Wanting to save the company, Fridriksson modified the popular analog games existing in the market such as Words with Friends and Draw Something. He tried to sell his idea in San Francisco but was met with pessimism. Fridriksson said everything was not easy. He thought he just needed to present his ideas of a quiz platform to a potential venture company and expect them to throw money onto the startup right away. But Fridriksson realized that finding the right people was the first challenge to hurdle. In fact, one venture company was willing to meet with him two months later. Fridriksson even thought about stalking his potential VC just to get his idea across.
Fridriksson’s persistence paid off. Unity technologies CEO David Helgason happened to be his compatriots. Helgason endorsed Plain Vanilla for a seed funding of $1.2 million in 2012. Helgason also convinced an affiliate of Lions Gate Entertainment to be Plain Vanilla’s partner for a trial trivia game about the Twilight series. Plain Vanilla released the game in November 2012. Today, the game has more than 2 million registered users. Plain Vanilla gained a reputation that earned the respect of some of the world’s known investors. For instance, Sequoia Capital backed the company as investor. Roelof Botha became Plain Vanilla’s new partner. QuizUp was launched in iPhones in November 2013.
With QuizUp, Plain Vanilla was able to create communities by gathering together all the people who love to play trivia games in one place. Players challenge friends and strangers in niche interests. QuizUp is addictive. It creates microcommunities where players chat, discuss ideas and compare rankings. Within just three weeks after its launching, QuizUp has attracted millions of users to become the fastest growing iPhone app in history. By the end of 2013, QuizUp was downloaded more than 5 million times.