storm.
Hi Scott. - Hi Jenny.
HQ Trivia is the only live game show you play on your phone.
- Oh my God, I wanna play.
- Okay, who has never hosted "New Year's Rockin' Eve"--
Jimmy Kimmel, Regis Philbin, or George Carlin?
The plan was we go live at midnight,
this will be our big New Year's Eve show.
- I know this one. - It was the most money
we'd ever given out. Ry, what's your answer?
- I would say Kimmel.
- I was up in Times Square... Ryan is our big winner!
Had to do the promo... - Thank you so much.
- Thank you, happy New Year, in the car,
down to the studio in Soho, rush and get in there you know,
five minutes to midnight, we're ready.
And we go live.
Can you believe this year's over already?
I feel like it's only been 365 days and 26--
And it crashes.
I don't know, I think they might have expected
maybe 500,000, and a million showed up
and the whole thing just, you know...
- You have had some glitches.
Some users have complained about that.
- We are going through some growing pains.
- What are we doing about the glitches?
- Right, well... - It's frustrating, Rus,
the glitches.
[overlapping yelling]
- Glitches in HQ appeared in many different forms.
The freezing, sudden disconnection from the game.
- What is the prime-- [garbled speech]
- An error message that would appear on the screen.
[laughs]
- People would always like meme Scott Rogowsky's face
all like muddled up.
- It just got so popular
and that might be a part of the reason
why the game was always crashing.
- Would you believe it?
- Once it got popular, it seemed like
we weren't able to add any new features.
All the engineers had to immediately switch
over to fixing all the problems,
rather than figuring out
how to put new features into the game.
- Colin was just focusing on
making sure the servers didn't break down.
Like making sure the technical side of the app worked.
And so everything else was really on Rus.
- Our engineering team, every day
they're working on making the servers better
and more reliable, and the focus really is
on delivering the best possible experience.
- Aah!
Oh, my God! Oh, my God!
[overlapping chatter] Oh, my God!
I won $11.30.
I won $11!
I don't remember the questions, except for the last one.
- The final question of the day...
- Who composed the startup music for Windows 95?
The answer was...
wait, now I can't even remember.
Oh my God.
[chime] Roxy Music.
Which is what I guessed.
- And you got some winners, baby, yeah!
177 of ya.
- I just really couldn't believe it.
I was in shock.
And my friends Tweeted the clip
@ScottRogowsky.
And I basically, like, was the internet.
- This woman's response to an $11 win
has gone viral.
- Joy there from Lauren May. Worth every action.
- People I hadn't talked to since elementary school,
reaching out to say like hi.
- So many people are jealous.
They'd love to be that excited about anything in their life.
- I wasn't this version of myself
that I was super proud of. but then...
- From San Francisco, California,
please welcome Lauren May.
I was like okay, well, if I can get to the "Ellen" show
after all this, it will have been worth it.
- Okay, so $11.30? - Correct.
- Did you spend the money yet?
- Well, so I learned
after I became viral the most comment--
I try not to read the comments
'cause, you know, people tell you not to do that,
but a lot of the comments were saying girl
you don't even know you can't get that money.
People were saying this poor girl
doesn't even know she's not gonna get $11.
Like after all's said and done, she actually gets nothing.
You actually can't cash out of HQ
until you have $20, which I don't have.
I am currently sitting on a whopping nothing.
- Oh no.
- You can't cash out
till you win $20 and then you only have 90 days.
Why--why that complexity?
- People are winning.
It is it is an attainable prize.
Lauren May in that reaction video, she was ecstatic
and it goes to show
that this is really not so much about the money,
it's about the thirst for knowledge and...
- Rus made some comment about,
"And people like Lauren, they're so excited
it's not even about the money."
Which is true, but I also got to go on "Ellen."
Most people who weren't able to cash out
didn't also get this incredible thing that happened to them.
And I could see how they would like their $11.30.
- The way technology firms approach their operations
is ready, fire, aim.
And if there's a little collateral damage,
you know, so be it.
