In this episode of the My First Million podcast, Sam Parr and his co‑host dissect the meteoric rise and abrupt collapse of HQ Trivia, a mobile live‑trivia game that once attracted over a million concurrent players and secured $10 million in funding at a $100 million valuation. They explain the product’s core mechanics—a daily 6 PM live‑hosted quiz with cash prizes—and how its novelty, aggressive sponsorships (e.g., Nike), and viral distribution propelled rapid growth. The conversation then pivots to the internal dysfunction that killed the company: a founder’s overdose, infighting, arrogance, and a failure to manage hype. Parr extrapolates broader principles for building “hit machines,” outlining five repeatable formulas that make food products go viral (side‑dish overload, topping as main, absurd shapes, rainbow‑color twists, and mash‑ups like the Cronut). He illustrates how these formulas rely on scarcity, Instagram‑ability, and media amplification. The hosts also discuss copy‑writing tricks—using jargon that sounds technical but is meaningless—to inflate perceived value, citing experiments with sushi menu descriptions that raised prices. Finally, they brainstorm how the HQ format could be resurrected on existing platforms (Twitch/YouTube) or repurposed for education (a subscription‑based live trivia learning app) and even for a modern allowance‑automation service. Throughout, the dialogue is conversational, peppered with anecdotes, and framed as practical advice for entrepreneurs seeking to create fleeting yet lucrative viral experiences.
Chapters
Okay, what else you got?
Okay, so, uh, you have HQ. So HQ died, obviously. Yeah. Um, I thought like it could have been cool. I'm like, they could be like Jeopardy. Jeopardy is huge.
So if you don't know what HQ was, it was a mobile app. It was a game show like Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, whatever, but that was all done on a mobile app, which was— when I saw this product, some— our friend Eric, um, uh, who does Tribe Socks, he showed me this app and he was like, Dude, my friend went to go work at this company. It's really interesting. Check this out. And he pulls it up. So at 6:00 PM every day, they would do the game show. So you get a notification at 6, you open the app, there's a host, a live guy, you know, live, live game show host on, uh, live streaming. And he would ask trivia questions and you would push the button. You have 10 seconds to answer. You'd push the button real quick to answer. And if you got all 10 or 12 questions right, you'd win the prize at the end. Which at that time it was, there was 400 players. And the prize was like $500. This thing grew like crazy. They had games with over a million concurrent players.
I feel like sometimes like a million and a half.
And exactly, over a million players. And over— I believe they had over a million dollars in prize money over time. And so this thing had this run, and they got tons of funding. Founders Fund funded them, $10 million in funding at $100 million valuation. And then they had, um, big-time brands launch stuff on there. So they were like, you know, this game is sponsored by Nike, it's all trivia about athletes, and we're going to drop this shoe. The new shoe release is happening live on HQ, and that's the prize. They were doing some interesting stuff, but it was kind of a fad. And, uh, which everyone knew, which everyone knew, cuz it was like games all have this hype cycle and then this decline over time. They're not— games aren't super, super sticky, most of them. And, um, this was definitely that. So this big novelty grew like crazy, viral product. In many ways, as somebody makes products, it was very inspiring cuz it was like so simple yet so awesome.
Like, and I actually felt like there— I'm not trying to be hyperbolic, but I felt like there was some revolutionary things for sure.
It was like, oh, I'm looking at the future. This is, this is what the future looks like. I still think that's what the future looks like. HQ died for many reasons.
Um, Scott McGowan, the founders are fucking crazy.
So literally one founder died. He overdosed on drugs. Um, the other founders, they are sort of always infighting. They were both sort of like, kind of come across at least from the outside as sort of like moody artists.
Yeah.
Um, one of them I believe started Vine also.
Russ. Yeah. Yeah.
Or both of them. They were both the founders of Vine. So definitely sort of brilliant guys in a way.
Um, but the, the, everyone says that Russ is a dick.
Yeah. And the, so, and he had, he got removed as CEO because he had some problems. He was, you know, he was a dick or whatever. The other guy got removed also, never figured it out. And the, the, the game show host Scott became this kind of like cult sensation cuz he was the host. Everyone saw him every day and he tweeted out when it shut down recently, he was just like, this company died for one reason alone. And that's the sort of incompetence and arrogance of the founders. And I was like, Yeah. Damn. That is like, you don't usually hear that. Like everybody's so PC and always just worried about their career.
No, he's a comedian. He didn't give a fuck.
