Discord Was Built For Gamers And Took the World by Storm #scottsthoughts

Welcome to success story the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary the success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. The HubSpot podcast network has other great podcasts you should go check out like being boss hosted by Emily Thompson. Now with the holidays just around the corner you're probably thinking what's next for you in the new year what other shows are you going to listen to to level yourself up well on the success story podcast interview a lot of entrepreneurs and I usually dive deep into the creative aspects of building a business so if you are creative a creative business owner or you're thinking about eventually becoming one which at some point everybody kind of has to be because you have to be a little bit creative in how you build a business how you market a business now you sell your product all that does require some creativity but also for people that are hyper focused on the creative niche you may be interested in being boss hosted by Emily Thompson being boss is an exploration of not only what it means but what it takes to be a boss as a creative business owner. If you are into some of the following topics you're going to love this show project management and building systems for creatives freelancers or side hustlers opening a retail store rituals that inspire and evoke creativity and taking time off as a business owner to focus on yourself your creativity and up skilling you need to listen to being boss they cover all these topics and more you can listen to being boss on any of your favorite podcasting platforms or at HubSpot.com slash podcast network. Today I'm going to be speaking about discord platform and an app that was built for gamers by gamers which is double down on great product great user experience and grew to be one of the most popular voice communication apps for communities globally this is a business case study this is discord's growth story. It was an app that was built for gamers it took the world by storm let's bring it back let's walk through the story of discord starting from the beginning so discord started out as sort of a love letter created by gamers for gamers it's creator Jason citron being a gamer himself. I found it quite difficult to talk about strategies and communicate with his teammates using the software that was available at the time this was early 2015 so naturally wanted to create a better way for gamers to easily communicate with one another in 2015 after an unsuccessful launch of a MOBA for mobile platforms citron decided to create the perfect platform for gamers once it arrived it was nothing like what the world had ever seen before but let's talk about capitalizing on failure one of the themes in Jason's story so after launching an unsuccessful mobile MOBA game called faith forever citron company hammer and chisel incorporated which has now become discord incorporated looked at one feature of their game and saw an opportunity one of the greatest features of faith forever was its built in voice communication. The plan is team through everything out the window and focused all of their resources and energy on creating a platform that would rival the likes of teamspeak and Skype with the foundation of their unsuccessful games best feature the platform was soon to become one of the world's largest and most successful voice communication tools and softwares available second core pillar in a strategy was keeping it simple. Discord prides itself on one crucial pillar user friendliness before discord was even conceptualized the go to VoIP or voice over IP software for many people back then was either Skype team speak or mumble many people hated using these apps they were too difficult to use and to navigate many still remember the very confusing and hard to understand user interface of team speak comparing it to discord look today team speak feels like it was made explicitly to be difficult. To navigate that's how great discord is still gamers kept using these apps as these were the only available options one of those frustrated gamers at the time who wanted a proper voice chat app was none other than discord CEO and co founder himself Jason citron so citron vision to chat service that would be focused on ease of access and minimal performance impact the perfect combination for gamer. Discord's UI is one of the most user friendly interfaces out there you can literally hop onto a server click a button or two and you're good to go chat or talk with your friends wherever in the world they may be. What makes discord even better than the other apps that it replaced is that it keeps everything nice symbol and tidy by integrating a multitude of apps so that you can keep track of everything in just one window now discord started small and when we say small we mean like really really small but Jason knew that he had something that would resonate with gamer he actually recalled at one point when there was only roughly 10 users were using discord just after it's released. A world of warcraft guild and group of friends playing league of legends those small in size at the time discord was serving its intended audience and it was fulfilling its intended goal from the very beginning chat for gamers was the original motto and up to that point discord was precisely that a platform built by gamers for gamers. Discord was built and started with the sole purpose of creating a user friendly platform for gamers to communicate with each other they're same passion for creating something wonderful for everyone to use is one of the main reasons why discord became what it is today and they've kept that simplicity as they've grown. Discord at its heart is a voice communication application similar to Skype or zoom it doesn't bring anything novel when it comes to that area we've all seen and used many different voice chat applications before through the internet that have allowed us to talk and connect to their friends anywhere in the world. It makes discord stand out from the pack is how it approaches the idea of voice chats hopping on a voice call with your friend feels like you're literally going up to them and striking a conversation gone are the days of extreme formality in the form of invite links and passwords that you need to input every time you need to hop on a call. Discord's voice chat feels quick seamless and easy which is a good thing in this day and age where in time is of the essence and it's now the norm to quickly jump on a call with somebody in discord users can create and customize their own servers ranging from tiny little friend groups to communities with hundreds of thousands of members. Server owners can manage roles and permissions through an intuitive interface that makes use of different colors as a guide to make everything easier to understand and to navigate. Now after they absolutely dominated the gamer chat market they realized that there was a need for them in other categories in other groups. The bottom line is a discord was built with the purpose of creating voice communication between gamers. Discord was able to do this by constantly adapting their product to the needs of their current user base instead of staying stuck on their original goal but ultimately coming back to that core vision which was simplicity and user experience first. .