I've been playing chess seriously for a few years now, and the longer I play, the more I notice parallels with how I think about growth marketing.
In chess, beginners react. They respond to threats as they appear. Strong players see patterns ahead of time and position themselves before the threat materializes. In marketing, the equivalent is proactively building your creative pipeline before fatigue hits, or scaling up before a seasonal peak rather than reacting to it.
Both chess and marketing reward patience. The impulse to do something — to make a move, to launch a campaign — is strong. But sometimes the most valuable action is to wait, observe, and not waste resources on something that doesn't improve your position.
Both fields are also fundamentally about resource allocation. In chess: tempo, space, and material. In marketing: budget, attention, and creative energy. How you allocate these limited resources determines whether you win or just stay in the game.
The last parallel is the most important: in chess, you can't just play the position in front of you — you have to think several moves ahead. In marketing, you can't just optimize for this week's ROAS — you have to think about where the customer is in their lifecycle, what the creative fatigue looks like in 30 days, and what the brand looks like at twice the current scale.