If you in fact can communicate or cement
the perception that you're growing faster
than anyone in your category, you attract more capital,
financial and human capital, which creates more growth
which creates more capital, more value,
and you start that upward spiral.
- Do it one more time, do it one more time.
[gong echoes]
- Million of you live in the game.
- We had a milestone of getting a million players in the game
and then we had a milestone
of getting two million players in the game.
- Two million plus of you.
- So to get to three million was the next milestone.
Rus bought a giant champagne bottle.
- It was probably like at least half my body length.
- And he had a sign that said you know,
break in case of three million.
And we just expect that we get there the next week.
I mean, this is this is the hubris,
this is the...
this is the great symbol of the Greek tragedy
that is HQ is this, you know, magnum bottle of champagne.
- We have over 1.5 million of you now, live.
1.9 million players still watching.
2.3 million--a record!
We know that you can have too much of a good thing.
- HQ Trivia. - HQ Trivia.
- Do you think you're going
to put Jeopardy! out of business?
- And tonight, a trivia sensation, HQ...
- I mean if you went to a Michelin star restaurant
every night, had a five-course meal
by the best chef in the world...
It's Monday night! It is Tuesday.
It is Wednesday. Thanksgiving is Thursday.
Friday night...Saturday. Happy Sunday.
Eventually you'd get sick of it.
- What day is it?
- Monday. It's Monday.
- I would not say that a majority of HQ players
are game show fans.
So because of that, boredom can quickly set in.
I started seeing those signs myself
from interacting with other HQ users on social media.
People starting to express
that they're getting bored of the game.
- There was a few other apps that had very similar premise.
- The Q prides itself on its ability to go live anywhere.
- And we would watch and be like this
is not as good as HQ, you know.
- [speaking language]
- Question number one:
- You had HQ imitators coming out of India and Thailand.
- The question on everyone's mind
was when will Facebook copy this and they did.
- Welcome to "Confetti."
I'm gonna ask you 13 questions.
They get harder as we go.
Let's get ready to confetti!
- I mean, every company and every CEO faces the same thing,
like the hardest thing is coming up with a good idea.
The next hardest thing is protecting it.
A lot of companies continually innovate, right?
The next iPhone will be better than this one.
That's the challenge that every company faces
from a consumer who constantly asks one question,
that is what have you done for me lately?
- Say cheese!
Hello, H-cuties! Happy Monday.
HQ is, you know, really hitting the peak,
that's when the numbers started declining
and that's when the cracks started showing.
April, you know, it started to go down.
May, really started to go down.
The penultimate question, Elmo--
know what that means? - No.
- July to August, seeing us start to drop below a million.
- I dunno! We did lose about half of you there.
- Yeah, looking at the top right and seeing 999.
I'm like, hmm, okay.
- 600,000! 400,000!
300,000!
- How do you regain that peak moment
and do you need to regain that moment?
- What we're proud of is that
we're able to maintain this core community
and core player base
that engages by the hundreds of thousands every day.
- A million people is a sexy number.
That's what enabled HQ to get those $15 million
in brand deals and ads sold.
You don't get those deals if numbers are going down.
- Yeah, I know, everyone's kinda on vacation.
You're here, you're doing it.
We're doin' it. We're doin' it up.
We're doin' it up right!
- Ughh...it was frustrating and-and also like
just basically like trying to figure out what--
where is it going wrong?
- This is really not what I was not expecting.
- Yeah, I mean so I think the obvious thing
that Rus could've tried...
- Things that would've nice if it had come our earlier.
- What if they did, I don't know, just pop culture trivia?
- New game play elements. - Geography.
- Points that roll over that accumulate on a leader board
or a profile. - Make it so you can still
answer questions after you got outta the game.
- There's no shortage of ideas,
there were brilliant people working at HQ
but they couldn't get their work done.
They could not execute because Rus wasn't allowing them to.
You know, every time someone had an idea
or a thing let's try this, no.
- Rus was afraid of tampering with the formula.
- You all know, of course, The Dab,
the dance move featuring a raised arm.
Rappers, football players, even Hillary Clinton Dab.
