Chess.com, every mention

How Chess.com Founder Built A $150 Million ARR Empire With Zero VC Funding | Erik Allebest | Neon Dec 27, 2024 · 54 mentions

• ▶ 0:11 Siddhartha Ahluwalia I have today with me, Eric Allbest, the founder of chess.com, the world's largest community for chess players, above a hundred million dollars in revenue, a very unusual consumer internet company because they are profitable. 3 times in the scene
• ▶ 2:06 Siddhartha Ahluwalia Uh, he's the founder of chess.com, the world's largest community for chess players. 2 times in the scene
• ▶ 8:02 Siddhartha Ahluwalia And I think the third thing, uh, was finally you landed on the chess.com. 3 times in the scene
• ▶ 9:03 Erik Allebest And so kind of while I was at business school at Stanford, um, I was working on kind of launching chess.com, but I didn't really think it was going to be a big thing. 6 times in the scene
• ▶ 14:06 Erik Allebest And then I took that 700,000 dollars and invested it all into chess.com.
• ▶ 16:38 Erik Allebest I spent money and I lost money and time on that business and went back to chess, uh, full-time in twenty-twelve. 3 times in the scene
• ▶ 22:20 Siddhartha Ahluwalia Uh, and you, you mentioned for the first five years of chess.com, you were fundraising and you were rejected because of, uh, you know, the target addressable market is, is really small. 2 times in the scene
• ▶ 30:33 Erik Allebest It might work to a certain scale, but, you know, I'm not going to be here, you know, at chess.com for the rest of my life.
• ▶ 36:44 Erik Allebest And I think a product organization, a product driven organization like chess.com is really needs to have that culture of users and deep belief in the product they're building.
• ▶ 40:07 Siddhartha Ahluwalia Hey, I already have the domain chess.com and now I'm the first place that you have to come to. 7 times in the scene
• ▶ 45:55 Erik Allebest So I'm not saying chess.com is the only one, but we do see a lot of other stories, whether it was, you know, Facebook or Uber or other, you know, DoorDash or all the other different companies, you know, where, you know, making money was… 3 times in the scene
• ▶ 50:21 Siddhartha Ahluwalia Because I assume, right, even sometime GA might have said, hey, you have built a hundred million ARR chess business. 2 times in the scene
• ▶ 56:59 Erik Allebest Um, Russian is our, our, our next language, even though chess.com is banned in Russia, we still get, I think everybody in Russia is using a VPN at this point, because the Russian government has banned so many websites and things, uh, you… 2 times in the scene
• ▶ 1:01:29 Erik Allebest You know, when I get on Reddit and see somebody flaming me as, you know, the evil CEO of chess.com 2 times in the scene
• ▶ 1:04:07 Erik Allebest And I think are, are wonderful people, um, to, to say goodbye to them from our company. 7 times in the scene
• ▶ 1:06:45 Erik Allebest I would, I would, I would hands down put our company culture up against any company. 8 times in the scene
• ▶ 1:09:39 Siddhartha Ahluwalia And, and thankfully, I believe that majority of the company is still owned by you.