As an entrepreneur, there’s a stage in building any startup that isn’t glamorous. It’s the part where you’re working late nights, manually doing things that don’t scale, and piecing together solutions that you know will need to be automated down the line. Andrew Chen calls this approach “Flintstoning,” referencing the classic cartoon where characters manually powered their stone-age cars with their feet. It’s the idea of building the illusion of a fully functional, automated product while manually executing the backend processes to prove the concept works before investing in automation.
Flintstoning has been a crucial early-stage strategy for many successful startups. Reddit, for example, famously used bots pretending to be users to create the appearance of an active community, fostering engagement until real users filled in. This approach allows startups to validate hypotheses and build traction before investing in complex engineering solutions. And Chessable? We were no exception.
Interestingly, one of the earliest examples of Flintstoning may go all the way back to the 18th century with the invention of the Mechanical Turk, a so-called “chess-playing automaton.” The device amazed audiences with its ability to play chess seemingly on its own. However, the secret was that it was powered by a human chess master hidden inside, manually making every move. This elaborate deception was an early form of Flintstoning—creating the illusion of automation to captivate an audience before the technology truly existed. Fast forward to today, where we now have cutting-edge chess AIs like AlphaZero and Maia, it’s wild to think how far we’ve come from those early, manually powered “machines.”
The Early Days of Chessable: Manual, Line-by-Line Importing of Chess Books
When I first started Chessable, the vision was ambitious: to create a modern learning platform for chess players, combining cognitive science principles with the game’s intricacies. But before we could build the platform that users know today—(almost) fully automated course imports, interactive training, and seamless navigation—I had to take on the laborious, manual work behind the scenes, myself.
We didn’t have an automated system for importing PGN (Portable Game Notation) files, the standard format for chess games and moves. To bring courses onto Chessable, every file needed to be processed, parsed, and inputted manually so users could study interactively. Some of the books we wanted to turn into courses didn’t even have PGN files—they were formatted in traditional book layouts, making the process even more labor-intensive. This meant that I, along with my small team, had to input every course, move by move, annotation by annotation. Each detail of a chess game had to be painstakingly added to create the seamless experience users would expect. It was slow, repetitive, and far from efficient—but it worked. Flintstoning at its finest.
I still remember importing the now-bestseller 100 Endgames You Must Know, one move at a time. It took me weeks of monotonous, manual work. But in the end, it was all worth it, as that course became a cornerstone for our growth and propelled Chessable to new heights.
Why Flintstoning Matters
In The Cold Start Problem, Andrew Chen describes Flintstoning as a stage when startups manually perform tasks that will later be automated, to test and refine their product in real-world conditions. This approach isn’t just about proving that the technology works; it’s about proving that the idea works and that there’s demand for it. Flintstoning buys you time to understand your market, adjust your approach, and build relationships with early users, all while keeping costs down.
For Chessable, manually importing courses gave us invaluable insights into what users wanted. We quickly learned which types of courses were most engaging and which learning features were essential. By doing this grunt work ourselves, we stayed close to the product and user experience, allowing us to iterate faster and build what people truly needed.
The Shift to Automation: The Hard Part
Eventually, Flintstoning reaches its limits. The manual processes that helped you get started can’t scale, and building automation becomes not just a convenience but a necessity. At Chessable, that point came when we realized the demand for courses was growing beyond what we could manually handle. We needed to create an automated PGN import system that could do in minutes what used to take us days.
Building this system wasn’t easy. We had to design and code complex algorithms that could handle variations in PGN formats (every site and program seemed to export their PGNs with their quirks), error-check moves, and process thousands of lines of data. We invested months into development and countless hours testing and refining the system, making sure it wouldn’t just work but work well enough to maintain the quality our users had come to expect. The shift from manual to automated processes marked a significant milestone for Chessable—it meant we were moving beyond the Flintstoning stage and stepping into scalable growth, allowing for the large selection of courses you see today.
Lessons Learned from Flintstoning Chessable
- Prove the Concept: The early, manual work allowed us to validate our core idea—that people wanted a science-backed platform to learn chess effectively.
- Stay Close to Your Users: By manually inputting courses, I was deeply involved in the user experience, which made it easier to understand our community’s needs and expectations.
- Iterate Quickly: Flintstoning let us iterate without heavy development costs. We could pivot or tweak our offering based on user feedback without needing to overhaul complex systems.
- Build with an Eye on the Future: We knew from the beginning that manual processes wouldn’t scale. Flintstoning was never the end goal; it was a stepping stone to building the automated features that would become Chessable’s backbone.
Flintstoning Chessable was hard work, but it was essential for our success. Those early days of manually importing courses line by line taught me that sometimes, you have to power the car with your feet before you can build the engine. And while automation was the key to scaling, the insights gained from those initial manual efforts laid the groundwork for what Chessable has become.
So, to all the aspiring entrepreneurs out there: don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and Flintstone your startup. It’s one of the most authentic, eye-opening ways to ensure your product not only survives but thrives.
