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Jason Citron

04/29/25

@ a16z speedrun

We initially planned to build a chat app for gaming, but we thought we could bootstrap it through a game. When the game failed, we realized we could launch the chat app directly instead.

Video

The Untold Story of Discord: "Pivots and F*ck Ups..."

@ a16z speedrun

The Untold Story of Discord: "Pivots and F*ck Ups..."

04/29/25

Related Takeaways

Jason Citron

04/29/25

@ a16z speedrun

It became clear that 'Fates Forever' wasn't going to be big enough to bootstrap our network, so we decided to focus on launching Discord as a standalone chat app.

Jason Citron

11/25/24

@ 20VC with Harry Stebbings

In the early days, investors rejected our multiplayer game idea because they doubted its potential for success, which ultimately led us to pivot to Discord.

Ilkka Paananen

04/03/25

@ a16z speedrun

Our pivot from web games to mobile was a critical decision, driven by the realization that our first Facebook game was a failure, which ultimately guided our direction.

Aravind Srinivas

02/22/25

@ Y Combinator

The first real product we launched was a chat UI that allowed users to converse and retrieve data from a database, which was well-received.

Jason Citron

11/25/24

@ 20VC with Harry Stebbings

The initial thesis for Discord was that a durable gaming company needed an established distribution advantage, leading to the creation of a group chat app for gamers.

Sam Altman

05/12/25

@ Sequoia Capital

The first consumer product we launched was DALL-E, not ChatGPT, as we initially focused on building an API to test our systems.

Jason Citron

04/29/25

@ a16z speedrun

When we launched our game 'Fates Forever' in 2014, it was a competitive multiplayer game on iPad, but it didn't succeed for various reasons, leading us to pivot.

Gaurav Misra

03/27/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

After initially exploring various projects, we realized we should have focused on the captions app, which was already successful without any updates.

Sam Altman

05/12/25

@ Sequoia Capital

Even though many struggled to build businesses with the GPT-3 API, people loved interacting with it, which led us to develop ChatGPT.