Lessons from Discord: Founding and Leadership Insights

Jason Citron is the Co-Founder and CEO of Discord, a voice, video and text platform for friends playing games. Jason has raised $1BN for the company and was able to scale to 200M users. Prior to co-founding Discord, Jason founded OpenFeint, the biggest social mobile gaming platform, which sold to GREE in 2011 for $104 million.

In Today’s Episode with Jason Citron We Discuss: 

1. Leadership Lessons That are Total BS:

• Hiring: Why does Jason believe hiring experienced executives is the worst thing you can do for your company? What did he learn by doing it?

• Culture: Why does Jason believe that empowerment and alignment are total BS? How does Jason empower people when they are told what to do vs choose what to do?

• Strategy: What does Jason believe is the most effective way to drive and implement the strategy? 

2. The Untold Moments Behind Scaling to 200M Users:

• Why did Jason offer to give investors their money back at one point? What was the hardest round to raise and why?

• Why did Jason turn down the chance to sell to Microsoft for $12BN? 

• What one single change in how Jason communicated with the first 100 users changed the trajectory of the entire company?

• What do most founders think they know about product market fit that they do not?

3. The Makings of a Unicorn Founder:

• Does Jason believe that richer founders make better founders?

• Why does Jason believe that entrepreneurs who play video games have a higher chance of being successful in the future?

• What single trait does Jason believe he has that has made him such a successful founder? Does Jason ever have imposter syndrome? When?