Heat Trivia exists because one host got tired of duct-taping spreadsheets, slide decks, and overpriced services together every Tuesday night. So he built something better.
Craig Heat has been hosting bar trivia for years. Standing in front of a packed room, mic in hand, reading questions off a screen he built himself. He knows what works and what doesn't — because he's lived it every week.
The problem was everything around the hosting. Writing questions took hours. Scoring was chaos. The "platforms" that existed either cost a fortune, required proprietary hardware, or turned the whole night into a phone-tapping exercise that killed the energy in the room.
So Craig built Heat Trivia — a platform that handles all the infrastructure a host needs without getting in the way of the thing that actually matters: a room full of people having a great time together.
Every trivia platform I tried either wanted me to hand my crowd a bunch of tablets, charged me hundreds a month, or made me write all the content myself. I just needed slides that looked good, scoring that worked, and fresh questions every week. So I built it.
Craig Heat — Founder, Heat Trivia
Most trivia platforms try to put the game on everyone's phone. Every player staring at their own screen, tapping answers in silence. That's not trivia night. That's a waiting room.
Heat Trivia takes a different approach. Teams write their answers on paper. After each round, they swap sheets with the table next door and grade each other's work while the host reveals the answers on screen. People argue about spelling. They negotiate half credit. They trash-talk across the room when the scores go up on the leaderboard.
The only phone that matters is the team captain's — they scan a QR code to register and submit wagers during the final round. Everyone else keeps their phone in their pocket and stays in the moment. The tech runs in the background so the humans can be humans.
Pen-and-paper gameplay keeps the social energy alive. The digital platform handles what it's actually good at: slides on the big screen, real-time scoring on the TV and phones, printable answer sheets, and fresh content delivery every week.
Hosts tell us this is the part their regulars love most. It feels like trivia night is supposed to feel — heads up, voices loud, phones away.
Heat Trivia is a product of Ikon Marketing Group LLC, based in Richland, Washington. It's a small operation by design — lean overhead means we can keep pricing honest and put the resources where they matter: writing great trivia content, keeping the platform reliable, and supporting the hosts who use it every week.
We're not venture-funded. We don't have a sales team. Hosts find us because the product works and the price is fair. That's the way we like it.