Hey everyone,
It was perhaps inevitable that a trivia app, one where you could only play twice a day, wouldn’t stand the test of time. Or at least four years. On Friday, CNN reported the once-popular HQ Trivia app was laying off its 25-person staff and shutting down. It was no more. It ceased to be.
The writing’s been on the wall for quite some time, as the company exploded into the cultural zeitgeist but never managed to maintain that momentum. In fact, at 3 p.m., for a couple of months, the Adweek newsroom ground to a halt as a group of reporters and editors gathered to play along. At its peak, it was seeing millions of fans vie for big money. (Adweek staffers did not win big money.) Last Wednesday, CNN reported only about 100,000 people played.
Created in the summer of 2017 by Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov, the cofounders of the 6-second video app Vine, the company was beset with management challenges after grappling with the sudden death of Kroll in December 2018. HQ faced too many headwinds, both internally and externally.
New competition sprung up from other trivia games, as well as a bevy of streaming platforms to capture attention. According to its annual State of Mobile report, App Annie found that there were 204 billion mobile app downloads in 2019, with people spending $120 billion on in-app purchases.
HQ’s model zigged where everyone zagged, creating ‘appoint-viewing’ for an app as opposed to playing whenever. The idea was enticing, but ultimately flawed, especially when the app economy has created an on-demand world.
Perhaps its biggest misstep was in the spring of 2019 when popular host Scott Rogowsky left the company after not being able to work out a deal with Yusupov (who took over as CEO after Kroll’s death) in order to let the host juggle other projects. Layoffs followed in July and interest waned.
The company had been trying to introduce multiple games and a subscription service, but that seems all over now.
CNN reported on Friday that Yusupov said in a company-wide email "lead investors are no longer willing to fund the company, and so effective today, HQ will cease operations and move to dissolution."
On Friday Rogowsky took to Twitter, writing “HQ didn’t die of natural causes. It was poisoned with a lethal cocktail of incompetence, arrogance, short-sightedness & sociopathic delusion. Saddened to see it finally succumb; sadder still for the good & talented staff abruptly left in the lurch after being gaslit and lied to.”
As always, thanks for reading. And if you have any tips or thoughts on the newsletter or just want to say 'hello,' drop me a line. Have a great week.
Josh Sternberg
Media and Tech Editor