Yeah. He definitely did not give a fuck. Cuz, uh, that was, that was pretty brutal on the day that it shut down.
So let's say, can I tell you what I would do?
Yes.
Okay. So I would be, I, I have no idea if they did this or not. I would've built this knowing that it's gonna die. And so it's like, I, it's my thing is I'm gonna be a hit machine.
Right.
And I'm gonna use this formula. And I always thought about this with, uh, remember like Cronut?
Yeah.
Okay. You know how like these viral food things, like these food things go viral? I, I like one day sat down, I'm like, what makes them go viral? So it's, and I've like broke it down to a handful of categories, which is like, it's either a, uh, it's gotta be a food that's typically a side, but you're gonna eat it in excess. So for example, only cookie dough instead of, so ice cream that's just cookie dough.
Right. Or you make the, you make the topping the main.
Yep.
So like one formula you could use.
Yep. Another, like, or like fondue. So like fondue is typically an appetizer, fondue only.
Right.
Another thing is you take the shape of it and you make it a ridiculous shape. Yes. Easy.
Including small to big. Like there's Bob's Donuts here. Donuts as big as your head.
So you make something small, big, and big, small.
Right.
The, the fifth or fourth thing is color rainbow. Bagels. So you just take the color green ketchup.
Instagrammable. Yes.
Yes. And then I had a fifth one, which was, um, so mashups, which is Cronut, right? Oh yeah. And then, and then that was the fifth one.
You, the Doritos, uh, Locos Taco. One of the, the most successful fast food thing in like the last 10 years was this Doritos Locos Taco. And then every fast food chain hired these agencies to be like, find me the next Doritos Locos Taco.
And so those are the 5, like, categories that I discovered. And then it's like, okay, so you just make it go viral by— you have to have distribution via Thrillist, BuzzFeed, and then eventually it's like, well, you just have your own handle and then you're just gonna make these go. And then you're gonna have a small shop outside, uh, outside in Brooklyn or in Manhattan, and you're just gonna— you're always putting out bangers. Yeah, you're just gonna fucking knock it out the park and you're gonna have a line all the time. And then 3 months later, boom, that one shut down. Switch. Now we're doing cookie dough ice cream.
So every season you come out with a new one viral sensation.
Yeah, it's like, all right, now we're doing—
I love this—
we're doing rainbow cake now, or green ketchup and hot dogs. Like, you just like, you're just like, okay. And so if I was— I, I've always thought about like, man, that's the way to go. You just have a small— you just are banging these, you're just banging these out. And then for the ones that last and are hits, like Cronut might be a hit. I mean, that's kind of like its own category now. Um, then you— that's like one of your tentpole franchises, right?
It's always available.
Yeah. That's what I would do. And then so with HQ Trivia, I would have done the same thing.
So this is like Supreme for food. It's like you have this, um, limited, scarce, kind of like, uh, out there thing. What you're doing is you're making these, these sort of wild concoctions on the food side using these 5 different—
yeah, but it's all formulaic.
Yeah, following one of these 5 formulas, and then you, you do a limited edition drop. You basically say, you know, you tweet out at 1 AM, it's live, you get a huge line, people cover the fact that there's a line, and then it becomes a thing in a hipster town.
Yeah, and this is so easy, like Bagel Bites, like pizza on bagel.
So this is, back when you were doing your hot dog stand, if you knew everything you know now, but you still needed to do a hot dog stand, you would end up doing something more like this.
Like green ketchup, like that, my shtick, the ketchup would only be green.
Right.
And what I did back then was I had, uh, what I did was like, you just have a little shtick, like, um, mine was my onions. I would boil them in Coca-Cola, which a lot of people do. I would just tell everyone I did that. And so there's, this is actually a famous copywriting trick, which is Have you ever heard of, um, a time— like a watch, like a wristwatch being described as like with quartz movement?
Yes.
They all have fucking quartz movement.
Right.
They all do. All of them do. Or like space-age aluminum. They all— that's not even a thing, first of all.
Like, what's that Mad Men line? Um, it's like, our filters are rolled or something like that.
Yeah, and they're like, well, everyone's is. And they're like, well, they don't know it.
Right.
So space-age aluminum, that, that That means nothing, first of all.
All right, first of all, nonsense.
Yeah, quartz movement, every single watch has that, right? And so the idea here is you just take something that they don't know, even though all the insiders know, and you just tell them, right?
