“Fundamentally humans want to do human stuff. That's, you know, humans competing against other humans. It's humans making things. It's human solving problems. And there's certain areas where, you know, machines have gotten better than humans at things, but it really, in the case of chess, has pushed humans to be better and to do better in their field.”
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More from Erik Allebest
Insight
Allebest: Pure software businesses without big tech rivals can avoid venture capital
“For a pure software and content business like ours you know, and one where we didn't have like, you know, no major tech company was bearing down on us. We were able to kind of take a little bit of the slower, a slower road there which was great developed a gre…”
Erik AllebestAug 13, 2026▶ 8:45How Chess.com Became the World’s Biggest Chess Community with CEO Erik Allebest
Disclosure
Chess.com remains bootstrapped as private equity investments were entirely secondary
“Well, I'll tell you, we're still a bootstrap business because CBC came in, but they still, you know they came in and bought secondary.”
Erik AllebestAug 13, 2026▶ 14:48How Chess.com Became the World’s Biggest Chess Community with CEO Erik Allebest
Opinion
The abundance of startup advice today is a founder's curse
“I think one of the curses of being a founder today is just how much like founder advice there is out there.”
Erik AllebestAug 13, 2026▶ 35:27How Chess.com Became the World’s Biggest Chess Community with CEO Erik Allebest
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Poker players will eventually care about skill ratings as much as money
“But I think that as people get used to like, wait, I actually care about my poker rating and I treat this as like something important. I think people are gonna care about it as much as money because it's a reflection of like the value and their skill as a play…”
Erik AllebestAug 13, 2026▶ 44:34How Chess.com Became the World’s Biggest Chess Community with CEO Erik Allebest
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Chess.com has 10 million daily and 50 million monthly active users
“We're about ten million daily active users, about 40 or fifty million monthly active users.”
Erik AllebestAug 13, 2026▶ 2:15How Chess.com Became the World’s Biggest Chess Community with CEO Erik Allebest
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Allebest: Chess.com has over 250 million registered members
“We have more than two hundred fifty million registered members and more revenue than I thought we would end up with as a chess company.”
Erik AllebestAug 13, 2026▶ 2:26How Chess.com Became the World’s Biggest Chess Community with CEO Erik Allebest
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