HQ Trivia shuts down after acquisition falls through

Shameless plug for my new open source trivia PWA Just Trivia[0]<p>It has no ads, tracking, social integrations or monetization of any kind. It can never go out of business, it already is out of business! It&#x27;s an MVP, I just stood it up two days ago.<p>The whole app bundle is around 700k before splitting. Each 10 question uses about 7kb of additional data. No CSS frameworks, minimal 3rd party deps. Uses the awesome illustrations from undraw.co<p>I&#x27;m working on an offline mode, with the db cached and the service worker acting as back end.<p>Sorry that got long. I&#x27;m going to do a show HN soon. But check it out if you want a simple trivia game on phone or tablet. It&#x27;s a passion project, in case you can&#x27;t tell.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;justtrivia.fun" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;justtrivia.fun</a><p>Repos: Front github.com&#x2F;jeremy21212121&#x2F;trivia-frontend Back github.com&#x2F;jeremy21212121&#x2F;express-trivia-server

HQ Trivia was great at first but it got boring fast, especially when they replaced host Scott Rogowsky and did the show multiple times a day instead of every few days which created more hype. The sudden death of cofounder Colin Kroll was also a bizarre event to add to the mix.

Same thing happened to Draw Something and Words with Friends. The trick is to get the 9 figure valuation, raise as much funding as possible and then put as much in your pockets before the hype dies down.

It was a neat idea. I&#x27;d be interested to see what else people could come up with around live events you participate in via your phone. Obviously there&#x27;s generic video streaming, but the more specific something gets the more interesting the cultural impact. Remember Twitch Plays Pokémon?

This should be surprising to precisely no one. And this is nothing against HQ Trivia (although the founder seemed like a tool [1]) but any sort of format has a shelf life. Long-lasting shows like Jeopardy are outliers. The more typical case is where a given show will play for a few years, people will get bored with it and it&#x27;ll be replaced by something else.<p>That&#x27;s really all that happened here. HQ Trivia had a novelty value that eventually went away. Losing Scott probably didn&#x27;t help. Just like Alex Trebek is probably a big part of the reason for Jeopardy&#x27;s longevity, I think Scott was a big part of the reason for HQ Trivia&#x27;s popularity.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theoutline.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;2517&#x2F;is-hq-trivia-holding-its-host-hostage?zd=1&amp;zi=iduliajj" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theoutline.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;2517&#x2F;is-hq-trivia-holding-its-ho...</a>

HQ was a daily part of my life for a few months in my last year of college. It was pretty cool way to get a large group of friends together twice a day.<p>Building software to assist in answering questions and win was fun too ;)

Some of these consumer startups should be financed and built like a movie, not a company. Use off the shelf tooling, experienced staff, and expect the thing to die off in revenues over a couple of years with some residual revenues in maintenance mode.

It almost sounds like a Game of Thrones esque style episode of Silicon Valley.<p>Huge success. Co-founder dies. There was a mutiny to remove the CEO from it&#x27;s employees Layoffs and now shutdown.<p>This happened all within about a year? (Cofounder passed in December 2018)

Any write-up on their tech stack? I imagine it&#x27;s not an easy problem at the height of their popularity to scale so many live video feeds with real-time interactions.

What a quick ride. It was so popular, so quickly. There must not have been great retention? Or poor monetization?

I still believe interactivity like this is the future of TV, but the real killer app hasn’t been found yet.

Count me as one of those who slowly quit playing when Scott quit hosting. He was definitely part of the reason I tuned in to play last year for a few months. And the fact that it was nightly, and not many games seeming to happen all the time.

What are the best trivia apps nowadays? Have been looking but haven&#x27;t found anything great. Still feels like there is an unmet need. I still love Quizup though ...

This always happens with products built to focus on short-term engagement instead of driving long-term retention.

Wow totally forgot about HQ... kind of obvious why it shut down because so did everyone else.

founders could have made money if they accepted that it was a fad.

MATT AND ANNA ARE DOING FINAL BROADCAST RIGHT NOW!

I&#x27;m sure death among heroin addicts is common. It&#x27;s only a matter of time they&#x27;ll come in contact with a fentanyl laced dose.

I don&#x27;t know... when I first heard about it, it was iPhone only? I believe, and, honestly, I&#x27;m not the type to just install just any &quot;app&quot; on my cell phone. So, for me, the interest or &quot;hype&quot; was doa.