We did this experiment when we were doing the sushi restaurant where we took the descriptions of our food. So it'd be like, you know, you take a Philadelphia roll, which is like this Americanized— it's salmon, it's cream cheese, and it's cucumber. You in a sushi roll. And then we would just— so Dan Ariely was one of our advisors and he's the guy who wrote Predictably Irrational. And so he would— he told us like, hey, one of the reasons wine charges this premium is because they created a whole language around what they do. You need to create a language around sushi so that people who start to learn about it feel like they know more and they want to pay more so they can have the better thing. Just teach them what is the better thing. And so we would, you know, we started just adding words as one experiment. We would have one version of our website where it was all online ordering. So it was one version of our, of our website would be the normal website. Then our A/B test was the other variation was our Philadelphia roll would be called, like, it'd be called the Philadelphia roll. And then the description would be like, Atlantic fresh, uh, you know, never frozen salmon with, you know, Philadelph— authentic Philadelphia cream cheese and a finely sliced cucumber. And we would raise the price and we would get like more orders even despite the higher price.
That's crazy.
Yeah. And, uh, and so it was just like a, psychological thing around—
yeah, that shit works.
Yeah, around the descriptions around things. Okay, back to HQ for a second. So they did try to release other games. They came out with like a word scramble type game. I think they kind of ran out of time, and also they had built the hype too much. And lesson to be learned: when you build this much hype, if you start to fail, you death spiral way faster because the pressure of your expectations and hype will crush you.
Well, so that's what I mean is I would have built this company expecting that. Like, we discussed that Clog game, and they're like, well, they're building it, so they're gonna just capture all the value up front and then let it die, right? So if you would have built that right away, like, built that into it, it would have been— it could have been a company. Kind of like, I imagine Zynga does this, which is they just have like— they're like, all right, this game is only gonna last 80 days maybe, right?
So two quick ideas on this HQ thing. So HQ died, okay, you know, rest in peace. But two things you could do if you wanted to make, make use of this, of the insights that were found in this. I think you can do this on top of Twitch or YouTube or any live streaming platform that already has audience. So you don't need to be your own app. You should just host— create a channel that's hosting a show and give away the prize money and promote it in the same way. And so I think somebody could build this on top of one of the existing platforms, not have to build your own tech, and not have to acquire downloads of your app, which is really expensive. And I think if you just did this every day at 7 PM on Twitch, I think a bunch of people would tune in. Um, second idea, uh, around this is, um, maybe the HQ format, which is this live video streaming with this charismatic host and question and answer, could be used in education. And so I would love to see somebody create an afterschool game that parents actually pay $3 a week to subscribe to, where your kid learns science through some Bill Nye the Science Guy type of host. And it's trivia, it's interactive, and they get sort of points as they, as they answer it. I thought about starting that company, uh, but I really think that that could work. I think it might also have the sort of fade in interest, but I remember as a kid I loved Brain Quest and I played all these like learning games and they were great. And so I think this is a modern day version of that.
That's interesting. Uh, that, that is quite sticky. I think that as we get older, I mean, your kid's not old enough, so you'll, I imagine you'll learn this once she gets old enough, but these things that we use as we are kids were just huge.
Yes.
Huge. Um, I'm into that.
And you wouldn't need tens of millions of people cuz you're not advertising. You'd be on subscription cuz parents would be like, oh, I don't have to go drop my kid off at tutoring and I don't have to like learn this myself. My kid already wants to sit in front of the iPad all day. So, okay, here's an iPad game that I feel good about because you're learning. It's kind of cool cuz it's live and interactive and I could play with you and I'll pay $3 a week for that.
Do you want to hear what I've— that in that same category that, um, I'll come back with some more research, but I was just surfing around and saw it is, um, that but for allowance.
Okay, tell me more.
So, um, a friend Ramon's kid had— I was like, I was like, hey Victor, does your dad give you allowance? Like, he better be giving you some money, right? And he goes, yeah, but it's all on this app. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, well, it is automated and I get $10 a week if I do everything, and I have a list of everything I got to do, and then it just sends me this $10, but it sends it into an account, and I could use those on the, the places that he's already approved that I could spend it on. Or if he wants, I can get this debit card that only works at a handful of places.
That's a great idea. Yeah, I was like, of course, of course idea. I get mad at myself for not thinking of it.
So I'm gonna go— I haven't thought— I haven't seen their financials or any— I've done— I'm going to.
