The Success Story of a 1,500 Year Old Game
This blog tells the story of a successful business that re-imagined a 1,500 year old game and bootstrapped it to $50M/year. Learn how one man's love of chess turned into a thriving business.
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Codie Sanchez
Investing millions in boring businesses & sharing what I learn. On a mission to create 1M financially free humans | My bio, not my tombstone, I hope it changes
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How a company re-imagined a 1,500 year old game...
— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023
And bootstrapped it to $50M/year.
The story of a successful site you've never thought about: -
This story:
— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023
• Starts with one guy's love of chess.
• Ends with a co making $50M/yr.
Erik Allebest ran a chess-teaching biz & a chess retail store.
In the early '00s, he set out to make the MySpace of chess. -
He wanted it to be a social site where you could:
— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023
• Share games
• Build a profile
• Add friends
• Chat on forums
But the users were clear:
They wanted to PLAY online, live. -
Two existing companies had this tech, but they weren't sharing.
— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023
So Erik's team built it from scratch.
From there, they had the secret ingredient... -
For $55k, they got the domain.https://t.co/mI6jHlhw2e made them the top result.
— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023
Anyone googling "chess" was funneled right to their site.
1,000s of free visitors every day. -
Beyond an online monopoly on the word "chess," what got https://t.co/mI6jHlhw2e bootstrapped to $50M/year?
— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023 -
The payment model is simple:
— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023
• Early, they launched a subscription service that taught people chess
• Today, they use a freemium model with tiered subscription options and ~700k active paid users -
3 things you can learn from https://t.co/mI6jHlhw2e's story:
— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023
1. Invest in content.
They pay 100+ chess pros to make content & commentate matches.
Chess streaming has made huge $$$ for this site. -
2. Listen to your customers.
— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023
The live online playing feature (aka, the main reason people go to the site now) was suggested by early users.
Since then, the founders have been actively responive to the community:
• On reddit pages & forums
• By constantly refining the product -
3) Be ambitious with acquisitions.https://t.co/mI6jHlhw2e swings big. And hits.
— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023
They've acquired:
• A major chess news site
• Chess giant Play Magnus Group
• Komodo, which offers post-match analysis for players.
• The rights to broadcast the World Chess Championship -
This biz shows if you know how to make deals...
— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023
• with content creators
• with your customers
• with your competition
Then you can make $ doing anything. -
Thanks for the read.
— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023
Give me a follow @Codie_Sanchez if you like business stories like this one.
RT so others can find this too:https://t.co/mHJ6fZHW0X -
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— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 5, 2023
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