In detail, how did Smogon get started? Plus, more questions...

I've just recently found out about this website in effort to expand my pokemon knowledge. I read the web page about the beginning of Smogon but i wanted to know more. For instance, how did the creators come up with tutorials and that this game is a lot more complex than originally thought?

Besides all of that, even though this website is free to access, how do the creators make money (if any)?

One more question (for now), how did the website grow into such a vast community?

-no, I am not a survey bot, or whatever, lol.

Competitive pokemon predates smogon by several years. This is just the site we made along the way.

The ads make a bit of money for chaos, I have no idea how much. The key to it is the fact that everyone works for free..

It just grew by being the best. Lots of people want to play pokemon competitively. They pretty much all come here.

Have a nice day.