- Now we're talkin'.
- Things were really breaking down behind the scenes
and a lot of it stemmed from this divide
between Rus and Colin into what kind of company this was.
- Rus and Colin did have different visions
for the company.
Rus was all about blowing up HQ Trivia
into massive thing, right, like let's get bigger prizes,
let's get bigger celebrities to host
and that's the future of HQ,
we're gonna build this into a massive show.
- If we can get millions of people
to engage for 15 minutes, 7 days a week,
that that's-hat's incredibly powerful.
- And my understanding from Colin was
we need to build a platform
with a number of different game shows going.
We're not gonna put all of our eggs in in one basket.
And that was a pretty dramatic difference of opinion
at that stage of the company
because you only have so much money.
You can choose to try and support the main game
or you can chose to try and build new games,
but you can't really do both.
[uneasy music]
[laughter]
- Nothing was getting done. I mean, HQ was this patient
on the operating table bleeding out
and there's two doctors standing over the body
arguing with each other, and the patient's dying.
We were in a total stasis
and at the same time hemorrhaging followers.
- It's a small office so people are talking to each other.
They're worried, right, like is this going to exist,
am I going to have a job?
- I was living, breathing, and sleeping HQ
literally to the point
where I was not sleeping because of HQ.
[somber music]
I mean someone had to, you know, raise the alarm here.
And that ended up being me.
That's when I called the board members
and the main investors.
- The board, which is small, there's only four people
including both co-founders, starts talking,
hey should Colin be the CEO instead of Rus?
- Colin as CEO,
and for us it was anyone but Colin.
♪ ♪
- Shortly, if not immediately after, the conversation,
I got a tip that there had been a formal complaint filed
by an HQ employee.
- This woman had a complaint against Colin.
I don't believe it was sexual in nature,
it was just like a sort of like the way she was being treated.
And she brought that up to Rus
and from what I understand the general sentiment
is that Rus kinda used that against Colin
as ammo to kinda push away the whole Colin as CEO notion.
- I had seen messages between him and a friend
saying I don't trust Rus anymore,
I feel like Rus is the one
who's orchestrating this whole thing.
- The board investigated
and they didn't find anything egregious about what he did.
- The president took time today to meet with
the rap star and front man Kanye West,
it was a rather bizarre scene.
- I couldn't even watch it. I had to turn
the television off.
- Around that time into the summer
Rus calls me into boardroom one day
and tells me he has a big idea and at this point I was like
I need to start recording this guy
so I can like pin him on what he says
'cause he just there's there's he's so slippery.
- I mean it was like the most out of left field thing
I'd ever heard.
His big pitch was no, no this is gonna be great
'cause you're the host and the CEO
and we can hire a camera crew to follow you around,
make it a reality show.
- You know talking to the audience
and saying like what tie should I wear
to the investor meeting today,
should it be the blue one or the black one
and be like you can get interactive feedback.
- You know, I'm just like this is--
- It just seemed comical.
But he was just desperate to figure something out.
To get someone else in there other than Colin.
- And I left there thinking okay like we're in trouble.
[sighs]
Yeah, and but then, you know, I took that week
to really think about the CEO thing.
I bought a book, CEO for dummies kind of thing.
I did take some business school classes at-at Hopkins.
I said I think people in the office would respect me
and would-- you know, they already did
so I would rally everybody together,
say guys let's save this thing, let's turn this around.
- Initially it seems crazy.
You're not really thinking about the host being the CEO.
- So I wrapped my head around and said okay you know what,
shoot like, you know, if not me, who, if not now, when?
♪ ♪
I booked a flight to San Francisco,
had a Power-point put together, met with the investors.
And I said here's my pitch.
You know, here's why Rus needs to go.
Here's why I don't think Colin is the right fit as well.
Rus came to me with this idea,
I thought it was crazy at first,
but now it might just be our last hope here.
Jeremy thoughtfully considered it
and he-he said thank you for coming here,
thank you for meeting me, and-and Rus wanted me in.
