Kriti Mehrotra
If there’s one thing absolutely nobody can deny, it’s that chess has garnered a lot of mainstream attention over the past few years and earned its standing as one of the most interesting sports. That’s even been reiterated in Netflix’s ‘Untold: Chess Mates’ while chronicling the 2022 cheating scandal between world champion Magnus Carlona and Grandmaster Hans Niemann. Amongst those to thus feature in this original is the Chief Executive Officer of the leading website about this sport, Chess.com, Erik Allebest.
Erik Allebest Has Been Greately Inspired by His Parents
Born in Southern California into a loving, supportive family, Erik Allebest always looked up to them and somehow inadvertently ended up following in their footsteps. He hails from an entrepreneurial family, with his father owning and operating several businesses while he was growing up. However, he credits his working mother for his trajectory as she taught him chess when he was just 8 years old. As per his accounts, seeing them made him develop a business acumen, too, so he became a young entrepreneur “doing everything from selling things and school to recycling cans. I was always trying to start something.”
Erik eventually graduated from high school in 1995 and enrolled at Brigham Young University to pursue a Bachelor’s in English, only to soon realize it was not the right path for him. While he earned his degree in 1999, he admittedly spent most of his time either learning about computers, engineering, and technology, or navigating the world of chess, which he really developed a passion for during his freshman year. In fact, he decided to establish a chess-teaching company while still in undergrad because it was his passion, and he knew there was an untapped market.
Erik ultimately licensed his company to another, which took his model for chess coaching and after-school chess clubs and rolled it out across the US and Canada. He subsequently launched another company called Wholesale Chess to sell chess equipment online from 1999 to 2005 before honing in on his dream of building a one-stop shop that championed his beloved sport. He soon found himself pursuing a Master of Business Administration at Stanford University with the support of his wife, where he founded the Stanford Business School Chess Club. He sadly had to shut it down 3 weeks later, as he was the sole member, but he didn’t let that affect his dreams and launched Chess.com in 2006.
Erik Allebest’s Dedication to His Company Has Taken It to New Heights
Erik was still at Stanford when he bought the Chess.com domain, with the aim of making it the most accessible way for someone to get involved with the sport. He wanted to create a platform that would enable users to learn how to play the game, to interact with one another, and then actually play online with one another to hone their skills. Since MySpace was huge at the time, his goal was to make Chess.com the MySpace of the chess world, and he definitely succeeded, even though it took some time. According to his own accounts, he was being recruited by several big organizations by this point, including Facebook and Google, but his heart lay elsewhere, so he turned down many lucrative offers.
Erik took massive risks to establish his business, and they somehow all eventually panned out, especially considering Chess.com was and remains primarily a virtual business. However, he has managed to remain humble, stating once in an interview that they had an unfair advantage from the very beginning because they owned the Chess.com domain name. “Back then, when you were on Internet Explorer or Firefox, if you put the word ‘chess’ in the browser bar and hit enter, it would put the .com on there and take you to the site. Every day, we were getting thousands of free visits.” Yet, it was the business model and what they offered that got them users and subscribers.
Chess.com was thus already doing well and making significant profits by the time 2020 rolled around, and then they skyrocketed. A combination of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, the release of Netflix’s ‘The Queen’s Gambit,’ and the rise of figures like Magnus Carlson resulted in their numbers blowing up. They were reportedly gaining at least a million new users a week, but they somehow managed not to get overwhelmed as they were able to expand and focus on what really mattered. The fact that they place special focus on anti-cheating, customer support, and IT operations for their streaming service has also not gone unnoticed by users, resulting in a stellar reputation. Therefore, under Erik’s leadership as the Chief Executive Officer, Chess.com continues to thrive.
Erik Allebest Has Managed to Find a Balance Between His Personal and Professional Experiences
Although Erik still helms Chess.com, all the while also serving as a Guest Lecturer at Stanford University Graduate School of Business and an Investor, he still manages to make time for family. He has admittedly found a great work-life balance because, as much as he loves his career as well as all that it has given him, he knows he’s doing it all for his loved ones, so they are the priority. The SEO Crawl Seed Investor (2021-Present) and Landover Investor (2022-Present) once asserted that whenever he is not working, his sole focus is on those closest to him, no matter what. He told Chess Base, “I have a work life and a personal life that are separate.”
Erik added, “I would say that my approach to life is that I try to be balanced. I am not a very balanced person at times because I just try to go hard at everything I do. It’s a bit of my personality. I think it’s my dad’s personality. I think it was his dad’s personality. It’s my son’s personality. It’s my daughter’s personality. It’s my wife’s personality. We like to drive. We like to build. We like to do things and work hard every day.” In other words, the Salt Lake City, Utah-based happily married father of two has the unwavering support and understanding of his loved ones, which makes things easier.
We should mention that Erik had met the love of his life while they were both pursuing their Bachelor’s degrees at Brigham Young University, shortly after which they married, settled down, and welcomed two children into this world. Nevertheless, even today, they make sure to eat dinner together, go for walks hand in hand, go to bed together, and just have quality time because they have learned it keeps their relationship healthy. On a more personal level, the CEO is also a fitness enthusiast, a spiritual individual, and a “philosophical person… I am a humanist. I am a believer in human greatness and potential.” Honestly, he seems perfectly content with his life, which is all that really matters in the long run.
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