No Priors · Thursday, August 13, 2026
Erik Allebest explained that Chess.com was built without external funding, instead growing organically through revenue generated from memberships. He highlighted a strong focus on user experience as key to their success, differentiating them from competitors.
“And we pretty quickly became profitable. And then we just grew, you know, as we had revenue, we would just hire somebody new, whether it was a community manager, a developer, a systems admin, uh, you know, designer, and it just kind of grew as we had money to, you know, for it to grow.”
“We wanted a product that felt great. We wanted it to be free to play, we wanted it to be in the browser, we wanted it to feel great. You know, we wanted to be a wonderful experience. So we really just focused on the user experience above all. And, you know, over time, that wins out.”
“But for a pure software and content business like ours, um, you know, and one where we didn't have, you know, no major tech company bearing down on us, um, we were able to kind of take a little bit of the slower, a slower road there, um, which was great. It developed a great culture and allowed us to, you know, not not need outside capital.”