Not every venture turns out the way they were originally planned. Sometimes, the best products, offerings, or applications get created in the process of building something else.
This was the case with popular messaging app Discord.
The core idea behind the messaging platform was initially conceived during the development of a video game called “Fates Forever.”
During the development stage of the video game, its creators found that it was hard to communicate with other players. As a result, they ended up creating Discord, a chat service that was user-friendly and intuitive to use.
Discord was released to the public in 2015, and as of 2026, it enjoys over 200 million monthly users located in various parts of the world.
While the messaging app’s creation occurred spontaneously, its success clearly wasn’t the product of luck nor spontaneity.
To understand why Discord is so popular today, we need to know more about the people behind it.
Today, we will put the spotlight on Jason Citron!
Photo from AI bees
Citron is a game developer and entrepreneur best known as one of the co-founders of Discord.
Before Discord, he founded OpenFeint, a mobile gaming social platform. After selling the latter, he established game development studio Hammer & Chisel and developed “Fates Forever.”
“Fates Forever” did not become the product Citron’s team had hoped for. However, as mentioned above, it did help them come up with and create Discord.
Why Discord Took Off in Popularity
Discord was built not to just serve as a run-of-the-mill communications platform for gamers. Users could also create their own servers, invite friends to join, and interact with each other without any hassle. Doing all of these things only required a few clicks.
In its early days, Citron and his team reached out to gamer communities and invited them to try Discord and provide feedback.
Since then, Discord has grown beyond gaming. The communities building servers on the platform expanded to hobbyists, content creators, educators, musicians, fans, and even companies.
Electronics giant Samsung, entertainment behemoth Netflix, and candy brand Mentos are among the companies that have official Discord servers.
In short, Discord went from being a gamer-centric communications platform into a hub where communities catering to different interests and hobbies are hosted. It has even served as a pipeline through which businesses can reach out to their customers!
Citron’s Playbook
Discord, and by extension, Citron’s success, offers lessons that brands, visionaries, and professionals can emulate or learn from:
- Be Solutions-oriented
Discord grew by addressing a problem its target users already experienced. Instead of creating a need from scratch, Citron focused on making online communication simpler and more reliable.
The platform also gave users the tools to create their own spaces rather than dictating exactly how the platform should be used. This flexibility allowed the app to expand its user base across different interests.
- Make It Easy for Others to Share Your Solution
A service becomes more valuable when users can easily bring others into it. Discord’s simple server and invite system helped turn individual users into growing communities.
- Use Data to Improve Customer Experience
Citron’s team paid attention to how people actually used Discord. As users found new ways to use the platform, those behaviors helped shape the implementation of new features or improvement of existing ones.
- Be Willing to Pivot
Citron’s winning idea didn’t come from his initial vision. Instead of desperately clinging to “Fates Forever,” he focused on the idea that led to the creation of Discord.
Success Isn’t A Straightforward Path
The creation of Discord occurred by happenstance, and by being willing to pivot to that winning idea, Citron was able to create a platform used by millions.
His story shows that sometimes, the most successful ventures don’t emerge out of scratch. Other times, they’re discovered by accident along the way.
About The Dynamic Marketing Communiqué’s
“Mondays: Marketing Marvels”
Too often, industry experts and the marketing press sing the praises of some brand or company’s marketing strategy.
… only for the audience to later find out that its product was a flop, or worse, that the brand or company went bankrupt.
The true ROI in marketing can’t be separated from the business as a whole.
What good is a marketing case study if one can’t prove that the company’s efforts actually paid off?
At the end of the day, either the entire business is successful or it isn’t. And the roles of marketing and communication are always paramount to that success.
Every Monday, we publish a case study that highlights the world’s greatest marketing strategies, marketers, and communicators.
However, the difference between our articles and the numerous ones out there is that we will always make certain that the firm really did generate and demonstrate earning power worthy of study in the first place in keeping with a person’s leadership skills in the area of marketing and/or communication.
We’ll also study the greatest marketing fails and analyze what they did wrong, or what they needed to improve. We all make mistakes, but better we learn from others’ mistakes—and earlier, rather than later.
Hope you find this week’s topic interesting and helpful.
Stay tuned for next Monday’s “Marketing Marvels!”
Cheers,
Adrian Kyle Vergara
Content Writer
Valens Dynamic Marketing Capabilities
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