Meet our Hosts: The Trivia Games with Bar None

1. Tell me about the beginnings, where did the idea of making Trivia Games virtually start?

Bar None Games was created in summer 2020 when my Harvard Business School reunion went remote. As class president, I still wanted to find a way to connect with people, so I created a virtual version of the bar-style trivia that my friends and I love. Ninety people joined and my classmates said it was the highlight of their quarantine.

Before I knew it, they were asking me to hold dozens of events for their friends and coworkers. The people who played loved their experience recommended it to other friends, and from there, the business took off on its own. Since then, we’ve grown to a corporate team of four employees, a host team of thirteen incredible hosts, and have hosted games for 24,000+ people.

2. How would you describe your games? Who is it good for?

To facilitate team bonding, we offer two types of team-based competitions: (1) Bar None Trivia (which consists of three rounds of creative and varied team trivia, including picture and music rounds), and (2) Bar None Triathlon (which consists of three fun and engaging mini game competitions). All of our events are live-hosted by professional entertainers who make sure that all players are having a great time.

Our events are perfect for groups of all types! Many corporations use us for new employee onboarding, diversity and inclusion celebration events, employee goodbye parties, intern welcome events, and more. For corporate groups, we have hosted events for as small as four people up to almost 1,000 people. Because our events are team-based, even large groups are able to form personal connections due to the large amounts of time that are spent in smaller group settings working with a smaller team to collaborate on trivia.

We’ve held events for groups as small as 4 people up to groups of 1,000 people. Our youngest game player has been in elementary school, and our oldest is a woman who celebrated her 80th

birthday with us. We’ve also held events for attendees across all continents. We work with groups of all kinds. We have also hosted events for many personal occasions, including weddings, birthday parties, baby showers, and more.

3. How do you believe this industry will be shaped in the upcoming 3 years?

Due to the pandemic, companies globally have re-envisioned where employees need to be physically located. Research projects that in the next five years, 25% of workers will be fully remote and 50% of workers will have flexible work, where they can choose to work from home or work from the office.

Because of this, corporate team building events also look very different, where events will be held to reflect where the employee base is, meaning more and more will be fully virtual and hybrid. With our Bar None Games events, we are able to accommodate groups of all types - fully remote, fully in-person, and hybrid.

4. Tell us about the most hilarious game you’ve ever hosted! What made it so special?

We have been lucky to host a wide variety of virtual events, including virtual fundraisers that have raised tens of thousands of dollars (the largest fundraiser to date successfully raised $75,000 for the nonprofit for a one-hour event!); a corporate’s annual holiday party for hundreds of employees all over the world; and a pre-wedding virtual celebration with hundreds of the couple’s loved ones.

5. What are some of the ways in which your session is helping teams engage more?

We’ve designed our games specifically around helping teams engage more:

The team-based nature of our games enables people to spend quality time talking to and interacting with each other, rather than simply passively watch an activity. Most people say that they have gotten to know a teammate better or learned something new about their teammates.

Our content is designed to be creative and inclusive. We ask for game preferences for every booking, so we can match you up with the perfect trivia for your age group, interest areas, geographic backgrounds, and more. We have over 200+ rounds of high-quality trivia to choose from!

We offer the ability to add on extra features like icebreakers, so your team can have other structured ways of engaging with each other (and you might even learn a fun fact about your teammate!).

6. How do you go about finding new trivia questions? Tell us more about it!

We have over 200 rounds of trivia categories that cover every topic from pop culture to history to wordplay, so we’re certainly always on the hunt for new trivia topics! We write all of our content in-house and pride ourselves in making fun, inclusive and creative trivia. When designing a new trivia category, we always listen to what our customer wants in terms of interest area, and then we like to give a fun spin on it.

For example, movies are a very common area of interest, and we developed a movie round of trivia where you have to guess the movie based on a series of emojis that describe it. We also gather inspiration from current events that are happening and provide themed events to our clients if they ask for them. For example, this summer, we developed trivia that’s themed around the Olympics, and in June, we developed trivia that’s themed around Pride Month.

7. What are the three most interesting facts that you didn't know until you started doing this job?

After founding a trivia company, I’ve learned a lot of interesting facts about many niche areas... Did you know only two countries in the world have the color purple in their flag? How about that Russia has the deepest lake in the world and also the largest body of fresh water in the world (Lake Baikal)? Another unexpected fact - unlike what the Kardashians would have you believe, Christiano Ronaldo is the most followed celebrity Instagram account.

8. What advantages does a virtual platform like onsite.fun bring you?

Working with Onsite.fun makes everything completely seamless! We love that they help coordinate with the customer and that we get to reach a new set of customers with who we typically work.

9. What advantages do performing virtually bring to you? Will you ever do in-person Trivias as well?

Because we’re virtual, it means that we get to bring people together who may not usually sit together. We often have people who join our games who are on opposite sides of the nation, or indifferent corners of the world. We’ve also been able to bring people together in unique ways, such as hosting company-wide tournaments where various regions are competing against each other in a series of trivia events.

While we don’t currently have plans for our hosts to be in-person conducting trivia, we’ve hosted trivia for a lot of groups who are also fully in-person together. Our format works great for groups whether they’re fully virtual, fully in-person, or hybrid.

10. What would you like your participants to take home?

We want every participant who plays our game to feel more connected to the others with who they played the event and feel like they had an extremely fun time in the hour that they spent with us. We like to encourage laughter, energetic dance moves, and some healthy competition.