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Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

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Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#101

Post by zacharycohn »

crocodiletears wrote: post #66

Discord isn't just for gamers. Though that's where it started, its robust community management features have made it's a go-to for online creators looking to engage with their audiences. It's especially prominent among Youtubers, and is increasingly becoming seen in some circles as a safer alternative to public forums like Reddit for topical discourse. This is, in my opinion because there's no formal discoverability…

> Discord isn't just for gamers.

That's true! It's also very popular among neo nazis.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#102

Post by shanghaiaway »

dvt wrote: post #69
shanghaiaway wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be more bearish on the stores of Origin, Epic, Ubisoft. Building a user base has to be done bottom up. Companies in general cannot do that because their approach is a forced top down one, pushed by marketing and sales. I think it's fair to believe that Discord can be one of two stores together with Steam. Other publishers are likely to fail.

> Building a user base has to be done bottom up. Stores have nothing to do with "user bases." You just want people to buy stuff. As a publisher, you have all the leverage when it comes to pricing arbitrage. You can sell game X on your platform for $45 and sell the same license to Discord for $50. The consumer doesn't care where they buy it from, as long as it's cheaper. Obviously, they're incentivized to buy it on yo…

Wrong. Stores need traffic, which is why they locate on shopping streets, in large malls, offer large discounts at times and use loss leader products, and buy advertising.

Discords user base is traffic.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#103

Post by scoggs »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #84
SL61 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you there. Gamers today are not price-averse like they might have been when the gaming demographic was mostly teens. After a peek at your website, I see I'm quite a bit younger than you. I know a lot of people who do not have much money, but they still consider it worth it to spend a chunk of their limited income on Discord Nitro. In some servers I've even seen young teens (13-14) spen…

It's all relative. Gamers are a heck of a lot more price averse than corporations, and the same person is more likely to spend money on a service that helps his/her business than one used for video games.

Well to me the question is:

How many too-young-to-work online gamers are there who have parents willing to pay for their subscriptions / games / in-game purchases?

We already know that these kids who don't have enough (or any of their own) money have a computer, internet access, and the ability to purchase all of the peripherals and a game needed to play. What's making companies stop and say, "We don't think the people who made these non-working kids positioned to be our customers (e.g. they have the minimum hardware needed to play their game / products) will spend any more money on them."?

Are there more kids whose parents buy them computers and allow them to play games than there are corporations / businesses?

Do all corporations / businesses and products made for corp/bus only allow for micro-transactions or are their products a monthly/yearly subscription fee (fixed rate) or is it a one time purchase?

Are we expecting future generations to stop buying computers and games for their children? Are we expecting children to stop being born or stop growing old enough to be able to use our products?

It's a demographic that's got infinite potential and every year there is a new set of customers. And, if you get on any single customer's good side they can become loyal, paying customers when they reach an age where they are no longer price-averse.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#104

Post by j-c-hewitt »

joering2 wrote: post #80
trophycase wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please god don't say that. M$'s acquisition of Skype is a lot of the reason we use Discord now.

After over six months of being harrased with “upgrade your skype for better experience”, I finally buckled up and clicked “ok”. When Skype came back in less than five minutes I felt that Microsoft read my mind, pickup all the features I loved and used daily, and deleted them off their new version! it simply blew my mind! In addition everything worked different! New Skype is entirely new messanger, not Skype upgrade.…

Yeah, but GIFs and emojis!

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#105

Post by dmix »

dvt wrote: post #16

I'm bearish on Discord. Unlike Slack, it targets a price-averse demographic and is attempting to enter spaces that are very saturated (Steam, Origin, Epic, Ubisoft are already crushing the digital distribution medium), so then it's basically an IRC replacement for gamers. I understand Slack's valuation as it targets huge companies with up to decades-long contracts and has projected revenues > $1B for this year, but I…

Interestingly Benchmark Capital backed Xfirem hired Xfire's founder, and is a top investor in Discord...

