🎆 Launched: How Discord Dominated Gaming

The story of Discord is a story of platform shifts. Jason Citron started his career in game development studios creating some a few titles for Xbox and PlayStation 2 (that's how old he is 😂) that you probably never heard of. In 2008, the "app store" was just announced and Jason thought this would be the perfect time to take the entrepreneurial plu

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It’s hard to make a hit game. CEO Jason Citron tried to create a successful gaming studio twice. Both times he ended up expertly pivoting to gaming infrastructure plays. Discord is a product of one of those switch-ups. Bots give Discord defensibility. More than 3 million “bots” have been built on top of Discord’s API. Chat servers use these to mode... See more

Though the company has succeeded in securing a $15 billion valuation and earns hundreds of millions in revenue, there’s the sense that its current manifestation is perhaps only halfway to its end state. For Discord to reach its obscene potential, CEO Jason Citron ​— no stranger to pivots — may have to embrace new technologies, consider different re... See more

While Mark Zuckerberg believes he is best placed to homestead the metaverse, he may be surprised to find a thriving, indigenous species has already taken hold: Discord. More than any other business, the company is truly “metaverse native,” unwittingly built for the future. First designed for gamers — the metaverse’s pioneers — time has allowed it t... See more

Fast-forward a few years, and Discord is at the center of the gaming universe. It has more than 100 million monthly active users, in millions of communities for every game and player imaginable.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, users of all stripes have flocked to Discord, attracted by its chat features, high-quality audio and video chat, privacy, ability to facilitate direct connections, and, unlike Slack, free servers.

Discord’s revenue growth has outpaced even its user growth. From $5 million in 2016, Discord grew revenue to $130 million in 2020, good for an astonishing 126% CAGR over four years.