The Success Story of a 1,500 Year Old Game

How a company re-imagined a 1,500 year old game...

And bootstrapped it to $50M/year.

The story of a successful site you've never thought about:

— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023

This story:
• 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.

— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023

He wanted it to be a social site where you could:

• Share games
• Build a profile
• Add friends
• Chat on forums

But the users were clear:

They wanted to PLAY online, live.

— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023

Two existing companies had this tech, but they weren't sharing.

So Erik's team built it from scratch.

From there, they had the secret ingredient...

— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023

For $55k, they got the domain.https://t.co/mI6jHlhw2e made them the top result.

Anyone googling "chess" was funneled right to their site.

1,000s of free visitors every day.

— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023

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:

• 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

— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023

3 things you can learn from https://t.co/mI6jHlhw2e's story:

1. Invest in content.

They pay 100+ chess pros to make content & commentate matches.

Chess streaming has made huge $$$ for this site.

— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023

2. Listen to your customers.

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

— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023

3) Be ambitious with acquisitions.https://t.co/mI6jHlhw2e swings big. And hits.

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

— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023

This biz shows if you know how to make deals...

• with content creators
• with your customers
• with your competition

Then you can make $ doing anything.

— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023

Thanks for the read.

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

— Codie Sanchez (@Codie_Sanchez) April 4, 2023