Whatever Happened To ChessUp After Shark Tank?

Chess is one of the most ubiquitous games out there. It has been around for centuries, it has a skill ceiling that encourages experimentation with numerous different strategies, and, most important of all, it can be quite fun. There's just one problem — the game can be rather difficult to learn and improve at.

At least, that's the issue that Jeff Wigh and Adam Roush emphasized when they pitched their product ChessUp to the "Shark Tank" investors in Season 14, Episode 9. Sparked by a desire to lower the barrier to learning chess, Wigh and Roush, along with the rest of their company Bryght Labs, created a smart chessboard known as ChessUp. The board's unique claim to fame is that it uses colored highlights to display all the current moves that can be made throughout a match and which would be most effective. It also boasts a suite of other features like online chess matches, AI assistance handicaps, and more.

With as novel a concept as ChessUp, it's no surprise that the product and the team behind it have had an eventful journey through their appearance on "Shark Tank" and their time after the show. Here's how things have gone for Bryght Labs and ChessUp so far.

During their segment on "Shark Tank," Jeff Wigh and Adam Roush introduced the concept of ChessUp to the hosts and explained how the business had been faring thus far. Things seemed to be proceeding relatively smoothly for the company, which was valued at $6 million, thanks to a successful Kickstarter funding campaign and roughly $400,000 in annual sales. Of course, their appearance on "Shark Tank" meant that they were ready to take things to the next level.

Wigh and Roush entered "Shark Tank" seeking an investment of $300,000 into ChessUp in exchange for 5% equity of the product. However, their demonstration was not enough to convince most of the Sharks to make an offer. Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, and Kevin O'Leary all passed on investing in ChessUp — but not all hope was yet lost for Bryght Labs.

Ultimately, it was Lori Greiner who eventually ended up striking a deal with the ChessUp team. Wigh and Roush sweetened the deal by adding a 3% royalty clause for Greiner and, thus, ChessUp ended up walking away from "Shark Tank" with the financial investment its creators had sought.

As of this article's publishing, less than a year has passed since the ChessUp team made their appearance on "Shark Tank" and secured their deal with Lori Greiner. Unsurprisingly, the "Shark Tank" effect gave the business a massive boost in sales. In a March 2023 interview with Startland News, Jeff Wigh revealed that the company actually sold out of ChessUp boards in the time immediately following its appearance on the program. "The show airing was a great positive for the company because it gives exposure to the product, so that was fantastic," the Bryght Labs CEO said. "Going on 'Shark Tank' was great for the product, good for sales, and we even get the benefit of more traffic on our website every time it re-airs."

Bryght Labs also received another bit of good fortune soon after, thanks to becoming the recipient of a venture capital investment from the Missouri Technology Corporation's IDEA Fund. Suffice to say, ChessUp had a bright future ahead of it in the months after it appeared on "Shark Tank."

As of September 2023, ChessUp is still in business and shipping out smart chessboards to customers. In addition to the board itself, Bryght Labs' list of products has expanded to include several peripherals and accessories, including a board carrying bag, a branded phone stand, and a set of ChessUp-compatible smart checkers pieces. The company also ships internationally, giving ChessUp a presence in the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, and many other locations.

While its "Shark Tank" appearance and various investors have certainly helped it along, part of the continued success of ChessUp owes to its positive reception from its consumer base. The product has amassed mostly positive reviews across the board both on Bryght Labs' product website and its listings on digital storefronts like Amazon. The company also routinely offers sales, such as a back to school special discount that offers the ChessUp board for 25 percent off of its usual price.

With ChessUp still going strong, the Bryght Labs team doesn't have plans to slow things down any time soon. Per the aforementioned interview between Startland News and Jeff Wigh, the company is planning to continue to iterate on ChessUp as a product, though specifics on what those upgrades might look like haven't yet been given.

On a related note, Wigh also indicated that his team hopes to use the success and "Shark Tank"-fueled popularity of ChessUp as a springboard to launch other STEM-related products in the future. "We're very much into these assisted learning or STEM games, music, art, those kinds of markets," the CEO said. "Where do we go next? All of that's in-bounds."

The Bryght Labs founder suggested that the company may turn its attention to creating a product in the smart instrument space, helping users learn how to play in the same manner that ChessUp does. "That's the kind of stuff that we would want to investigate," he said. "We want to take that idea a little further by collecting data that can actually be processed and then returned to the user with applicable improvement steps."