Scott Rogowsky is a comic – he is aware of learn how to make enjoyable of himself. That’s how he ended up roaming New York Metropolis Comedian Con together 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, wanting on the tall, bearded man like somebody they’d recognized 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 may very well be a pal of a pal they’d met at a celebration.
“I do know your face,” one other individual says, staring thoughtfully on the 41-one-year-old.
A cosplayer dressed as a Ghostbuster lastly figures it out.
“Did you used to try this sport 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 everyone’s imagined to know who I’m.”
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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 in style tradition, then pale out of the general public consciousness virtually as quick. Between 2017 and 2019, Rogowsky hosted the reside cellular sport present twice a day. At its peak, it drew greater than 2.4 million day by day viewers every evening. It garnered 20 million lifetime downloads.
Now thecomedian is again with an app of his personal known as Savvy, which shares quite a lot of the DNA of HQ. Savvy’s first sport, TextSavvy, is a day by day reside sport present the place gamers can earn money — solely this time, viewers are competing in opposition to Rogowsky in a phrase puzzle sport that’s one thing like a hybrid of The New York Occasions’ Wordle and Connections, quite than trivia.
“I consider that is my calling in a bizarre means,” Rogowsky says. “I stand up there in entrance of that digicam, there’s 1000’s of individuals watching at house – thousands and thousands, again within 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 employees dropping every thing in the course 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 corporate imploded in a barrage of unlucky circumstances.
One founder, Colin Kroll, died of a drug overdose; the opposite founder, Rus Yusupov, was a divisive chief who clashed together with his employees. He as soon as threatened a journalist that he would fireplace 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 identical lure that dooms so many startups. The corporate had raised a $15 million funding spherical at a $100 million valuation, nevertheless it was – fairly actually – gifting away cash, and it by no means developed a significant plan to monetize or construct a sustainable enterprise mannequin. The corporate in the end 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 unhealthy 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 within the toilet. However his present was cancelled when the pandemic shut down baseball. He tried a handful of occasions through the years to recreate an organization like HQ, nevertheless 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 within the ocean, simply getting battered by issues I can’t management, and that was kind 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 by this very significant private transformation within the final couple of years,” he mentioned. That course of culminated in a seven-day mountain retreat known 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, 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 have been slim. Thousands and thousands of viewers got here again every evening due to Rogowsky’s fast wit and appeal, which earned him a cult following of followers who nonetheless name him “Quiz Daddy.”
“From the psychological, emotional aspect, I couldn’t actually course of what was happening,” Rogowsky says, reflecting on his viral fame. “And within 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 obtained quite a lot of messages through the years from individuals who wished to assist him construct the following HQ. However final yr, a direct message on X from European sport designer Johan de Jager grabbed his consideration.
“The concept was the host performs in opposition to 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 earlier than.”
However within the age of AI, the place gamers can simply lookup solutions, Rogowsky was skeptical {that a} trivia sport may work pretty, so Savvy embraced phrase puzzles as an alternative.
Probably the most that Savvy has paid out in a single sport is round $400 — small in comparison with HQ’s occasional six-figure prize swimming pools. That’s as a result of Rogowsky and his co-founders are funding the corporate themselves.
“Look, I do know this isn’t the 1000’s of {dollars} that you simply noticed on HQ, the lots of of 1000’s that we ultimately acquired to,” Rogowsky mentioned on one latest TextSavvy broadcast. “However the distinction is HQ was funded by enterprise capital. They’d $8 million within the financial institution to begin. They acquired one other $15 million from different enterprise capitalists. We don’t acquired that… This can be a low-budge operashe as a result of I’m paying for it!”
Rogwosky says he has spoken with buyers about Savvy and even gotten some engaging provides. However enterprise backing usually comes with strain on founders to maximise returns as quick as they’ll, a mannequin that may set a enterprise as much as fail, as HQ demonstrated.
“Folks need to 10x and 100x [their investment]… I’d be very glad to get to some extent of profitability, to the place we will simply continue to grow the corporate, maintain hiring extra folks, maintain making extra video games,” Rogowsky says. “I’m not searching for some sort of eight-figure, nine-figure exit. That 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 stand up there in entrance of that digicam and have enjoyable.’”
TextSavvy is at present working a “Season 0,” a delicate launch that permits the workforce to work by technical kinks earlier than formally launching on March 1. To date, with out a lot promotion, TextSavvy has peaked at about 4,000 viewers in a single evening.
That’s not a lot in comparison with 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 anyplace this time,” Rogowsky mentioned. “There’s nobody to fireside me. There’s no drama, there’s no stress. There’s not going to be a documentary about Savvy the way in which there was about HQ.”
