Scott Rogowsky is a comedian – he knows how to make fun of himself. That's how he ended up roaming New York City Comic Con with a photo of himself printed like a wanted poster, filming himself asking strangers, “Have you seen this man?”
These passersby showed a flash of recognition, looking at the tall, bearded man as someone they knew in a previous life but couldn't quite place.
“You look familiar! Where do I know you from?” – someone asks, as if Rogowski could be a friend of a friend they met at a party.
“I know your face,” says another person, staring thoughtfully at the 41-year-old.
A cosplayer dressed as a Ghostbuster finally gets it.
“Have you played on this online game show?” he asks. – Like every night?
Rogowsky was simply making fun of himself by posing as a faded internet sensation. “I know my place,” he tells TechCrunch. “I don't walk around like everyone knows who I am.”
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But seven years ago everyone was doing it.
Rogowsky was once the face of HQ Trivia, an app that exploded into popular culture and then disappeared from public consciousness almost as quickly. From 2017 to 2019, Rogowsky hosted a live mobile game show twice daily. At its peak, it attracted over 2.4 million daily viewers each evening. It has collected 20 million downloads in its lifetime.
Now the comedian is back with his own app called Savvy, which has a lot in common with HQ's DNA. Savvy's first game TextSavvy, is a daily live game show where players can earn money—only this time, viewers compete with Rogowsky in a puzzle game that's something like a hybrid of Wordle and Connections from The New York Times, rather than trivia.
“I believe this is my calling, in a strange way,” Rogowsky says. “I stand in front of the camera, thousands of people are watching it at home – millions of people in the headquarters days – and it just flows.”
HQ Trivia was founded by the creators of Vine – the short-form video platform that preceded TikTok – and has become a true cultural sensation. National news channels he ran stories about office workers who dropped everything in the middle of the day to play switchboard at 3 p.m. It was crucial — meeting entertainment in the new format of the streaming era — until the company went under in an avalanche of unfortunate circumstances.
One of the founders, Colin Kroll, died of a drug overdose; the second founder, Rus Yusupov, was a divisive leader who clashed with his staff. He once threatened a journalist that he would fire Rogowski if he published an interview with Rogowski in which he mentioned liking Sweetgreen salads (Yusupov apparently did not want to give the fast food chain free publicity). First of all, HQ Trivia fell victim to the same trap that dooms many startups. The company raised a $15 million funding round at a $100 million valuation, but – quite literally – it was a giveaway and never developed a meaningful plan to make money or build a sustainable business model. The company eventually filed for bankruptcy in February 2020, and its failure later became a source of fuel for the company dramatic documentaries AND crime podcasts analyzing why such a promising application failed so spectacularly.
This was, understandably, a real blow to Rogowski. But then came another bad luck. Rogowsky, a huge baseball fan, left HQ Trivia in 2019 to find a job as a host MLB Network's daily programming. He felt like he had finally made it – he still perks up, remembering the time he bumped into Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez in the bathroom. However, his appearance was canceled when the pandemic shut down baseball. He tried several times over the years to recreate a headquarters-like company, but it was a journey full of false starts.
“Something crazy happened that I had no control over. I felt like I was being tossed and turned on a raft in the ocean, just being harassed by things that I had no control over. In a way, that was my approach to life in general,” he says.
He considered himself retired from show business and opened a vintage shop in California. But he missed the comedy.
“Over the last few years, I have gone through this very significant personal transformation,” he said. The process culminated in a seven-day mountain retreat called the “Hoffman Process” – a program he describes as a digital detox combining psychology and neuroscience lessons that helped him “take control of (his) life again.”
“It gave me a lot of clarity to say, you know what, I have more work to do here,” Rogowsky says. “I came out of that seclusion and thought, 'I have something to say. People find me funny and entertaining. I think I'm funny and funny. “
People turned on HQ Trivia in hopes of winning a cash prize, but the chances of winning were slim. Rogowsky's quick wit and charm kept millions of viewers coming back every night, earning him a cult following that still calls him “Quiz Daddy.”
“Psychologically and emotionally, I couldn't understand what was happening,” Rogowsky says, recalling his viral fame. “In the seven humbling years that have passed since then, I have a whole new perspective… I have a fan base, I have my core supporters here. They are on board with me and it's all about publicity.”
Over the years, Rogowski received many messages from people who wanted to help him build another headquarters. But last year, a direct message on X from European game designer Johan de Jager caught his attention.
“The idea was that the host was playing against the audience, so it was a two-way interaction,” Rogowsky says. “Imagine the headquarters if I not only asked questions but also answered them… It adds another layer that no one has thought of before.”
However, in the age of artificial intelligence where players can easily look up answers, Rogowsky was skeptical that a trivia game could work honestly, so Savvy opted for word puzzles instead.
The maximum amount Savvy has paid out in a single game is about $400 – a small amount compared to the occasional six-figure prize pools at HQ. This is because Rogowski and his co-founders finance the company themselves.
“Look, I know it's not the thousands of dollars you saw at headquarters, but the hundreds of thousands that we finally got,” Rogowsky said in a recent TextSavvy Broadcast. “But the difference is that the headquarters was financed by venture capital. They started with $8 million in the bank. They got another $15 million from other venture capitalists. We don't understand it… It's a low-budget opera because I'm paying for it!”
Rogowsky says he's talked to investors about Savvy and even received some tempting offers. But venture backing often comes with pressure on founders to maximize profits as quickly as possible, a model that can doom a company to failure, as headquarters has shown.
“People want 10x and 100x (their investment)… I would be very happy if I could get to a level of profitability where we could just continue to grow the company and hire more people and make more games,” Rogowsky says. “I'm not looking for an eight-figure, nine-figure exit. This is what I want to do. I'll do it as long as I wake up every morning and say, 'Damn, I'm excited to get in front of the camera and have fun.' “
TextSavvy is currently running “Season 0,” a programmatic launch that allows the team to iron out technical issues before its formal launch on March 1. So far, without much promotion, TextSavvy has peaked at around 4,000 viewers in a single evening.
It's not much compared to the times spent at the headquarters. On the other hand, when TechCrunch first wrote about HQ, the app only had about 3,300 concurrent viewers. Who says Savvy can't do it again?
“We're not going anywhere this time,” Rogowsky said. “There is no one to fire me. There is no drama, there is no tension. There will be no documentary about Savvy like there was with HQ.”
