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Meeting the entrepreneur behind a startup you've panned isn't the most enjoyable thing. That happened to me last night when I met Brian Zisk, co-founder of Chesspark. In March, I ranked eight of the startups that presented at an SF Beta mixer. At the bottom of the list was Zisk's Chesspark. I wrote at the time:
It was a battle for the bottom with FreePledge, but Chesspark takes it for being king of niche. Looks fun but it might be better off as one of the 3000 games on Kongregate.
Zisk had seen my post but it didn't seem to bother him too much. It turns out he's a gifted entrepreneur that co-founded was an an early advisor to Gotuit, a white-label video editing startup that has raised more than $20 million from Highland Capital Partners and Atlas Venture, and ClickFacts, an anti-click fraud startup. He's also deeply involved with music and is the co-founder and technologies director of the Future of Music Coalition.
He explained to me last night that with the company's initial investment of less than $1 million, it's not a stretch to think that Chesspark can attract tens of thousands of users willing to pay about $10 per month for the best chess experience on the web. That consists of lessons, community, interaction with grand masters and other value added services. Zisk hinted at the possibility of expanding into other verticals after the company has mastered chess. While this plan has limited upside, it does provide a tidy financial return for investors. So, perhaps, Chesspark deserved a little better in my post from March.
All I can hope now is that I don't run into the founders of FreePledge anytime soon.
Tags: chesspark, sf+beta, sfbeta, kongregate, freepledge, vc, venture capital
We're thrilled that Josh has revisited his opinion, and at Chesspark's progress with over 100,000 folks signed up to our beta at this point, growing by over 1,000 new users every day. After the original review it was clear that we had not had a chance to speak personally, nor that it was known that the Chesspark team featured most of the founding Green Witch Internet Radio Team (which we sold to CMGI in early 2000) reconstituting around a new venture.
There are a few other subtleties here which Josh missed out on during our brief chat on that windy pier. As far as Gotuit Media, I was one of two people (with Harvard's William Terry Fisher) on the company's founding Board of Advisors, but the company was actually started by visionary Jim Logan. ClickFacts, Inc. was founded By Michael Caruso, Mikhail Ledvich, and others, and I'm similarly on their Board of Advisors and consulting to them. As for Chesspark, I am a partner, but Jack Moffit is the Open Source Technical Visionary who woodshedded the company before bringing it to Patrick Mahoney and then to I.
In any case, love the blog, hope to see you again soon, and keep up the good work!
Brian Zisk