Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 5:48 PM PT

PopJax Gets $4.7M for Web Video Trivia

PopJax, a company devoted to games about web video, is launching tomorrow, but its web site just went up if you want to check it out now. The year-old company has raised $4.7 million from Shasta Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Selby Ventures (where it was incubated).

San Francisco-based PopJax has hired professional gameshow writers to seed 10,000 questions in categories like “Super Bowl Ads,” and “Oscars Greatest.” In the “Before They Were Famous” game I played in the company’s Facebook version, an embedded YouTube video played while I answered a multiple choice question, earning me more points if I correctly identified the future boy band member (I didn’t) in less time.

“We’re going to build out everything to be the Trivial Pursuit of the Internet age,” PopJax CEO Doug Barry told us today. “After all, they sold 90 million copies.” Barry said the company — which currently has 14 employees — won’t explore a monetization strategy until it builds its user base. For now it is just embedding publicly available video, much of it bootleg. Barry said he’s working to secure studio content deals.

Give the games a whirl and let us know what you think.

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Topic: Money & Power, Startups

Comments (4)

Do they offer cash prizes? During the initial dotcom boom, there was a company that had a weekly LiveTrivia game using their patented (I think) livematrix software. They offered, like WWTBAM, a $1M prize. I recall seeing the guy in charge on CNBC saying he was capitalized enough to keep doing that for several years. Within three months, the game stopped and they collapsed into marketing the software only.

mikecane — 8:37 AM on March 14, 2008 Reply
Right now the only prize I see offered on the site is a $250 drawing for submitting trivia questions, but I’m sure there’s more than that.

http://popjax.com/videocube/prizes.htm

Liz Gannes, NewTeeVee — 9:58 AM on March 14, 2008 Reply
This is HUGE. What a great idea. It’s totally fun. I’m playing a game and answering questions about a TV commercial – what more of a revenue model do you actually need?

Harlan Talbot — 5:38 PM on March 14, 2008 Reply
Nice site, but I’ve been playing wiseoz.com – a lot of prizes, growing community and a lot of nice people.

ReverendJim — 6:24 PM on June 21, 2008 Reply

Linkbacks (2)

[...] to build out everything to be the Trivial Pursuit of the Internet age,” PopJax CEO Doug Barry told NewTeeVee earlier today. “After all, they sold 90 million [...]

PopJax Raises a Non-Trivial $4.7M — 10:53 PM on March 12, 2008
[...] PopJax Raises $4.7 Million for Web Video Trivia NEWTEEVEE PopJax, a company devoted to games about web video, is launching tomorrow. The year-old company has raised $4.7 million from Shasta Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Selby Ventures (where it was incubated). San Francisco-based PopJax has hired professional gameshow writers to seed 10,000 questions in categories like “Super Bowl Ads,” and “Oscars Greatest.” “We’re going to build out everything to be the Trivial Pursuit of the Internet age,” PopJax CEO Doug Barry said. Source> [...]

March 17, 2008 | next media update — 11:11 AM on March 17, 2008