I kinda left thinking okay this might happen,
this might happen.
And then about a week later when they had the vote,
and, uh, they named Colin CEO
and to me, it was like well, you know, again I tried.
You know, Colin, we'll see what he can do.
Look, I mean, he's a co-founder,
let's-let's anything's better than Rus, right?
Colin now in his capacity as CEO had the ability
to excommunicate Rus.
If I became CEO, that would be my first order of business.
Give Rus that bottle of champagne
and say here you go, man, now please see yourself out
and never come back.
Unfortunately, that's not what Colin did when he became CEO
and it caused all sorts of other problems.
- We've had a hardware restart.
- May have had an instrumentation problem.
- Colin had a lot
of responsibilities on his plate.
This company had really started to stagnate.
Now it was really transitioning into the second act.
He needed to come up with what was HQ Trivia
going to be next, not just what it already was.
- Colin opened it up to every single employee
to come up with like what they thought
would be an exciting new show
and we literally pitched it to them.
- Let's dive right in and meet today's bachelor.
- There was an idea for there to be a dating show,
a comedy show...
- Record high pollen count.
Who the fuck counts pollen?
- Where you could boo someone that's not doing a good job.
♪ ♪
- Things started to turn around
when Colin became CEO.
- He basically gave everybody their autonomy.
Let them design and build.
- His platform was like, listen to people here
and, like, take feedback and work together
to make something happen.
♪ ♪
- Colin had put so much time and effort
into creating HQ Words...
- It's time for HQ Words!
- The next game that was going to be launched soon.
- We had balloons in the office.
HQ Words, ready to go with our new show.
- You could tell that Colin was under a lot of stress.
He felt the responsibility of keeping everyone employed
and making the investors happy at the same time.
- He was working day and night,
really grueling hours,
partly driven by a creative desire
to accomplish something, but, you know,
it was all weighing on him.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- Let's now talk "Fortnite," shall we?
- This is one of those viral games
that is literally sucking productivity
out of schools, out of workplaces.
You can forget trying to have a conversation at home.
- Right before Christmas 2018, HQ had their holiday party.
- I was hosting it.
I went and got little lights on the table,
the décor for the makeshift phone booth.
I was kinda, like, mingling with everyone,
just making my rounds the whole night,
making sure that everyone was having a good time.
- I am Frosty the Host Man, bringing you dough, man.
The elf of wealth...
- It was a really, really, really nice party.
- At the Christmas party, Colin was looking worn out.
He was, you know, taking a break from drinking.
He felt he was drinking too much.
It's probably hard to watch
all your co-workers get obliterated.
Kinda was in a bit of a rush to get outta there.
You know, he didn't wanna be tempted.
- Colin comes up to me and he says, "Hey V,
"I didn't wanna leave without telling without thanking you.
"It seems like everyone's having a good time.
And I just didn't wanna leave without saying goodbye."
♪ ♪
- Good morning. Periods of rain today.
Low clouds, 39,
with northeast winds of 15. Feels more like...
- The weekend after that party,
I got a text with an article that had the headline
that said that the co-founder of HQ had passed away.
- The co-founder of one of the world's
most popular trivia games has died.
An official tells CNN that HQ Trivia CEO Colin Kroll
was found dead this morning in New York.
- Colin Kroll, CEO of HQ, dead at 34.
It's like, what? Like, is this--is this a joke?
- You might not know his name,
but you probably know his work.
He co-founded the viral game HQ Trivia
and the video app Vine.
- Officers went into Colin Kroll's apartment
early Sunday after his girlfriend
requested a wellness check.
- Police say Kroll was found unconscious
and unresponsive in his bedroom.
- Then, like, other, you know, texts
just started flooding in.
I was like, "Oh, my God."
I mean, it was--that was just like--
it was totally surreal.
It was totally, totally surreal.
♪ ♪
- I found out about Colin's death on Twitter
and just being. you know. dumbfounded.
♪ ♪
I remember kinda reaching out to other colleagues and friends
and--and trying to learn what had happened.
♪ ♪
- I always thought of him
as a surprisingly approachable, normal person.
