Rus Yusupov

Co-founder, HQ Trivia & Vine

Rus Yusupov is an American product designer and entrepreneur whose businesses include Vine and HQ Trivia. Rus began his career as a digital product designer at various digital firms including Razorfish and R/GA, before founding his own design and engineering consultancy, Big Human, in 2008. Based in NYC, Big Human’s clients include Google, Facebook, TDAmeritrade, Compass, Time Warner, OKCupid, Urban Dictionary, among others. In 2012, Rus incubated Vine out of the Big Human offices and within months sold the looping, short-form video service to Twitter. Vine turned people into stars. It transformed the world of comedy, the music industry and cultivated popular memes. It was imitated by larger competitors and was the first app to launch a generation of short-form video apps. After three years of overseeing Product for Vine at Twitter, Rus teamed up with his Vine co-founder to create HQ Trivia – and almost overnight, the show began drawing millions of concurrent players, generating significant excitement around its fun, novel concept and simple design. HQ’s pioneering format and massive audience has drawn large advertisers including Nike, Warner Bros., Amazon, Wendy’s, Target, Chevrolet among others. Rus has received several industry recognitions, including a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award, Variety Magazine Breakthrough of the Year Award, UJA Lydia Vareljan Leadership Award, PGA Digital VIP Award 2014, multiple Webby Awards and an Emmy Nomination. He is a graduate of LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and The School of Visual Arts, where he earned a BFA in Design. Rus lives in New York with his wife and daughter.