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Why isn't Chess.com on the stock market?

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IanShawDulin

Chess popularity is not slowing down. Chess.com gets about 100,000 new members a day. It's a known fact that chess is booming so much that the Chess.com servers sometimes have trouble keeping up with so much traffic. Going public and having such an influx in capital would enable the site to invest in their infrastructure and be ahead of demand for years to come. So why isn't Chess.com on the stock market? Is there any indication that they will become publicly traded in the near future?

AliciadorisBiii
IanShawDulin 写道:

Chess popularity is not slowing down. Chess.com gets about 100,000 new members a day. It's a known fact that chess is booming so much that the Chess.com servers sometimes have trouble keeping up with so much traffic. Going public and having such an influx in capital would enable the site to invest in their infrastructure and be ahead of demand for years to come. So why isn't Chess.com on the stock market? Is there any indication that they will become publicly traded in the near future?

that's because chess . com is just for chess people

Martin_Stahl
IanShawDulin wrote:

Chess popularity is not slowing down. Chess.com gets about 100,000 new members a day. It's a known fact that chess is booming so much that the Chess.com servers sometimes have trouble keeping up with so much traffic. Going public and having such an influx in capital would enable the site to invest in their infrastructure and be ahead of demand for years to come. So why isn't Chess.com on the stock market? Is there any indication that they will become publicly traded in the near future?

@erik has posted before somewhere that there are no plans to ever go public.

Martin_Stahl

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/erik-from-chess-com-here-ask-me-almost-anything?page=13#comment-27520592

Hidethe_painHarold

although chess.com locks most of its features behind a paywall... To maximise profits

IanShawDulin
Hidethe_painHarold wrote:

although chess.com locks most of its features behind a paywall... To maximise profits

Which in turn enables them to deliver quality services.

Martin_Stahl
Hidethe_painHarold wrote:

although chess.com locks most of its features behind a paywall... To maximise profits

I'm sure if the site wanted to, they could modify offerings and pricing to maximize profit. The subscription pricing changed for the first time in 14 years, less than a year ago, to support continuing growth of the site.

As a private company, the site can use profits to improve services, support and sponsor other chess related things (tournaments, events, etc), and other outreach instead of funneling profits to the market investors.

marqumax
I would gladly invest in chess.com
IanShawDulin
marqumax wrote:
I would gladly invest in chess.com

Same here. My money is just sitting here, lol.

Echybrex

I love chess, but I wouldn’t put my money into it, even with the boom. This site probably isn’t on the stock market because staying private gives them way more control over where their money goes.
Being public changes things—it’s more about pleasing investors than just the core community. It’s kind of like working with a prop trading firm—when you’re private, you get to focus on optimizing strategy and making decisions that actually benefit the traders rather than catering to outside investors.

David
Echybrex wrote:

I love chess, but I wouldn’t put my money into it, even with the boom. This site probably isn’t on the stock market because staying private gives them way more control over where their money goes.

Check out Erik's interviews in https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general-chess-discussion/erik-allebest-interview-on-scaling-to-100m-revenue-150m-members-and-700-people-99989457

They accepted some investment from someone who said they were in it for the long haul and then later on said they needed to get out. And then that next person said they were in and then turned around and said they wanted to get out. What external equity people have is from dealing with that change of sentiment and Chess.com isn't going any further down that path, having been burned by it before.

Martin_Stahl
David wrote:

Check out Erik's interviews in https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general-chess-discussion/erik-allebest-interview-on-scaling-to-100m-revenue-150m-members-and-700-people-99989457

They accepted some investment from someone who said they were in it for the long haul and then later on said they needed to get out. And then that next person said they were in and then turned around and said they wanted to get out. What external equity people have is from dealing with that change of sentiment and Chess.com isn't going any further down that path, having been burned by it before.

Some of the more recent interviews mentioned that becoming public might be something for the future, though it's not actively being pursued.