Just a single guy in New York
looking to hang out with friends,
who happens to be responsible for this company,
and just, you know, it makes me realize
he was carrying a huge secret around in plain sight.
- New York police found him unconscious in his bed,
and they suspect a drug overdose
as the cause of death.
- I never, in my wildest imagination,
could have ever guessed that Colin was doing heroin.
Colin died of a heroin overdose
because there was fentanyl in it.
And that was, like, the point when I even learned
that he was doing heroin.
- Some people wanted to just-- "Let's cancel the show.
We're not doing a show tonight."
We were debating, like, you know,
"What--what--what do we do here,
and how do we approach this?" and I was like, "Guys,
"like, you have to--we have to acknowledge this.
I mean, it'd be crazy not to say something."
It is with a heavy heart
that I must share some tragic news
that has befallen the HQ family.
So I had this idea to say, like, "Let's go live at 9:00,
and I will just, you know, eulogize Colin."
Colin, or CK, as we called him,
was a true visionary who changed the game twice,
first with Vine, and then with this very app.
- You always wondered, like,
what was he gonna make next?
- Thank you, CK.
Good night, everybody.
- We have no idea how mobile and media might've changed
if he'd still been around another decade or two.
- Some people come into our lives
and leave too soon,
leaving behind an afterimage, a fading memory.
Colin is not one of those people.
We were married in many ways,
and I lost-- and I lost a partner.
Obviously Colin struggled with his issues, as we all do.
Maybe for Colin, it was too much, too soon.
I can't say we always agreed
or that we were always happy with each other,
but it was during these challenging times
that Colin's kind soul and big heart
would truly shine.
I hope he left each and every one of you
with that sense of feeling special, as he did with me.
Thank you.
- After Colin died, we had to figure out
what we're gonna do with this company
that was now without its CEO,
without its co-founder, completely rudderless.
Cyan had basically recused herself from the board,
so, like, now the board is just Jeremy and Rus,
and we need a CEO.
Jeremy reinstated Rus as CEO, interim CEO.
- But that meant that HQ Trivia was going back
to a lot of its problems.
They still needed to experiment,
and that was not Rus's strong suit.
- Words was supposed to come out the day
that Colin died. That got delayed.
- And then, by the time HQ Words comes out,
the excitement's gone, the passion's gone.
- Welcome to HQ Words!
- The app's already on the way out.
- [gasps] It's getting old.
- If they had launched it
at the peak of HQ Trivia's popularity,
it could've been equally massive,
but it was a little bit too little, too late.
- It was an icy reception.
- No-one at HQ wanted to let Colin down posthumously
'cause he had put all of his blood, sweat,
and tears into this thing,
but with Rus at the helm again,
there was really never
a light at the end of the tunnel.
- In many ways, Colin was the product.
He had the idea and the know-how to do it.
Without him in our back pocket,
it was kinda just a bunch of people
thinking, "Well what would he have done?"
[electronic music]
- Morale was now at an all-time low,
and dominoes were falling, people were leaving.
- I mean, they laid off a few of us at once,
and they were very solemn, and they were just like
"Hey, just wanna let you know today's your last day at HQ,"
and they gave me a tote bag to put my stuff in
with the HQ logo on it, which I thought was funny.
I mean, definitely a final little piece on top of it.
- It really, you know-- this was it.
The ship was truly sinking here.
That's why, when I had an opportunity
to go elsewhere, I took it.
Dan Plesac. This is actually Dan's jacket.
It was like a streaming sports app produced by MOB,
and I'm a huge baseball fan.
♪ Meet the Mets, meet the Mets ♪
I'm thinking I can still do the Sunday night at HQ
and do change up Monday through Friday.
Rus did not wanna do that,
and they did not wanna do a farewell, and so okay.
I guess that I'm no longer gonna be hosting at HQ,
and, uh... that was that.
