Discord: A Founder’s Guide
Founders often come to us to take advantage of our combined gaming and consumer expertise. Particularly focusing on how to tap into Discord’s vast and engaged user base. Today, Discord is used by ~200 million people every month. Over the next decade, we think this number will grow substantially as another billion people start playing multiplayer games and engaging in an internet that is more interactive and community driven.
Discord has become ground zero for start-ups building towards a future shaped by games. Whether it’s new ways to interact with AI, trade stocks or beta test with a community of early users, having a Discord presence is often an essential part of a start-up’s go-to-market strategy.
When I joined Discord in 2021 after my startup, Zyper, was acquired by the company, I led the growth of new communities for two years. I guided many founders, creators, large companies and brands on how to successfully architect and scale a community on the platform, whilst helping people deepen their friendships around games and shared interests.
When I left in 2023 to invest in seed stage start-ups alongside Jason and Brian here at Patron, I wanted to continue to help more of our portfolio founders unlock Discord.
What’s the secret to finding success on a platform built for players – that has taken on a life of its own?
Founder Workshops in the Private Patron Discord Server
Most people spend their time on Discord hanging out with small friend groups, containing anywhere from five to 15 people, with 90% of users playing games together. However, over the last five years, the team has narrowed it’s focus from broadly being a community-centric chat app, to a place that helps people deepen their friendships around games and shared interest, such as:
- Studying together
- Listening to music
- Streaming anime
- Generating AI pictures
Discord can be somewhat of a black box when it comes to discovering products. But when it works, it thrives.
Look at the Midjourney AI case. With over 20 million registered users in their server alone, they have successfully captured immense interest. Discord is consistently minting unicorns in this way.
Here are the 4 steps to supercharging your distribution on Discord.
A Founders Guide to Discord
1. Server Setup
Anyone and everyone can set up a server on Discord. It’s easy to make a server. But what does it take to make a great server?
Utility and Entertainment
Your server should be infused from its inception with clear value propositions that set you apart. It’s usually helpful to design your server with a combination of utility and entertainment in mind. I wrote a more in-depth piece on community architecture that you can read here. When aiming to scale your server, the value you bring is the groundwork that sets you up for success. Whether it’s through:
- Exclusive content
- Helpful tools
- Engaging activities
Remember to build your server with your community. Memes, myth and lore will evolve from your day 1’s (early users) and you should look to them to incorporate new rituals and channels. Without them, your server is just another server.
Access
The people in your server should feel a sense of pride. Whether you’re looking at top servers in the realm of sneakers or sports analytics, many top servers are exclusive to those who have done one of three things:
- Been offered an invite
- Paid for access
- Linked their account to an app
That exclusivity makes your community feel that extra ounce of pride. Remember you can give folks roles and gate access to channels. In the private Patron server, we have a guest lounge for speakers and experts that come and host workshops in VCs, but they can’t see the rest of the server. Only folks with the ‘founder’ role can see that. Think through when you want users to discover your server. Pre using/downloading/playing with your product? Post using/downloading/playing with your product?
Examples of Server Design from Pika, Midjourney and Viggle
Cross-Promotion
Not being the only server in your niche is a good thing.
Your server members, and prospective members, are going to be a part of other servers that are in some way related to yours.
Being able to partner up with other relevant servers to cross-promote each other is a great tactic. It will increase visibility for everyone involved. There are no negative outcomes here:
- Your network gets bigger
- Your server grows
- You have a wider net to cast in everything you do
Cross-promotion is often a manual strategy. Spend time in other servers, contribute and get to know the mods to see if they’d be open to partnering.
Freemium Experiences
Offer something to your users that no one else can. Apps such as Pika do this exclusively in their server where you can create something with a watermark – clever marketing.
Users can generate the AI outcomes they want publicly whilst having a watermark on it (free publicity for Pika), which pushes more users to the app or website to generate assets without the Pika logo.
You can’t get this experience for free anywhere else.
Pika’s watermark in server experience
2. Apps
Double up with the tactics and make a bot. Bots (now called Apps) are extremely powerful tools for extending your reach across Discord without requiring users to join your server. This is even more important with the implementation of the App Directory that was added natively to Discord towards the end of 2022, making your app even easier to discover.
The success of bots is severely underestimated in the space. Viggle AI has become one of the most downloaded apps on the entire platform, allowing you to generate memes and characters that can be integrated into various servers, driving engagement and awareness.
Another bot with a great story is Shapes, Inc. (Shapesy), your server’s very own AI friend. Think less content generator and more always-available companion, ready at any moment to share memes or revive your chat with interesting questions like, “If you had to live in any video game world for a year, which one would you pick?”. Combining the latest innovations in AI and Discord integrations, the founders have been able to create a native companion that can reach every server on the platform.
Viggle AI App is easily discoverable
Want to know the best part? When people select your bot in the App Directory, the server that you link to your app is right next to it!
3. Activities
One of Discord’s most recent additions, the HTML5 shared experiences of Activities, makes it easier to distribute interactive content than ever before. Just like with bots, if you build an Activity on Discord it can be accessed by anyone on the platform, not just those in your server.
Activities allow friends on Discord to hang out with each other while they play games, watch videos, listen to music (Discord users are responsible for over a billion Spotify streams per year)and more – all natively within Discord. If you want to meet your users where they are, consider a core part of the product experience actually living on Discord.
Building Activities like SketchHeads are a new way to get distribution on Discord
4. Trends
Staying on top of trends within Discord can help you discover new ways to attract prospective users and promote your product. Communities are notable for discovering, engaging with, and sustaining trends. Just a few examples of this are:
- Consumer & AI: Discord is a hub for discovering new AI start-ups like Altera
- Social Trading: Start-ups like After Hour bring a social aspect to trading, combining community engagement with practical utility.
- Listening to Music: Discord is catering to the next generation’s music listening habits. With AI driven, interactive services like STEM growing rapidly in popularity.
Success Stories
Patron Portfolio Company Altera’s Server
The platform offers start-ups unique opportunities to reach early adopter audiences, driving product discovery. Using these exact techniques, companies in our portfolio such as Altera and Tonic have leveraged Discord to build and interact with their communities consistently throughout their building process to:
- Develop relationships and trust with their early adopters
- Get a consistently great feedback loop
Setting up a server alone isn’t enough. You need a compelling value proposition.
Whether it’s utility or entertainment, there are plenty of opportunities on Discord to supercharge your distribution through bots, activities, or simply knowing the secrets to set up your server correctly. You can distribute your content and share your message widely across the Discord ecosystem with ease by using these tips.
There is no doubt that Discord is the best platform to connect with your fans. That’s why we, at Patron, natively use the platform to keep in contact with our portfolio companies and bring them the services they need in their founder journeys, such as:
- Workshops from Experts in their field from game design, to social hacking & product led growth.
- Exclusive Playtests
- Private Mentoring Sessions
Discord is where early adopters, especially gamers, discover cutting-edge products and technologies. By strategically setting up your server, creating engaging bots, leveraging shared activities, staying on top of trends, and learning from all of the success stories, you can supercharge your product distribution on Discord. Embrace these strategies to tap into Discord’s dynamic community and watch your product gain traction among the next generation of users.
Building on Discord? Say hello! My DMs on Twitter and Linkedin are open!
@AmberAtherton