Colin Kroll Net Worth: Sold Vine for $30M Before Founding HQ Trivia App

Colin Kroll, who was found dead in his New York apartment Sunday, had made a name for himself in the Silicon Valley, with his startups Vine and HQ Trivia valued many millions over.

New York Police Department officers found the young technology executive unconscious in his bed. According to police, they were responding to a call for a welfare check on Kroll when they found him lifeless.

The entrepreneur was pronounced dead at the scene. He was 34.

"We learned today of the passing of our friend and founder, Colin Kroll, and it's with deep sadness that we say goodbye. Our thoughts go out to his family, friends and loved ones during this incredibly difficult time,” HQ said in a statement.

Not much public information is availabe on Colin Kroll's personal wealth.

His LinkedIn profile shows that he worked as a software engineer and then an engineering manager at Yahoo! before he joined the startup space. He was chief technology officer of Jetsetter, which was later acquired by TripAdvisor in 2013.

Kroll found great success with the video-sharing application Vine, which he founded in June 2012, along with Rus Yusupov and Dom Hofmann. In just a few months, the app was acquired by Twitter for $30 million.

In 2015, the tech executive co-founded HQ Trivia, an app that allows users to play quizzes real-time. The game show app was released in August 2017.

In early 2018, as it gained popularity, with the numbers of users in the millions, the startup closed a $15 million investment round from venture capital firm Founders Fund. The company was valued at $100 million, post-money. HQ Trivia had faced trouble late last year as Silicon Valley venture capitalists demurred on funding the company over alleged bad behavior by Kroll when he was working at Vine.

While the free app faced backlash over its payout system, it found better footing by inking deals with Warner Bros. and Nike. These were aimed at further funding jackpots of the game app.

Kroll continued to work at HQ Trivia App where he was also CEO until his untimely demise.