Chess.com's competitive advantage came from a relentless focus on user experience, free access, and browser-based play, not from venture capital funding.
Allebest describes how Chess.com outcompeted early rivals by focusing on a great, free, browser-based experience rather than trying to raise capital or follow conventional startup playbooks. ✦ AI generated
Erik Allebest · No Priors · 2026-08-13 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 6:51
“How did you think about competition and like 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, you know, we wanted it to be a wonderful experience. So, we really just focused on the user experience above all. And, you know, over time, you know, that wins out.
verbatim transcript · starts at 6:51
6:37>> Yeah. >> And and how do you think about it today? Because there there are I don't know if you can say the words but there are platforms like less out there. >> Yeah. >> Amongst the many drivers of people raising a huge amount of capital. Some businesses are more capex intensive than others, but even when they're not naturally, the desire to like be the dominant player in a market, the way chess.com
7:01is, right, is um I think a common driver. >> Yeah. And I think that's fair. And I want to, you know, give the caveat that the chess, you know, the chess industry, as we call it today, didn't exist, you know, 20 years ago. It was like some some apps and like one kind of, you know, a couple of of players. There was free internet chess server fix, there
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