Colin Kroll (May 17, 1984 – December 16, 2018) was an American entrepreneur who co-founded the video hosting service

Vine A vine is any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent (that is, climbing) stems, lianas, or runners. The word ''vine'' can also refer to such stems or runners themselves, for instance, when used in wicker work.Jackson; Benjamin; Da ...

and the trivia game app HQ Trivia.

Early life and education

Kroll was born in

Rye, New York Rye is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States, within the New York metropolitan area, New York City metropolitan area. It received its charter as a city in 1942, making it the most recent such charter in the state. Its area of ...

, or

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

, Michigan, the son of Alan Kroll. After his parents' divorce when he was 10, Kroll was raised in the suburbs of Detroit, graduating from Bloomfield Hills Andover High School, and then dropping out of community college to work on coding projects for local businesses. Kroll eventually returned to school, attending

Oakland University Oakland University (OU or Oakland) is a public university, public research university in Auburn Hills, Michigan, Auburn Hills and Rochester Hills, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1957 through a donation of Matilda Dodge Wilson and husband ...

where he studied computer science.

Career

Kroll worked as an engineering manager at Right Media, a subsidiary of

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

, from 2007 to 2009 and as chief technology officer at Jetsetter from 2009 to 2013. He met Rus Yusupov and Dom Hofmann while working at Jetsetter. Hofmann, Kroll and Yusupov founded the video hosting service

. Kroll worked as general manager of Vine through 2014. Vine was acquired by Twitter in 2012 (though was shut down 4 years later). After working at Twitter following the acquisition, Kroll was dismissed following "bad management" and extensive allegations of workplace sexual harassment of women. Kroll and his business partner Yusupov formed Intermedia Labs, the company behind HQ Trivia. The real-time trivia game app was launched in 2017, climbing to the top of

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

's free game app chart during the early months of 2018. Kroll and another board member forced Yusupov, who was the CEO of Intermedia Labs, out of his position and Kroll took over as CEO in September 2018.

Death

Police were called to Kroll's apartment in

SoHo, Manhattan SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall (SoHo), and ha ...

shortly after midnight on December 16, 2018, when his girlfriend became concerned after making multiple unsuccessful attempts to contact him by phone throughout the previous day. Kroll was found dead in his bedroom of a

drug overdose A drug overdose (overdose or OD) is the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities much greater than are recommended. Retrieved on September 20, 2014.

. Drugs found in his system include

fentanyl Fentanyl is a highly potent synthetic piperidine opioid primarily used as an analgesic (pain medication). It is 30 to 50 times more Potency (pharmacology), potent than heroin and 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. Its primary Medici ...

, 4-Fluoroisobutyrfentanyl,

heroin Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a morphinan opioid substance synthesized from the Opium, dried latex of the Papaver somniferum, opium poppy; it is mainly used as a recreational drug for its eupho ...

and

cocaine Cocaine is a tropane alkaloid and central nervous system stimulant, derived primarily from the leaves of two South American coca plants, ''Erythroxylum coca'' and ''Erythroxylum novogranatense, E. novogranatense'', which are cultivated a ...

, the

New York City medical examiner The Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York (OCME) is a department within the city government that investigates cases of persons who die within New York City from criminal violence; by casualty or by suicide; suddenly, when in ap ...

said, ultimately determining Kroll's cause of death to be "accidental overdose by fentanyl-laced heroin."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kroll, Colin 1984 births 2018 deaths 21st-century American businesspeople Accidental deaths in New York (state) American technology company founders Businesspeople from Michigan Businesspeople from New York (state) Businesspeople from New York City Deaths by heroin overdose in New York (state) Drug-related deaths in New York City Oakland University alumni People from Rye, New York People from SoHo, Manhattan Twitter, Inc. people