Iceland review - 2014, Page 18

16 ICELAND REVIEW
QuizUp has been a running success since it
was published on November 7. Are you a one hit
wonder company like Rovio with Angry Birds?
“Yes and no … we want to be a one hit
company like Facebook. And we have grown
faster than they have, with three million users
after the first three weeks. And now, we have
150,000 new users per day, which means that
in two days we added as many people as the
whole population of Iceland.”
What about other platforms, the app is only
available for iPhone at the moment?
“In early 2014 we will be available on all
the three big platforms, iOS, Windows and
Android, and we are constantly improving
the game, adding new topics and questions.
Today we have more than one hundred
people writing for us and there are more
than 200,000 questions.”
The only thing I dislike about the game is that
a few questions are long. Too long.
“Some questions are long but we have
editors who are working hard to make the
questions snappy. But this can be hard; you
have long names of capitals, cars, cows and
currencies. The good things about a quiz
game like ours is that we are constantly able
to refresh the questions and add new topics
to the close to 300 we have today.”
Currently, 1,000 new apps are published every
single day, how did you succeed? “We had a
budget, a promotional budget of one million
dollars. We did not have to use it. QuizUp
became like a virus; we found out that it
spread through word of mouth—friends
showing friends—that QuizUp got down-
loaded. And the first marketing research
shows that the average user spends 40 min-
utes a day playing the game. That is more
than we expected. And people are playing
later in the day, taking a couple of questions
before going to sleep.”
The next step?
“Now the game is only in English, so the
next step is not only to put it on all three
mobile platforms, we’re going to bring more
languages. Six months ago there were only
seven of us here at our Reykjavík downtown
office whereas now we are 30, and hiring.
And for the American investors who have
put close to USD six million into the project,
it does not matter where we are located as
long as we deliver.”
Do you feel pressure from the investors, like
Sequoia Capital, which is the largest?
“Yes pressure, but only the good kind; they
care. Now companies and investors are con-
tacting us, which is a welcome change from
the two years the QuizUp platform was in
the making.”
Let’s talk about revenue, how are you going to
make money on the game, how can it be free of
charge?
“This is the million dollar question. Now
we are concentrating on, like a lot of startups,
getting a bigger user base, like Instagram. We
do not want to change the experience of
the game; to add ads. But in the future, we
could sell question carousels to companies
that want to promote their products. There
is a lot of revenue potential, but it has to be
done right.”
Back at the Iceland Review office, I looked
at my Nokia Lumina 1020 phone and started
to select the images I would use to go with
the interview. One thing was missing: there
was no QuizUp on my Windows phone.
Looking over to the next desk, I asked my
colleague if I could borrow her iPhone, just
to play one quick game. I chose my favorite
topic, Africa, and got started. It was impos-
sible to stop; I had to play just one more
game, then one more, and then one more
after that … 
INNOVATION
“In early 2014 we will be available on all the three
big platforms, iOS, Windows and Android, and
we are constantly improving the game...”