Chess.com didn't consider itself a big business until 2024 because the initial growth spurts seemed like temporary fads, but the sustained higher baseline proved the market was real and larger than expected.

9:26would actually be an industry. Um at what point was it a progressive thing? At what point did you think like oh this is actually going to be a a a big business versus um you know it's something I'm personally passionate about? Yeah, I think 2024 was when we thought this would be a big business. >> That was not that long ago. >> Not that long ago [laughter]

9:49because before before COVID and Queen's Gambit, we had like a million daily active users and we were shocked at that. And um but then when CO and Queens COVID happened, Queen's Gambit happened, some news cycles happened and we're like, "Oh, this might just be a flash in the pan like treadmills and sourdough bread and other things that people did during, you know, co um and we might just come back

10:14down to where we were." But we actually stayed really high after that, a little bit lower than our peak in 2022. >> Mhm. But then in 2023, we had another crazy wave where all these kids started playing in schools because of short form content and the Mittensbot and the cheating scandal and all these other things in 2023 and we just spiked again. And then when we came down again, we

10:39were so much higher and we maintained this baseline. And so kind of in 2024, we're like, "Oh my gosh, like this thing is actually sticking around. It's actually growing and compounding over time." Um I think this is a lot bigger than we thought it was going to be which which was you know fascinating. It's also terrifying u in some ways because you know it's always like if your

11:00business is shrinking it's scary because how do you make it grow? If your business is flat it's scary because you know how do you make it grow? If your business is going up it's scary because like how do you maintain that growth or how do you deal with it? you know, we were like literally just like, you know, we had issues with scalability across the product and the tech and all those

11:19things. And so, it's been pretty white knuckle. Um, I think for the last year, it's actually been more calm than it ever has been just because we've had the team in place and, you know, our growth is more predictable. Um, and we finally kind of gotten our hands around organizationally what it means to be a 650 person fully remote company. Um, so it's been pretty it's been pretty smooth

11:41and we're now focused on a lot of experimentation and product improvements and you know infrastructure and tech and obviously the integration of AI and what that's meaning and um so it it's been an interesting last uh 12 months for sure. >> I want to ask about two more uh businessy topics and then talk about AI in the context of chess and sort of your your reflections on that. The first