Discord: Jason Citron

**Guy Raz** (0:00)
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**Guy Raz** (1:18)
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Hey, really quick before we start the show, if you happen to be going to Austin for South by Southwest, I will be there. On Monday, March 14th, from 10 to 11 And I'll be talking about How I Built This, the story of the show and all the things that we're gonna be doing. So if you happen to be in Austin, March 14th, at 10 a.m. at the Austin Convention Center, I hope to see you there.

**Jason Citron** (2:04)
You know, when I started the company in 2012, the idea was eventually to build a games distribution business. And so fast forward to 2018, realizing that it wasn't gonna work and isn't what our customers wanted, it kind of was one of those moments where I was like questioning everything, like do I know what I'm doing? You know, how are we gonna build a business?
And I actually was kind of physically ill for a week because I didn't really know what to do because so much of our time and energy was leading up towards building that business.

**Guy Raz** (2:47)
Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Jason Citron gave up on building video games and instead created Discord, a social platform for gamers that eventually grew into a meeting place for more than 150 million monthly users.
When I was in middle school, we had a phone in the kitchen with a very long cord. And when a friend would call, I take the phone attached to that cord down the hall and into a closet where I could close the door for privacy.
Every now and again, my mom or dad would pick up the phone in the middle of my conversation and I would say, Mom, I'm on the phone. Now, right at the start of the pandemic, a version of this exact scenario played out, except this time, I was the one intruding on my child and he wasn't even on the phone. He was at his desk on his computer playing Minecraft wearing a headset and mic. I walked into his room, started asking him some questions when he looked at me in horror and said, Dad, I'm talking to my friends. And I could hear little voices coming out of his headset, multiple voices, and he was talking back and talking to the other characters on the screen. And on top of that, there was a window on the computer screen with a constantly updating text conversation. Oh, and music too. Spotify was playing in the background. Now, at the risk of sounding like a very old and out of touch dad, all of this was made possible by a social media platform that I'd heard of but didn't know much about, Discord. And since its launch in 2015, it's become one of the biggest social media platforms in the world. Discord was built for gamers as a way to chat and send messages and talk while playing video games together. And like Zoom and Slack, Discord grew at a massive rate during the pandemic because for millions of people, it was a way to socialize. And in our case, it kind of saved my kids during the almost two years of limited in real life social interaction. But what's most remarkable about Discord is that when it was launched in 2015, social media was dominated by Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snap. And you would have been kind of crazy to try and compete with those. But Jason Citron, the founder and creator of Discord, wasn't competing at all. Instead, he entered that crowded social media space through a side door, a door that led to gamers. He built his platform for them, designed with their needs in mind. And in return, they not only adopted Discord, they told all their friends to do the same.