BoomBust The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia
HQ Trivia, an app featuring a live quiz show created by Vine founders Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov, gained a million users within months of going live—an early-stage virality experienced by the likes of Facebook and few others. Then, its growth crashed. Boom/Bust traces the app’s rise to popularity, profiling former host Scott Rogowsky, whose earthbound, cheeseball comedy is vital to understanding what a sensation the app once was. But the podcast also tells a bigger story of the gold-rush frenzy of start-up culture: venture capital, bickering co-founders, allegations of inappropriate behavior with women , and the struggle for relevance in a marketplace with no attention span. The mantra “adapt or perish” might explain HQ Trivia’s slide into irrelevance from a technology standpoint, but Boom/Bust argues that the toxic culture within start-ups—the behaviors of overworked employees and their high-profile leaders—hasn’t evolved one bit.
Storyline
HQ Trivia, an app featuring a live quiz show created by Vine founders Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov, gained a million users within months of going live—an early-stage virality experienced by the likes of Facebook and few others. Then, its growth crashed. Boom/Bust traces the app’s rise to popularity, profiling former host Scott Rogowsky, whose earthbound, cheeseball comedy is vital to understanding what a sensation the app once was. But the podcast also tells a bigger story of the gold-rush frenzy of start-up culture: venture capital, bickering co-founders, allegations of inappropriate behavior with women, and the struggle for relevance in a marketplace with no attention span. The mantra “adapt or perish” might explain HQ Trivia’s slide into irrelevance from a technology standpoint, but Boom/Bust argues that the toxic culture within start-ups—the behaviors of overworked employees and their high-profile leaders—hasn’t evolved one bit.
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