Erik Allebest: Scaling to $100M Revenue, 150M Members and 700 People, All with No Vc Funding | E1113

Chess.com is my third chess business, which is totally absurd to say.

This is Eric Alabast, co-founder and CEO of Chess.com. He started the business in 2005. Now it does over $100 million per year in revenue. And the most impressive part? They did not raise a single dollar in venture. As a result of not raising money, did you do things differently?

I mean, I had to do it differently. Everything I saw going on in Silicon Valley was like spend, spend, spend. We did the opposite. We thought about monetizing immediately. Everybody was remote. There was no office. I think raising money feels a lot like earning money. It's a self-validation.

In the earlier years, was there a needle-moving moment?

There were a couple of moments that things took off. So one was...

Eric, I am so excited for this. Dude, I've got to hand it to you, you have the best headshot that I've ever seen, and we're gonna, we're gonna put it on social because everyone does, you know, like serious, looking into the distance, and you just smashed it. So thank you for being here, Eric. (laughs)

(laughs) Thanks for having me. I try not to take myself very seriously. I love, I love dressing up in different costumes and being weird, so, uh, thanks for, thanks for using it.

No, listen, dude. It kind of goes straight to our first point though, which is, you know, you love doing things that are slightly out there. I heard that your first entrepreneurial activity happened at nine. What was it? That's at, that's at a young age.

Yeah, I was always, like, scrappy. And I don't know, like, my dad was the same way. He was always starting stuff, doing things. I did several things at a young age. I would sell things at school. We would sell, like, you know, either candy bars or bracelets or things. I would, uh, go to where the high school kids would drink beer and leave all their cans, and I would collect them all and go recycle them. I would go door-to-door to sell stationery. I was just always hustling for something, some way to kind of, like, you know, make money and, like, do something. So yeah, it's in, like, the blood.

I have this theory that exceptional people show exceptionalism early in terms of entrepreneurial activity. (laughs) Do you agree with that in terms of the best entrepreneurs show entrepreneurialism early? I'm just intrigued.

I mean, you probably have a... You probably look at a wider sample size than I do. I, I look at myself and, you know, obviously I did start young, um, and several of the other people I know have as well. But there's also some great, you know, later-in-life entrepreneurs who kind of did something and then they had, like, a, a moment and a spark. So, um, you know, I don't, I don't know. It's a, it's a fair thesis.