"If the headline of this article read: 'This company wants to help Nintendo with its mobile app,' I would be content with that," Discord CEO Jason Citron tells me.
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This startup is solving a huge problem for over 45 million video gamers, and it's growing like crazy (MSFT)
Discord is a mega-popular app with 45 million-plus video gamers relying on it to stay in touch. Here's why.
Discord CEO Jason Citron.
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Citron is joking, but he's on to something: The new Nintendo Switch console requires players to use a separate app on their phones if they want to voice chat with their teammates. It's a frustrating hurdle that's turning people off to otherwise well-received games like "Splatoon 2."
Meanwhile, Discord is a red-hot app amongst PC gamers, allowing them to chat for free with friends via text or voice no matter what they're playing. From December 2016 to May 2017, Discord went from 25 million users to 45 million, almost doubling in five short months. The company says that growth is still strong.
"When I talk to gamers, I say, 'it's like Skype for gamers," says Citron. "When I talk to [venture capitalists], 'it's like Slack for gamers.'"
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And yet, Citron says that he has different ambitions for Discord than those of Slack or Skype. Microsoft increasingly sees Skype as a social network for your closest friends and family. $5 billion startup Slack sees its popular work chat app as something like an operating system unto itself.
Discord, then, has one mission, and that's to help people play video games together. That's it. So far, it's working. Here's what makes Discord special — and why Citron says Discord could never have existed if he hadn't failed twice as a video game developer.
If I hadnt been running out of money
Before Discord, Citron was best known in the industry as the co-creator of OpenFeint, an early social network for iPhone games.
OpenFeint itself got its start as part of "Aurora Feint," an iOS game that Citron had co-developed and released in 2008. The game itself was a commercial failure, but Citron found success in licensing the OpenFeint technology to other developers.
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Optimized for gaming
For the last decade and a half, gamers in need of voice chat have either been using TeamSpeak, a voice chat program first made available in 2001 that's largely remained the same, or Microsoft's Skype.
Discord is designed to take what gamers like about those programs — notably, the ability to quickly and easily form a group and chat with them — and bring them into a more modern interface. Like WhatsApp, Slack, or Facebook Messenger, Discord is available on PC, the web, and the smartphone.
In a technical sense, Citron says that Discord has the sole focus of serving gamers. That means that the company's number-one priority is making sure that the Discord app doesn't eat up too much of your system's resources. After all, if you're using Discord in the background to chat, you're probably playing a graphics-heavy game, too.
You can see that priority made manifest in the app's little details. For instance, an animated .gif image doesn't play automatically in a Discord chat; the processing power could be better used elsewhere. Next up in the product are features like screen-sharing, but it's meant for small groups, not the huge audiences enjoyed by Amazon's Twitch.
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As for the business model, Citron says the company is still figuring it out. Earlier this year, Discord introduced Nitro, a $5/month premium service that gives users extra privileges that are mostly cosmetic. Discord is also delving into partnerships with game developers, allowing them to build Discord chat straight into their games.
The app's general snappiness has won Discord acclaim from users outside of video gaming, too, including groups of programmers. That's fine, Citron says, but the company is very happy catering specifically to gamers. In fact, the very concept of a version of the app for businesses is a running gag at the Discord offices.
"We joke sometimes," says Citron. "Maybe we'll do it for April Fools."
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