East Boston friends are the minds behind popular online trivia game Movie Grid
EAST BOSTON - Inside their small East Boston apartment, two buddies from high school are at the center of an online addiction called Movie Grid.
Sam Shulman and Alex Nunan are the brains behind Movie Grid, a daily online trivia game that's exploded in popularity.
"It's a daily movie trivia game and it gives you nine grid boxes," Nunan said.
The rules are simple. You get nine guesses to fill up the nine boxes, all about movies. The more obscure movie titles, the better. The super addictive game has sucked in more than 20,000 daily users since the launch just a few months ago. But this was an idea that was never meant to go anywhere.
"We both did a coding boot camp and learned how to code. Coming out of that, the job market for software engineers, especially entry-level software, was really brutal, really competitive time, so we needed something to pass the time," Shulman said.
Out of work and looking for coding jobs, they came up with the concept for their resumes. But then, something happened.
"We were just building this on the side, we had no expectation of it growing into anything," Shulman said. "But on that first day, it was like, oh, this is really something!"
The game immediately caught on, thanks to social media, and it went from a resume filler to a full-time job.
"It's definitely crazy. I've talked to a couple of my software friends and they're all like, this doesn't happen. You have to take this and run because this is a golden egg," Nunan said.
An unexpected adventure, carving them a new path forward, fueled by all the positivity.
"The response has been super positive and we're really excited about that. It, kind of, just motivates us and keeps us going," Nunan said.
"Obviously, we came into this with zero expectations, simply just a side project for us. But now with the user base, I and Alex, we love working on it every day, we love the community of people we built," Shulman said. "So I think that there's no reason why we can't keep going, making new games, trying to come up with new ideas."
To play the game, click here.