How Chess.com Became the World’s Top Chess App

Albert Cheng is the Chief Growth Officer of Chess.com. Prior to joining Chess.com a year ago, Albert served as the Head of Product Growth and Monetization at both Duolingo and Grammarly, two of the world’s most successful consumer subscription businesses. Earlier in his career, Albert also held product and engineering roles at YouTube and SoFi, as well as a couple smaller startups. Outside of work, he is an avid chess player and diehard San Francisco 49ers fan.

Key Takeaways:

• Chess.com was founded in 2005 after Erik Allebest and Jay Severson acquired the domain for $55,000. The company now has >90% market share of the online chess market, with 200 million registered users, 40 to 50 million MAUs, 10 million DAUs, 1.5 million subscribers, and north of 20 million games played everyday.
• For years, Chess.com grew slowly but steadily by investing in its core product experience and underlying infrastructure to provide the best possible gameplay experience for users. This attention to detail was the foundation for its success.
• Then in 2020, the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the release of a massive hit TV show called The Queen’s Gambit led to a chess boom that drove a quadrupling in Chess.com’s daily registrations.
• Chess.com has grown almost 100% organically driven by strong SEO and ASO performance thanks to its domain, as well as a powerful word of mouth flywheel supported by online tournaments, partnerships, and strong relationships with celebrity chess players like Magnus Carlsen and Gukesh Dommaraju.
• Going forward, the company is focused on instilling a product-led growth culture rooted in high-velocity, hypothesis-driven experimentation to continuously improve key metrics like user retention and subscriber conversion, which it hopes will drive compounding long-term revenue growth.

Albert Cheng:

• Website: https://www.chess.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertcheng1/
• X: https://x.com/albertc248

Phil Carter:

• Website: https://www.philgcarter.com
• Substack: https://philgcarter.substack.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philgcarter
• X: https://x.com/philgcarter

Podcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io

Chapters

• 3:59 The origin story of Chess.com
• 7:31 How COVID and Queen’s Gambit inflected Chess.com’s growth
• 12:18 The strategies Chess.com used to lean into this chess boom
• 15:23 The acquisition channels that perform best for Chess.com
• 16:05 Why Chess.com has stayed away from paid advertising
• 20:07 Media bets Chess.com made to try to create another chess boom
• 22:35 How celebrity chess players have brought in new audiences
• 24:33 How media investments have driven business impact
• 29:29 Applying lessons from Duolingo and Grammarly to Chess.com
• 32:44 Steps to instilling a growth culture at Chess.com
• 34:08 The hit rate companies should aim for on growth experiments
• 36:49 Chess.com’s biggest A/B test wins and failures
• 39:14 The vision for what Chess.com looks like in 2030
• 41:50 Lightning round