 What percentage did luck play in you getting here? I took the MTA, so it was all luck that I came here in one piece. Ras Yusupov, co-founder of HQ. You ready to answer some questions? Let's do this. How'd you come up with the idea? HQ came from a simple of idea, thought about live video. What if astronauts hosted a game show from space? And we've got HQ today. It felt like it just blew up virally out of nowhere. What was your launch strategy? Our launch strategy was just to put software out. We didn't have a go-to-market plan or anything like that. We gave it to some people on the internet, and we found that they were joining in every day, and it just spawned from there. And we haven't spent a dime in advertising, and it's just software growing organically, and that's what we know how to do. But I did see a Super Bowl commercial, right? We did get a Super Bowl commercial from NBC. We didn't pay a dime for it. It was part of a partnership that we did with them. Are you the first brand to get a free commercial in the Super Bowl? I don't know if, you know, networks or the brands would ever put that out there, but it was reported that we got it for free. Was that not a good question? No, yeah, it's like that. When you kind of, can I take one from the sack? Can I take one from the sack? Sure, sure, sure. Here, so pick one. All right, we'll do like a magic trick. Pick one. Whose career do you model your own after? Okay, I look up to the great entrepreneurs of our time. This is a controversial response, but I think Mark Zuckerberg has done an incredible job in building a great platform and navigating really difficult issues surrounding his company. I am an Elon Musk fanboy. I love what Meg Whitman has done for her career and going through big corporations and now working with Katzenberg on Quibi. If you could start all over again, what would you do differently? We released a lot very quickly, so ship less and with more focus. What percentage did luck play in you getting here? I took the MTA, so it was all luck that I came here in one piece. How do you regain that peak moment and do you need to regain that moment? We saw a lot of early adopters join HQ and they've since churned out and what we're proud of is that we're able to maintain this core community and core player base that engages by the hundreds of thousands every day. What specific element of marketing is your strength? I think product marketing is something that we do really well and it's gotten us this far. If you had one marketing dollar to spend, where would you spend it? Well, some of the best ads that I see for HQ out there are by people that post videos of themselves winning and they do that for free. So I guess I'd give them a dollar. What do you love about yourself? Everything. What's the biggest challenge you have at the moment? The biggest challenge at the moment is really trying to appeal to our diverse audiences. We've got eight-year-olds playing and we've got eight-year-olds playing. So how do you build a brand that speaks to everyone but also stands for knowledge and fun and interactivity? What part of the business surprised you the most? I think how quickly HQ grew and blew up, that was really surprising and the community that formed around it. How has the marketplace changed since you launched? We've seen countless competitors pop up after HQ's success. Facebook launched a copycat. They've since shut it down and the big networks have tried to do what we do but no one's quite done it in the way that we have. What's the best consumer feedback you've ever gotten and what's the worst? The best consumer feedback is requests for HQ to go on more times during the day. The worst feedback is no feedback. What part of the business sucks? I think dealing with software performance issues has been a struggle for us and our engineering team, they're some of the best and they're constantly working on making the app in the game more performant and more reliable. It's definitely a drag to see people struggling with something that frankly we have control over and that gets me down. What part of the brand are you most proud of? The logo design, the way the elements of live video, mobile gaming and TV production come together and above all I really love the sound design. George Lucas said that 50% of the entertainment value of a movie is the sound and I don't think it's any different from for games. We spend a lot of time on the sound design and the music. Which makes sense because so much of mobility feels like a sound off environment and so when you have it on it actually matters a lot because that game cannot be played without it, right? I guess they maybe can be. Okay, what was the investor pitch? Jeopardy for the next generation? The investor pitch was really simple. We did it over a cocktail. I told the investor, hey imagine you get a push notification and when you launch the app there's a host with a suit on and a great lighting package and he tells you I'm gonna take you on an amazing entertaining journey. Let's go and the show starts from there and I think we agreed to the deal terms over those cocktails. What's a piece of advice you live by? Never settle, never tire. I think just keep going no matter what. How will you know when you've made it? I know I've made it when I get feedback from the community that's really positive and these stories around people using our products that really show that they're bringing people together and they're just giving people a moment of relief from life. What's been your most successful brand partnership? We've done incredible partnerships with companies like Nike and Target and Warner Brothers. My favorite so far has been our partnership with Nike. We created Nike HQ Air Sneaker which I'm wearing right now that are really comfortable. It really just sparked the excitement around the community. Sneaker heads as well as HQ fans just went crazy for these sneakers and we did a game all about Nike's history and technology which really made sense for the two brands. How much different are you from your public perception? Well I'll say don't believe everything you read in the news and people that know me, they know me as a modest creative guy that loves his family and loves his work. Why is it called HQ trivia? I don't think we'll ever say what HQ stands for but it does have a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Russ Yuzapov, co-founder of HQ, thanks for being here. I'm Ian Wishingrad and we'll see you next time on I'm With The Brand.