It’s hard to make a hit game. CEO Jason Citron tried to create a successful gaming studio twice. Both times he ended up expertly pivoting to gaming infrastructure plays. Discord is a product of one of those switch-ups. Bots give Discord defensibility. More than 3 million “bots” have been built on top of Discord’s API. Chat servers use these to mode... See more

The recent history of the Internet, however, warns that we shouldn’t necessarily expect the endearingly homegrown nature of these 1,000 True Fans communities to persist. When viable new economic niches emerge online, venture-backed businesses, looking to extract their cut, are typically not far behind. Services such as Patreon and Kickstarter are j... See more