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#106

Post by trynewideas »

Insanity wrote: post #85
stevehawk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as a gamer I have to ask "when was that?"

There surely was a time. We had ventrilo and TeamSpeak but mostly used Skype for a small group from a clan. I am speaking of roughly a decade ago, around CoD4 and L4D we often used Skype. Also, xfire to chat. Which was an awesome program at the time!

I can't be the only one out here who remembers RogerWilco

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#107

Post by j-c-hewitt »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #35
dvt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is as valuable to the gaming community as IRC was, or as Ventrilo was, or as Skype was (for a while). In other words, not very (as all those tools were easily replaced). Twitch built a marketplace of creators and consumers (like YouTube) -- that's why it's hard to replace. Discord, on the other hand, is a chat program.

I disagree (to a degree) . Everyone i know kicked and screamed about switching from Vent/Teamspeak/Mumble. I feel like it eventually dominated not because it was easy to dump existing solutions, but because existing solutions were poorly designed by comparison. No mobile, horrid chat, required install, poor voip quality. Discord came along with a better offering and it still was a tough switch. With that said, i agre…

I think one big killer feature Discord has is that you just have to paste in an URL/shortcode to join a server instead of needing to enter an IP and create a username to join every server. It is so much more streamlined to join a Discord server. The voice quality and chat features are both whatever although I would say that Discord feels like a more responsive and less resource intensive application than something like Slack or nuSkype.

The last time I used Slack it was a giant memory hog and used a lot of CPU resources. I don't think Discord would have become nearly as popular compared to say Mumble or Teamspeak it was not also relatively efficient in terms of system resources because PC gamers are very sensitive to big resource hogs.

As far as becoming a digital retail storefront, it has zero advantages compared to the other various competitors. While the other digital retailers do have social features, those social features are generally add-ons that aren't critical to the experience. Many of those storefronts also have API hooks that many developers rely upon for certain game-relevant social features like joining a friend's game in progress.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#108

Post by dvt »

shanghaiaway wrote: post #102
dvt wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Building a user base has to be done bottom up. Stores have nothing to do with "user bases." You just want people to buy stuff. As a publisher, you have all the leverage when it comes to pricing arbitrage. You can sell game X on your platform for $45 and sell the same license to Discord for $50. The consumer doesn't care where they buy it from, as long as it's cheaper. Obviously, they're incentivized to buy it on yo…

Wrong. Stores need traffic, which is why they locate on shopping streets, in large malls, offer large discounts at times and use loss leader products, and buy advertising. Discords user base is traffic.

> Wrong. Stores need traffic...

That's incredibly reductive. Not all traffic is created equally. Reddit, for example, is notorious for providing awful bang for your ad buck[1].

> Discords user base is traffic.

Oh, I see, so Facebook and Google should've started online stores because of.. traffic? Of course not. If you build a (big enough) platform for free, one of the few viable ways to monetize is to do ads. Making a store is a very dubious prospect (which has not been received particularly warmly). If you're going to bring up Steam, keep in mind they had about a decade of first mover advantage.

[1] https://blog.ladder.io/reddit-ads/

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#109

Post by trevyn »

dvt wrote: post #16

I'm bearish on Discord. Unlike Slack, it targets a price-averse demographic and is attempting to enter spaces that are very saturated (Steam, Origin, Epic, Ubisoft are already crushing the digital distribution medium), so then it's basically an IRC replacement for gamers. I understand Slack's valuation as it targets huge companies with up to decades-long contracts and has projected revenues > $1B for this year, but I…

I feel like if Discord had a default white theme and took out the gaming-specific references, it could easily be a better choice for business comms than Slack.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#110

Post by foxhop »

I'm bullish regarding twitch (Amazon) and Discord. Too bad I'm not a VC or have any money or way to monitized my knowledge.

Do I use either service?

Not often, but I have accounts. When I reconnect to my gamer friends / clicks they all use these services.

I have not felt compelled (peer pressure) to create accounts on any cloud provider in a long time. Both got me to sign up.

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