20VC: Discord's Jason Citron on Why Everything We are Taught About Hiring & Management is BS | Do Richer Founders & Gamer Founders Make Better Founders? | Never Before Told Moments Behind Scaling to 200M Users

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The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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?

Transcript

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0:00.0	That period for us when we went from 200 to 1,000 in basically two and a half years was the
0:05.4	moment in time when I think I made the most management mistakes at Discord.
0:11.2	I hired a bunch of executives and set the vision and delegated that worked to them.
0:15.6	Everything ground to a halt.
0:17.4	Words today that trigger me, which I think are shadows of this, are words like empowerment,
0:21.9	alignment.
0:22.8	This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and today we are joined by Jason Citron, co-found and
0:27.5	CEO at Discord, where he has raised a billion dollars for the company, with the latest
0:31.9	price being a whopping $14.5 billion.
0:35.3	This discussion is an incredible walkthrough of untold stories on product market
0:40.0	fit, hiring mistakes, turning down $12 billion acquisition offers, why gaming makes the best founders,
0:47.4	and are richer founders better founders? But before we dive in, what do Henry Ford and AI have in
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	...

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