Scott Rogowsky is a comic — he is aware of how to make enjoyable of himself. That’s how he ended up roaming New York Metropolis Comedian Con along with his personal picture printed out like a “Needed” poster, filming himself asking strangers, “Have you ever seen this man?”
These passersby confirmed a flicker of recognition, the tall, bearded man like somebody they’d identified in a previous life, however couldn’t fairly place.
“You look acquainted! The place do I do know you from?” somebody asks, as if Rogowsky might be a good friend of a good friend they’d met at a celebration.
“I do know your face,” one other particular person says, staring thoughtfully at the 41-year-old.
A cosplayer dressed as a Ghostbuster lastly figures it out.
“Did you used to do this recreation present on-line?” he asks. “Like, each evening?”
Rogowsky was simply poking enjoyable at himself, embracing the persona of a washed-up web sensation. “I do know my place,” he tells TechCrunch. “I’m not strolling round like all people’s supposed to know who I’m.”
Techcrunch occasion
Boston, MA
|
June 9, 2026
However seven years in the past, everybody did.
Rogowsky was as soon as the face of HQ Trivia, an app that exploded into fashionable tradition, then pale out of the public consciousness nearly as quick. Between 2017 and 2019, Rogowsky hosted the reside cell recreation present twice a day. At its peak, it drew greater than 2.4 million each day viewers every evening. It garnered 20 million lifetime downloads.
Now the comic is again with an app of his personal referred to as Savvy, which shares quite a lot of the DNA of HQ. Savvy’s first recreation, TextSavvy, is a each day reside recreation present the place gamers can earn money — solely this time, viewers are competing towards Rogowsky in a phrase puzzle recreation that’s one thing like a hybrid of The New York Occasions’ Wordle and Connections, reasonably than trivia.
“I imagine this is my calling in a bizarre method,” Rogowsky says. “I rise up there in entrance of that digicam, there’s 1000’s of individuals watching at residence — hundreds of thousands, again in the HQ days — and it simply flows.”
HQ Trivia was based by the creators of Vine — the short-video platform that predated TikTok — and have become a real cultural sensation. National news channels ran stories about workplace staff dropping every part in the center of the day to play HQ at 3 p.m. It was groundbreaking — appointment leisure in a brand new format for the streaming period — till the firm imploded in a barrage of unlucky circumstances.
One founder, Colin Kroll, died of a drug overdose; the different founder, Rus Yusupov, was a divisive chief who clashed along with his workers. He as soon as threatened a journalist that he would hearth Rogowsky if she printed an interview with Rogowsky the place he talked about liking Sweetgreen salads (Yusupov apparently didn’t need to give the fast-food chain free publicity). Most of all, HQ Trivia fell sufferer to the similar entice that dooms so many startups. The corporate had raised a $15 million funding round at a $100 million valuation, however it was — fairly actually — making a gift of cash, and it by no means developed a significant plan to monetize or construct a sustainable enterprise mannequin. The corporate finally filed for chapter in February 2020, with its demise later changing into fodder for dramatic documentaries and true-crime-adjacent podcasts dissecting how such a promising app failed so spectacularly.
This was, understandably, an actual blow for Rogowsky. However extra dangerous luck adopted. A baseball superfan, Rogowsky had left HQ Trivia in 2019 for a job internet hosting a daily MLB Network show. He felt like he lastly made it — he nonetheless lights up recalling working into Corridor of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez in the rest room. However his present was canceled when the pandemic shut down baseball. He tried a handful of occasions over the years to recreate an organization like HQ, however it was a journey of false begins.
“Loopy s–t occurred that I had no management over, and I felt like I used to be being tossed and turned on this raft in the ocean, simply getting battered by issues I can’t management, and that was type of my angle about life generally,” he says.
He thought of himself retired from present enterprise and opened a classic retailer in California. However he missed comedy.
“I went via this very significant private transformation in the final couple of years,” he mentioned. That course of culminated in a seven-day mountain retreat referred to as “the Hoffman Course of,” a program that he describes as a digital detox combining classes in psychology and neuroscience that helped him “take management of [his] life once more.”
“It gave me quite a lot of readability to say, you realize what, I’ve extra to do right here,” Rogowsky says. “I acquired out of that retreat and I used to be like, ‘I’ve one thing to say. Folks discover me humorous and entertaining. I discover myself humorous and entertaining.’”
Folks tuned into HQ Trivia for the prospect of profitable a money prize, however the odds of profitable had been slim. Thousands and thousands of viewers got here again every evening due to Rogowsky’s fast wit and attraction, which earned him a cult following of followers who nonetheless name him “Quiz Daddy.”
“From the psychological, emotional facet, I couldn’t actually course of what was going on,” Rogowsky says, reflecting on his viral fame. “And in the seven humbling years since, I’ve a vastly new perspective… I’ve my fanbase, I’ve my core followers proper right here. They’re on board with me, and it’s a matter of getting the phrase out.”
Rogowsky acquired quite a lot of messages over the years from individuals who needed to assist him construct the subsequent HQ. However final 12 months, a direct message on X from European recreation designer Johan de Jager grabbed his consideration.
“The thought was the host performs towards the viewers, so it’s like a two-way interplay,” Rogowsky says. “Think about HQ if I wasn’t simply asking the questions but additionally answering [them]… That provides one other layer to it that nobody had considered before.”
However in the age of AI, the place gamers can simply search for solutions, Rogowsky was skeptical {that a} trivia recreation might work pretty, so Savvy embraced phrase puzzles as an alternative.
Probably the most that Savvy has paid out in a single recreation is round $400 — small in contrast to HQ’s occasional six-figure prize swimming pools. That’s as a result of Rogowsky and his co-founders are funding the firm themselves.
“Look, I do know this isn’t the 1000’s of {dollars} that you simply noticed on HQ, the a whole bunch of 1000’s that we finally acquired to,” Rogowsky mentioned on one latest TextSavvy broadcast. “However the distinction is HQ was funded by enterprise capital. They’d $8 million in the financial institution to begin. They acquired one other $15 million from different enterprise capitalists. We don’t acquired that… This is a low-budge operashe as a result of I’m paying for it!”
Rogowsky says he has spoken with buyers about Savvy and even gotten some attractive provides. However enterprise backing usually comes with strain on founders to maximize returns as quick as they will, a mannequin that may set a enterprise up to fail, as HQ demonstrated.
“Folks need to 10x and 100x [their investment]… I’d be very comfortable to get to a degree of profitability, to the place we will simply continue to grow the firm, preserve hiring extra individuals, preserve making extra video games,” Rogowsky says. “I’m not searching for some sort of eight-figure, nine-figure exit. This is what I need to do. I’m going to do that so long as I proceed to get up each morning and say, ‘Goddamn, I’m excited to rise up there in entrance of that digicam and have enjoyable.’”
TextSavvy is presently working a “Season 0,” a gentle launch that enables the staff to work via technical kinks before formally launching on March 1. To this point, with out a lot promotion, TextSavvy has peaked at about 4,000 viewers in a single evening.
That’s not a lot in contrast to the HQ days. Then once more, when TechCrunch first wrote about HQ, the app solely had about 3,300 concurrent viewers. Who’s to say Savvy can’t do it once more?
“We’re not going wherever this time,” Rogowsky mentioned. “There’s nobody to hearth me. There’s no drama, there’s no rigidity. There’s not going to be a documentary about Savvy the method there was about HQ.”
Disclaimer: This article is sourced from external platforms. OverBeta has not independently verified the information. Readers are advised to verify details before relying on them.
