Founder’s Field Guide
Episode 4 Building the Third Place
Founder’s Field Guide

Episode 4: Building the Third Place

Building the Third Place

Jason is the founder and CEO of Discord, a communications network with over 100 million monthly users and communities for every topic you could imagine. We cover the evolving business model for video games, Discord's early distribution methods, and Discord's hiring philosophy.

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[00:03:17] – Lessons from his time as a video game developer

[00:07:58] – Going from game developer to game development platform

[00:12:23] – From his first startup to Discord

[00:16:33] – Expressing the hypothesis of discord

[00:20:10] – How to know what signal to build upon

[00:22:11] – Early adoption of Discord

[00:26:17] – Getting the word out about Discord in the early days

[00:30:43] – Creating more than just a platform, but creating a third place for people to congregate

[00:32:55] – The evolution and expansion of the types of communities using their platform

[00:37:27] – Discord’s business model and how it’s evolved

[00:41:32] – Enhancing communication through Nitro

[00:45:05] – Big principles for company building at Discord

[00:51:22] – His thoughts around competitive advantage for the platform

[00:52:55] – Creating a holistic experience for the users

[00:55:45] – What bothers him the most when hiring

[00:57:47] – Kindest thing anyone has done for him

Building the Third Place

Introduction

Patrick
My guest today is Jason Citron, founder and CEO ofDiscord.Discordis one of the largest and fastest growing social networks in the world. It started as a place for gamers to congregate online, but thanks to how easy it makes it to create a community of any type and its offering of text, audio, and video as means of communication, it has expanded far beyond gaming. It has the potential to become the default digital “third place” that we go to find belonging in a variety of online communities. With over 100 million users, it’s also one of the most interesting communication services since the original social networks rose to power.

Our conversation focuses on his background prior to Discord, Discord’s founding and growth, itsbusiness model and how it has evolved over the past 8 years, and what the future holds forDiscord. As we talked, I had this sense that I’d be willing to go work for Jason, and I think you’ll see why. I hope you enjoy our wide ranging conversation.

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