[allegro music]
When I, you know, finally announced on Twitter,
like formally said, you know,
"I'm no longer at HQ,
and I've got this new show. I'm really excited about it,"
and all the tributes starting coming in
and the Rock tweeted at me,
and, you know, that was trending
on Twitter for a weekend, the fact that I left HQ
and people were upset that--like, you know,
"Where's the farewell show?" You know.
It would've been nice to do for the fans.
It's like, how do you not see how bad this looks?
[breaker winds down]
- So if Scott leaves in April 2019,
Valentine's Day of 2020
is where they officially pulled the plug on HQ.
- It is Friday, February 14th.
Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.
- Happy Valentine's Day.
- We heard that HQ was being canceled,
that that was it, that HQ was no more.
So it was kind of a sad moment. Like, this is it.
♪ ♪
- Publicly, the ending was really abrupt.
For a lot of people, it was just a notification
sent to their phone.
"We're done. See you later.
Thanks for the good times."
- Hey!
But...
There's still plans to produce this last show the next day.
So what did the hosts do? They got drunk.
- This is the last game ever,
and this $5 prize is coming out of my own pocket.
We ran out of money.
We just kept giving it away.
- $6 million in prizes. - That's insane.
- It was a beautiful final train wreck to witness.
- We got this in case we hit 3 million players.
Should we open it?
- Everyone was basically commiserating together
on the air.
- Whoa! Oh, my God!
[laughs]
Matt! Agh.
- A bunch of champagne fell on my crotch.
Feels like I peed my pants.
- Let me see. Does it...
Ooh, wow, it does.
Final question... - Q12.
Final question ever.
- And then the tweet went out, you know, HQ is shutting down,
ran out of money.
[feedback noise]
[jaunty xylophone music]
- HQ shut down for what we thought was gonna be for good.
- Whoo! We were gone for a while.
- HQ ended up coming back. And Rus did it.
- We've all been hard at work, building a brand-new,
just-for-you HQ, chapter two!
- Rus managed to find investors
that believed that HQ still had something special,
even if it was never gonna have 2.3 million players again.
- ♪ Seventh question ♪
We gonna make a TikTok.
- I--I...
- Who got it? Who got it?
- It folded in in February of 2020
and was mysteriously resurrected six weeks later
as a shell of its former self.
- I'm so excited! HQ Trivia is back, y'all.
Yeah!
[electronic music]
♪ ♪
- I'm technically inventor.
I'm on the design patent for this app that I helped build.
I watched it rise to being the most popular thing
in pop culture in one moment in time.
I remember seeing Joe Biden, before he was president,
tell Scott Rogowsky that Scott was more popular than him.
And then I watched it all slowly go away.
♪ ♪
- That isn't a new story. That's an important story.
[cheers and applause]
The hype and the excitement
of founders becoming rock stars
and then failure,
like big failure, quick failure.
I don't think a lot of us
will know this pressure, right,
when they put millions of dollars into you.
You gotta manage to live up to that insane valuation
that everyone believed you had.
Not to take it far-- this is a quiz app--
but I think HQ's just like a microcosm
for a much larger landscape of start-ups
and what happened over the last decade.
[glitzy music]
♪ ♪
- I've been spending a lot of time in my office here
in my store, Quiz Daddy's Closet,
my vintage clothing shop.
I'm hosting a podcast.
I'm hosting livestreams of the show I created
called Wild Cards.
Tutu and I are gonna open that box,
finding his rookie card in here.
And I have guests join me,
athletes and--
So let's go here, Tutu.
This is going out to, uh, Christian.
Fresh from the pack to Tutu's hands.
How cool is that?
Yeah, I get people coming in here,
"Oh, my gosh, it's the HQ guy."
And I say, "Yeah that's me.
It'd better be me. I'm wearing his underwear."
Classic line. The late great Alex Trebek
had his estate sale last week. I went.
The whole situation is is somewhat absurd.
You know, you're doing this thing,
it becomes super popular,
you're recognized everywhere,
you're winning awards,
you're in magazines,
and all that, and then
it doesn't last forever,
and now you look back on it.
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
Oh, that--that actually-- that all actually happened.
♪ ♪
[frenetic music]
♪ ♪