glitch: the rise and fall of hq trivia starts right now. see ya. it s time to meet the clock. are you tired of linear and non-interactive television. if you ve won this game, you now have a chance to answer the jackpot question. don t even know what linear non-interactive television means? you re right for $32,000. 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. that you just sit in front of like a couch potato. hello? what s this? something wrong? come on, interact with me. this is hq, baby, the trivia game show on your phone, where you answer questions to win cash. so $11.30 i was just excited to win. you re our winners, baby! so many people, they re dropping everything to play this game. we are talking about hq trivia. joining us no are the co-founders, tom crowell and russ. these guys in charge are smart. we grew up watchin
Workplace that, you know, really had not been reckoned with. and a long overdue reckoning. unfortunately, i think colin got caught up in that. colin kroll, his behavior was described as creepy at times, also egregious, according to recode, 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. 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.
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,
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, 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. you know, palm-sweating nervous. colin was so uncomfortable. he never wanted to be on camera again. we realize that we ve created a new category. rus was definitely more like,
well, good morning to you on this friday. have you ever heard of this? it s called the fidget spinner. this is the hottest new toy. 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 re able to see the future before everyone else can 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 them 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, then it just might work. i mean, who doesn t want to be a contestant on a game show? the entire job of both the startup founder and an investor is to predict the future. more and more of the video