Scott Rogowski is a comedian and knows how to make fun of himself. So he ended up walking around New York City Comic Con with his photo printed like a “Wanted” poster and filming himself asking strangers, “Have you seen this guy?”
These passersby looked at the tall bearded man, like someone they had known in a past life, and gave a glimpse of recognition, but they couldn’t place him.
“That looks familiar! Where did you know that?” someone asked, as if Rogowski might be a friend of a friend they met at the party.
“I know your face,” said another, looking thoughtfully at the 41-year-old.
A cosplayer dressed as a Ghostbuster has finally figured it out.
“Were you doing that game show online?” he asks. “Like every night?”
Mr. Rogowski was only making fun of himself by adopting the persona of an Internet sensation. “I know my position,” he told TechCrunch. “I don’t walk around like everyone knows me.”
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But seven years ago everyone was doing it.
Rogowsky was once the face of HQ Trivia. HQ Trivia is an app that exploded into popular culture, then faded from the public consciousness almost as quickly. From 2017 to 2019, Rogowski hosted live mobile gaming shows twice a day. At its peak, it drew more than 2.4 million viewers each night. It has reached 20 million lifetime downloads.
The comedian is back with his own app called Savvy, which shares a lot of HQ’s DNA. Savvy’s first game, TextSavvy, is a daily live game show where players can win cash. Only this time, viewers will compete with Rogowsky in a word puzzle game that’s more like a cross between Wordle and Connections from The New York Times than trivia.
“Oddly enough, I believe this is my calling,” Rogowski says. “When I stand in front of that camera, there are thousands of people watching at home, compared to millions when I was at headquarters, and it just flows by.”
HQ Trivia was founded by the creators of Vine, the short video platform that predated TikTok, and became a true cultural sensation. National news channels aired articles about office workers dropping everything during the day to play at the headquarters at 3pm until the company collapses due to a series of unfortunate circumstances. This was a breakthrough — a new form of appointment entertainment in the streaming era.
One of the founders, Colin Kroll, died of a drug overdose. Another founder, Rus Yusupov, was a divisive leader who clashed with his subordinates. He once threatened a journalist with firing Rogowski if he published an interview in which Rogowski mentioned liking sweet green salad (Yusupov clearly didn’t want to give his fast-food chain free publicity). Most of all, HQ Trivia fell victim to the same trap that ruins many startups. The company raised a $15 million funding round at a $100 million valuation, but it was literally throwing money away without developing a meaningful plan to monetize or build a sustainable business model. The company ultimately filed for bankruptcy in February 2020, but its demise has since become the fodder for dramatic documentaries and true-crime podcasts dissecting how such a promising app failed so spectacularly.
Naturally, this was a big blow for Rogowski. But more bad luck followed. Rogowski, a huge baseball fan, left HQ Trivia in 2019 for a job hosting a daily show on MLB Network. He finally felt successful. I still get a kick out of remembering meeting Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez in the bathroom. But his show was canceled when baseball was canceled due to the pandemic. Over the years, he tried several times to rebuild companies like Headquarters, but it was a journey that got off to a false start.
“Crazy things happened that were out of my control, and I felt like I was being thrown on a raft at sea, being beaten down by things that were out of my control. That was kind of my attitude towards life in general,” he says.
He considered himself retired from show business and opened a vintage store in California. But he missed comedy.
“I’ve gone through this very meaningful personal change in the last few years,” he said. The process culminated in a seven-day lodge called the “Hoffman Process.” The program is a digital detox that combines lessons from psychology and neuroscience, and he explains that it “helped me take control of my emotions.” [his] Life again. ”
“This really helped me say there’s a lot more work to be done here,” Rogowski says. “I came out of that retreat thinking, ‘I have something to say. People think I’m funny and funny. I think I’m funny and funny, too.’
People turned to HQ Trivia hoping to win prizes, but the odds of winning were slim. Rogowski’s wit and charm kept millions of viewers coming back each night. Rogofsky gained a cult following, still referred to as “Quiz Dad.”
“Psychologically and emotionally, I had no idea what was going on,” Rogowski says, reflecting on his viral fame. “In the seven humbling years since then, I’ve gained a very new perspective…I have a fan base, I have a core following here. They’re supportive of me, and it’s important to get the word out.”
Over the years, Rogowski has received many messages from people wanting to help build their next headquarters. But last year, a direct message about X from European game designer Johan de Jager caught his attention.
“The idea was for the host to play to the audience, so it’s kind of a two-way interaction,” Rogowski said. “Imagine if headquarters had me answering questions as well as asking them. [them]…This adds a new layer that no one has thought of before. ”
But in the age of AI, where players can easily search for answers, Rogowski was skeptical that trivia games would work fairly. So Savy turned to word puzzles instead.
The most Savvy has paid in a single game is about $400, but that’s small compared to HQ’s occasional six-figure winnings. That’s because Rogowski and his co-founders are funding the company themselves.
“Look, we know this isn’t the thousands of dollars that we saw at headquarters, it’s not the hundreds of thousands of dollars that we ended up getting,” Rogowski said on a recent TextSavvy broadcast. “But the difference is that the headquarters was funded by venture capitalists. They had $8 million in the bank to start. They got another $15 million from other venture capitalists. We don’t know that…This is a low-budget opera. I’m paying for it!”
Rogowski said he has spoken to investors about Savvy and has received several attractive offers. But venture-backing often puts pressure on founders to maximize profits as quickly as possible, which can be a model for business failure, as HQ demonstrated.
“People want 10x, 100x. [their investment]”…I would be very happy if we could get to a profitable point where we can continue to grow the company, continue to hire more people, continue to make more games,” Rogowski said. This is what I want to do. As long as I wake up every morning and say, “Oh my God, I can’t wait to get in front of the camera and have a good time,” I’m going to keep doing this. ”
TextSavvy is currently in its soft launch, Season 0. This will allow the team to resolve any technical issues ahead of the official launch on March 1st. So far, TextSavvy has reached around 4,000 viewers per night without much promotion.
It’s nothing compared to when I was at the head office. Again, when TechCrunch first wrote about HQ, the app only had about 3,300 concurrent viewers. Who’s to say Savvy can’t do it again?
“We’re not going anywhere this time,” Rogowski said. “Nobody’s going to fire me. There’s no drama, there’s no tension. They’re not going to make a documentary about Savvy like they’re going to do about HQ.”
