It started as a joke. The Rivera family — a sprawling Cuban-American family spread across Florida — was planning their annual reunion and the cousins wanted to settle an old argument: which branch of the family knew the most useless trivia.
The Origin
"Every reunion, our abuela would quiz us on family history, pop culture, and random facts," says Alex Rivera, 22, a marketing major at FIU. "We wanted to make it digital so everyone could play on their phones at the same time, even the aunties who live in Orlando and couldn't make it."
Alex had basic HTML knowledge from a web design class. His cousin Sofia, 19, was studying graphic design. Their older cousin Marco, 24, worked in sales and had no technical background at all. None of them were developers.
Building TriviaRumble
"Sofia found Velosyti on TikTok," Alex says. "Some guy had built a whole app in a video and it looked wild. We decided to try it for the reunion."
Marco described the concept: "A real-time multiplayer trivia game where you create a room, invite people with a code, and compete to answer questions fastest. Like Kahoot but you can add your own questions and it keeps a leaderboard."
The first version took an afternoon. Alex handled the game logic description, Sofia designed the visual style (requesting neon colors and playful animations), and Marco tested it by creating rounds of family trivia questions.
"We had the basic game working in about two hours," Sofia recalls. "Then we spent the rest of the day adding features — custom question sets, a trophy system, and a family leaderboard that persists between game sessions."
The Reunion
At the reunion, 34 family members played TriviaRumble on their phones. It was, by all accounts, the highlight of the event.
"Abuela won the family history round, obviously," Marco laughs. "But the real surprise was that everyone kept playing after the reunion. Family members would create quiz rooms on weekday evenings. It became our new family activity."
Going Viral
Two weeks after the reunion, Sofia posted a TikTok showing the app. "I just screenshared the game and showed how fun it was. Nothing special." The video got 400,000 views.
"My DMs exploded with people asking where they could play," Sofia says. Within a week, they opened TriviaRumble to the public. Users could create free rooms with up to 8 players. They added a premium tier — unlimited players and custom branding — for $4.99/month.
The Business
Three months later, TriviaRumble has 52,000 monthly active players, with engagement concentrated on weekend evenings when families and friend groups get together. The premium tier generates about $3,200/month.
"We've been adding features based on what players ask for," Alex says. "Team mode was the biggest request — where families can play as a team against other families. We built it in a day."
The cousins have no plans to raise funding or turn it into a full-time business. "It's a fun side project that makes money," Marco says. "And it brought our family closer together, which is honestly the best part."
Lessons Learned
Alex reflects: "The biggest lesson is that you don't need to be a developer to build something people love. You need to understand your users — which, in our case, was literally our family. We built what we wanted to play, and it turns out a lot of other families wanted the same thing."