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A Brief History Of QuizUp

Jordan Crook
Summer, 1979
Thor Fridriksson is born in Reykjavik, Iceland.”
Fall, 2004
Thor cofounds his first company in Iceland, an ISP called Hive. It went on to become the third largest ISP in Iceland.”
2008
Iceland experiences a major financial crisis. Hive merges with a SKO., another telecommunications 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 is broke. (Though, they didn’t 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 in Iceland wants to fund it. “
March, 2012
So Thor, with the confidence of a man named 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, starting with a few subject-oriented QuizUp apps based around themes. “
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, and with a vision of building one centralized trivial game (powered by the stickiness of social networking), the company lands a $2.4 million Series A led by Greycroft Partners, Tencent, BOLDStart Ventures, and IDG Ventures.”
September, 2013
After following the company since 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. n”
December, 2013
And as a Christmas present, the company gets enough attention to start the media tour, with Thor making his first TV appearance on Bloomberg. They likened QuizUp to the next Words With Friends.”
December, 2013
And then 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 months, QuizUp already has 10 million downloads. “
February, 2014
The team is so excited about it that they dress up and take this odd picture. “
March, 2014
Shortly after hitting 10 million downloads on iOS, Plain Vanilla launches QuizUp on Android. They have more than 10,000 downloads in an hour. “
March, 2014
Just two weeks after launch, QuizUp has already reached another 10 million downloads.”
March, 2014
The company is ready to upgrade, and moves into a much bigger office. Still in Iceland. “
April, 2014
The company is now focused on localizing the app for other countries, such as Germany and Spain. “

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Jordan Crook

Jordan Crook was the Deputy Editor of TechCrunch.

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