BigBrain aims to bring live mobile trivia back to glory – ProWellTech

If you ask Nik Bonaddio why he wanted to create a new trivia mobile app, his answer is simple.

“I have very few true passions in my life: I love trivia and I love sports,” said Bonaddio. “I’ve already started a sports company, so I have to start a trivia company.”

He’s not kidding about any part of the equation. Bonaddio actually won $ 100,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, with whom he founded the sports analysis company numberFire (acquired by FanDuel in 2014).

And today, after a phase of beta testing, Bonaddio starts Big brain. He also announces that the startup has raised $ 4.5 million in seed capital from FirstRound Capital, Box Group, Ludlow Ventures, Golden Ventures, and others.

Of course, you can’t mention mobile trivia without thinking about HQ Trivia, the trivia app that shut down last year after a high profile drama and spectacular final episode.

Credit: Big brain

But Bonaddio said BigBrain does things differently than Headquarters in some important ways. For starters, although there will be a handful of free games, users will have to pay to enter, with the cash rewards coming from the entry fees. (From a legal standpoint, Bonaddio said this was different from gambling because trivia is recognized as a game of skill.)

“The free-to-play model doesn’t really work for trivia,” he argued.

Also, there will be no live video with a live host – Bonaddio said it was “very, very difficult and very inexpensive from a technical point of view”. Instead, he claimed the company struck a middle ground: “We have photos, we have various interactive elements, it’s not just a simple multiple choice quiz. We try to keep it interactive. “

Easier production also means BigBrain will run 20 tests where there were only two quizzes a day at headquarters, with quizzes every 15 minutes at peak times.

Topics range from old-school hip-hop to college football to ’90s movies, and Bonaddio said different quizzes will have different pricing structures – some might be winners while others award prizes to the top 50% of the time Participants could forgive. The average quiz costs $ 2 to $ 3 to take, but prices range from free to $ 20 or even $ 50.

What kind of quiz costs so much money? As an example, Bonaddio said that when he polled potential users, he found, “There aren’t any casual Rick and Morty fans … they’re almost entirely price sensitive, and since they’ve seen every episode, they can’t Fathom a World in someone who knows more about Rick and Morty than he does. “