Scott Rogowsky is a comedian who knows how to make fun of himself. That is how he ended up roaming New York City Comic Con with his own photo printed out like a “Wanted” poster, filming himself asking strangers if they had seen this man. These passersby showed a flicker of recognition, looking at the tall, bearded man like someone they had known in a past life but could not quite place. One person asked where they knew him from, as though Rogowsky could be a friend of a friend they had met at a party. Another person stated they knew his face, staring thoughtfully at the forty-one-year-old. A cosplayer dressed as a Ghostbuster finally figured it out, asking if he used to do that game show online every night.
Rogowsky was just poking fun at himself, embracing the persona of a washed-up internet sensation. He acknowledges his place, stating he does not walk around like everybody is supposed to know who he is. But seven years ago, everyone did. Rogowsky was once the face of HQ Trivia, an app that exploded into popular culture and then faded out of the public consciousness almost as fast. Between 2017 and 2019, Rogowsky hosted the live mobile game show twice a day. At its peak, it drew more than 2.4 million daily viewers each night and garnered 20 million lifetime downloads.
Now the comedian is back with an app of his own called Savvy, which shares a lot of the DNA of HQ. Savvy’s first game, TextSavvy, is a daily live game show where players can earn cash. This time, viewers are competing against Rogowsky in a word puzzle game that is something like a hybrid of The New York Times’ Wordle and Connections, rather than trivia. Rogowsky says he believes this is his calling in a weird way, explaining that when he gets up in front of that camera with thousands of people watching at home, it just flows.
HQ Trivia was founded by the creators of Vine and became a genuine cultural sensation. National news channels ran stories about office workers dropping everything in the middle of the day to play HQ at 3 p.m. It was groundbreaking appointment entertainment in a new format for the streaming era, until the company imploded. One founder died of a drug overdose; the other was a divisive leader who clashed with his staff and once threatened a journalist. Most of all, HQ Trivia fell victim to the same trap that dooms so many startups. The company had raised a $15 million funding round at a $100 million valuation, but it was giving away money and never developed a meaningful plan to monetize or build a sustainable business model. The company ultimately filed for bankruptcy in February 2020.
This was a real blow for Rogowsky. More bad luck followed. A baseball superfan, Rogowsky had left HQ Trivia in 2019 for a job hosting a daily MLB Network show. He felt like he finally made it, but his show was cancelled when the pandemic shut down baseball. He tried a handful of times over the years to recreate a company like HQ, but it was a journey of false starts. He felt tossed and turned by things he could not control. He considered himself retired from show business and opened a vintage store in California, but he missed comedy.
Rogowsky went through a meaningful personal transformation in the last couple of years. That process culminated in a seven-day mountain retreat called the Hoffman Process, a program he describes as a digital detox combining lessons in psychology and neuroscience that helped him take control of his life again. It gave him the clarity to say he had more to do. He got out of that retreat knowing he had something to say and that people find him funny and entertaining.
People tuned into HQ Trivia for the prospect of winning a cash prize, but the odds of winning were slim. Millions of viewers came back each night because of Rogowsky’s quick wit and charm, which earned him a cult following of fans who still call him Quiz Daddy. Reflecting on his viral fame, Rogowsky says he could not really process what was going on at the time, but in the seven humbling years since, he has a vastly new perspective. He has his fanbase and his core followers, and it is a matter of getting the word out.
Rogowsky received many messages over the years from people who wanted to help him build the next HQ. But last year, a direct message on X from European game designer Johan de Jager grabbed his attention. The idea was that the host plays against the audience, adding a layer of two-way interaction that no one had thought of before. But in the age of AI, where players can easily look up answers, Rogowsky was skeptical that a trivia game could work fairly, so Savvy embraced word puzzles instead.
The most that Savvy has paid out in a single game is around $400, small compared to HQ’s occasional six-figure prize pools. That is because Rogowsky and his co-founders are funding the company themselves. He acknowledges it is not the thousands of dollars seen on HQ, but the difference is that HQ was funded by venture capital. They had millions in the bank to start, while Savvy is a low-budget operation because he is paying for it.
Rogowsky says he has spoken with investors about Savvy and even gotten some enticing offers. But venture backing often comes with pressure on founders to maximize returns as fast as they can, a model that can set a business up to fail, as HQ demonstrated. He would be very happy to get to a point of profitability, to where they can just keep growing the company and making more games. He is not looking for some type of eight-figure or nine-figure exit. This is what he wants to do for as long as he wakes up excited to get in front of that camera and have fun.
TextSavvy is currently running a Season 0, a soft launch that allows the team to work through technical kinks before formally launching. So far, without much promotion, TextSavvy has peaked at about 4,000 viewers in one night. That is not much compared to the HQ days. Then again, when TechCrunch first wrote about HQ, the app only had about 3,300 concurrent viewers. Who is to say Savvy cannot do it again? Rogowsky says they are not going anywhere this time. There is no one to fire him, there is no drama, there is no tension. There is not going to be a documentary about Savvy the way there was about HQ.