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. colin had very clear ideas about what he wanted to create in the world. and his ambition was to reshape culture, 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. he was a total pain in the [ bleep ]
it just seemed comical, but he was just desperate to figure something out to get someone else in there other than colin. i don t think colin would be the best ceo for the company. yeah. he s going to tank hq trivia just to preserve the engineers so they can make more apps and make more software. right. and i left there thinking, okay, like, we re in trouble. yeah, 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 business school classes at hopkins. i said, i think people in the office would respect me and, you know, they already did. so i would rally everybody together and say, guys, let s save this and 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 i said, okay, you know what,
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. anything is better than rus. right? that s why at t-mobile for business. you ll save more than $1,000 versus verizon. and with price lock guarantee, we ll never raise your rate plan. so you can keep your focus on toe-turns and making sure the sauce is extra spicy. at t-mobile, there are no small businesses. that run with the champ was magical. i mean the tender chicken, the peppercorn ranch. i love my rings but i ll cherish that lunch. forever. the subway series. the greatest menu of all time. only at vanguard, you re more than just an investor you re an owner. we got this, babe. that means that your dreams are ours too. and our financial planning tools can help you reach them.
rus knows he s going to have free reign 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. you can go back to every article, every interview with rus. what s the future of hq? rus whole thing was, i want to give away a million dollars. 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. 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 awesom
different visions for the company. rus was all about blowing up hq trivia into this 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 going to build this into a massive show. if we could get millions of people to engage for 15 minutes, seven days a week, that s incredibly powerful. my understanding from colin was we need to build a platform with a number of different game shows going. we re not going to put all of our eggs 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 choose to try and build new games, but you can t really do both.