History Of QuizUp
Summer, 1979
Þorsteinn B. Friðriksson sometimes anglicised as Thor Fridriksson is born in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Fall, 2004
Thor co-founds his first company in Iceland, an ISP called Hive. It became the third largest ISP in Iceland.
2008
Iceland experiences a major financial crisis. Hive merges with an SKO, another telecommunication company, taking the name Tal.
2008
Thor bounces out of that mess to go to Oxford for his MBA. Where he starts thinking of dreams bigger than a national company.
2008
He wants to build something global.
October 2010
Thor goes back to Iceland to found Plain Vanilla Games.
Fall 2011
Plain Vanilla takes its first swing in the App Store with a game called the Moogies, an interactive cartoon for toddlers.
Fall 2011
A swing and a miss.
Winter 2011
The company was broke. Though they did not declare bankruptcy. That's from a television show called The Office.
January 2012
Bills are overdue, and as Thor mulls over them at his desk in Iceland (in the depths of winter), he sketches out his latest game idea on the back of an electric bill.
January 2012
QuizUp is born!
February 2012
But no one wants to fund it in Iceland.
March 2012
So Thor buys three one-way tickets to San Francisco. He brought his two developers, Johann and Arni with him.
March 2012
Getting in front of VCs quickly wasn't easy. "I had to be creative to get in front of these VCs. It maybe even bordered on stalking. In hindsight, maybe it was a bit creepy," said Thor
Summer 2012
With a little help from BOLDstart Ventures, CrunchFund, and a group of other investors, Plain Vanilla closes a $1.2 million seed round.
Summer 2012
The company heads back to Iceland and hired out a team, and went to work building QuizUp, started with a few subject-oriented QuizUp apps based around themes.
Fall 2012
And then, the planets align, and time is on the side of Plain Vanilla Games. Yes, it is!
November 2012
Plain Vanilla forges a partnership with Lionsgate and launches a Twilight-themed version QuizUp and Thor's like, "QuizUp, you are my life now."
Winter 2012
And the kids love it.
Winter 2012
The team spends the next year building out other versions of QuizUp, like NatGeo and Basketball.
April 2013
To keep fueling the fire, the company lands a $2.4 million Series led by Greycroft Partners, Tencent, BOLDStart Ventures, and IDG Ventures.
September 2013
After following the company since its launch, Sequoia partner Roelof Botha gets beta access to QuizUp, before the final version ever lands on the App Store. He's into it.
November 2013
Finally, the company launches a unified, all-inclusive QuizUp app on the iPhone.
November 2013
Within a week, the app has over 1 million downloads.
November 2013
Within two weeks, the company is offered a bridge Series A investment from Sequoia, bringing the total Series A from $2.4 million to $4.4 million.
December 2013
And as a Christmas present, the company gets enough attention to start the media tour, with Thor makis his first TV appearance on Bloomberg. They linked QuizUp to next Words With Friends.
December 2013
And the big money comes in, with Plain Vanilla closing a $22 million Series B led by Roelof Botha and Sequoia.
February 2014
After a couple of months, QuizUp already has 10 million downloads. The team is so excited about it that they dress up and take this odd picture.
March 2014
After hitting 10 million downloads on iOS, Plain Vanilla launches QuizUp on Android OS. They have more than 10K downloads in an hour.
March 2014
Just 2 weeks after launch, QuizUp has already reached another 10 million downloads. The company is ready to upgrade and moves into a much bigger office. Still in Iceland.
April 2014
The company is now focused on localising the app for other countries, such as Germany and Spain.
September 2015
QuizUp introduces Live Chat in every topic to chat with people in the group. It also became very popular.
May 2016
QuizUp removed Live Chat as they thought it is not working as they wanted to make it more popular.
September 2015
QuizUp introduces Live Chat in every topic to chat with people in the group. It also became very popular.
May 2016
QuizUp removed Live Chat as they thought it is not working as they wanted to make it more popular.
August 2016
QuizUp was out of business and sold to GLU Mobile for $7.5 million. Palin Vanilla shuts down its operation in August 2016. The game is now operated from San Francisco.
Lol. What garbage reporting. I like how they conveniently left out 2 years of relevant info. Like the part where PV went out of business. Then they try to spin the sale to Glu like it was a good thing? Glu ruined the app, and continues to do so. They only bought PV because they were the last to invest in QuizUp, and didn't get all their money back.
ReplyDeletehttp://icelandreview.com/news/2016/08/31/plain-vanilla-closes-shop-lays-staff
Wow. You're additions are outright wrong. Live chat is irrelevant to QuizUp. It was never popular. Never was. Still isn't, and never will be. That's why they took it down in the first place. And nothing mentioning the fact PV had boosters in version 1.0 but publicly admitted they had to remove them because it was killing the apps user numbers.
ReplyDeleteYou also mention nothing about the significant transition into a social media platform with the 2.0 update. And again, nothing on the fact exchange currency in the form of gems came into Quizup when Glu first invested in the app along with the return of boosters and an extremely intrusive ad campaign that further alienated users and continued to make to number of users on the app crash from over 85million, to well below 400k active users. Also, no mention of the failed show with NBC? Come on! Once you're done with your hard on for Thor, do some research and remain objective. Don't just kiss Thor's a** and lie about live chat.