Rus Yusupov

Yusupov began his career as a digital product designer at firms including Razorfish and R/GA, where he worked on projects including as the lead designer on the first version of Hulu.com in 2007.[2] In 2008, he founded Big Human,[1] a design and engineering studio based in New York City. Big Human's clients include Time.com, Urban Dictionary, Jetsetter, Time Warner and Fortune, among others.[3]

In June 2012, Yusupov co-founded Vine, a looping, short-form video service.[4] Vine was sold to Twitter in October 2012 for a reported $30 million,[5] shortly before the service's official launch. In 2013, Vine hit number one on the App store for free downloads and become the most used video sharing application in the market at the time.[6] Yusupov left Twitter in late 2015 after Vine was deprioritized by Twitter. Yusupov later tweeted, "Don't sell your company!"[7][8]

After leaving Twitter, Yusupov co-founded Intermedia Labs, an app studio, in 2015.[9]

The first app developed by Intermedia Labs was Hype, a platform wherein users had the ability to share a variety of multimedia content into a live broadcast.[9]

Subsequent apps developed by Intermedia Labs include Bounce,[9] an app that allows users to "remix" videos, and HQ Trivia, an appointment-based trivia game that is broadcast live to mobile phones.[9]

HQ Trivia, Intermedia's most successful app to-date, was released in August 2017.[9] The game averaged 700,000-1,000,000 viewers for each broadcast.[10] HQ was available worldwide on the iOS App Store and Google Play, with live shows targeted to North American, Australian, and UK audiences.[11]

The app took the form of a live game show, played at 9 PM Eastern Time every day, and occasionally at various other times for special themed programs (focused on specific topics such as sports, music, or word-puzzles). The host of the show asked a series of (usually) twelve multiple choice questions, each with three possible answers. Those players who answered the questions correctly within the 10-second limit moved on, and the rest were eliminated. The players that correctly answered the final question split the prize money. This prize was most recently $5,000 for most games, but it had been as high as $400,000 on one occasion.[12]

According to a 2017 Daily Beast article, Yusupov threatened to fire HQ host Scott Rogowsky if the website chose to run a profile on Rogowsky's rise to fame via HQ.[13] Yusupov later claimed the accusations were false. HQ shut down on February 14, 2020 after its primary investors had stopped funding the company and a potential sale of HQ to an "established business" fell through.[14] Six weeks later, on March 29, 2020, Yusupov tweeted that HQ Trivia was returning that evening.[15]