With HQ’s bank account full, sources say Yusupov was extremely slow to make decisions, allowing HQ to stagnate.
When he learned Rogowsky had expressed his preference for salad restaurant chain Sweetgreen, Yusupov shouted “He cannot say that! We do not have a brand deal with Sweetgreen! Under no circumstances can he say that.” The next day, Yusupov falsely claimed he’d never threatened Rogowsky’s job. Please read me your story word for word,” Yusupov said. He yelled at a Daily Beast reporter after the outlet’s Taylor Lorenz interviewed Rogowsky without Yusupov’s approval, threatening to fire the host. His public behavior had already raised flags.
Yusupov failed to translate that cash into sustained growth and product innovation. The round was led by Founders Fund’s Cyan Bannister, and it valued HQ at more than $100 million. Rapid growth and an investigation by early HQ investor Jeremy Liew that found no egregious misconduct by Kroll paved the way for a $15 million investment. He’d also picked up a reputation of being creepy around female employees, as well as Vine stars, TechCrunch has learned. Co-founder Colin Kroll, who’d also started Vine with Yusupov and sold it to Twitter, had been fired from Twitter after 18 months for being a bad manager, Recode reported. Affectionately awarded nicknames like Quiz Daddy, Quiz Khalifa, Host Malone and Trap Trebek from the “HQties” who played daily, he was the de facto face of the startup. But they all lacked HQ’s secret weapon - its plucky host, comedian Scott Rogowsky. Quickly, copycats from China and Facebook entered the market. 6 overall app in the App Store, and grown to 2.38 million players by March. When TechCrunch wrote the first coverage of HQ Trivia in October 2017, it had just 3,500 concurrent players. The games felt urgent since you could only participate at designated times, fun to play against friends or strangers, and winning carried a significance no single-player or non-stop online game could match. HQ reimagined gaming and mobile entertainment with the launch of its 12-question trivia game in August 2017, where players all competed live in twice-daily shows anyone who got all the answers right split a cash jackpot. Employees petitioned to remove HQ Trivia’s CEO Rus Yusupov
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