Chess.com won by relentlessly focusing on user experience rather than competing on fundraising or spending.
Allebest explains how Chess.com defeated well-funded competitors by focusing on what players actually wanted—free, browser-based, great-feeling chess—rather than following the conventional startup playbook of heavy fundraising and customer acquisition spending. ✦ AI generated
Erik Allebest · No Priors · 2026-08-13 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 7:39
“How did you think about competition and the rate of growth you needed to have?”
We came on and we just relentlessly focused on what we wanted as players ourselves. We wanted a product that felt great. We wanted it to be free to play. We wanted to be in the browser. We wanted it to feel great, we wanted it to be a wonderful experience. So, we really just focused on the user experience above all. And over time, that wins out. Most of the others kind of fell by the wayside. Chess is like not patentable. There's thousands if not tens of thousands of chess apps in the app store and chess websites and at the end of the day really product is going to win out and community and content and so it's just really this relentless focus on creating the best possible experience.
verbatim transcript · starts at 7:39
7:21was ICC chess club. Um, those were the two major players. Uh, there was Yahoo Chess. And, you know, we came on and we just relentlessly focused on what we wanted as players ourselves. We wanted a product that felt great. We wanted it to be free to play. We wanted to be in the browser. We wanted it to feel great, you know, we wanted it to be a wonderful
7:39experience. So, we really just focused on the user experience above all. And, you know, over time, you know, that wins out. And so, you know, most of the others um kind of fell by the wayside. Obviously, Lichess exists today. They're kind of the I would say the Linux of uh you know, they exist for a really important reason. It's great for the community. It's open source. It does
8:01what it does and we coexist here and you know, we drive the growth of the game through what we do and you know, through the investments we're allowed to we we're able to make due to the fact that we do generate revenue. Um and you know, they serve a different part of it. Um the interesting thing is chess is like not patentable. There's you know thousands if not tens of thousands of
8:22chess apps in the app store and chess websites and um you know at the end of the day really product is going to win out and community and content and so it's just really this this relentless focus on creating the best possible experience. I do think there's other markets and businesses where you need to to raise money um whether to move at speed. Again, we've built this for 20
8:44years. Um, so others need to move faster or more at speed or there's more investment in certain areas or obviously if there's like hardware or inventory. Those are different types of businesses. But for a pure software and content business like ours, um, you know, a 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
9:02little bit of the slower a slower road there. Um, which was great. Uh, it developed a great culture and allowed us to, you know, not not need outside capital. So you said that part of why you were able to grow in the way you did was there were not a lot of people who believed that you know the business would be as big as it is or the industry