#192

Guest: Stanislav Vishnevskiy, CTO and co-founder of Discord
For many years, the conventional wisdom was the gaming was not social because it was something you usually did at home. “But people who play games are often the most social,” says Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy. “They’re spending 10, 20 hours with other people online, hanging out.” As a teenager, Stanislav logged more than 1,000 days playing his favorite video game and socializing with friends around the world, but with 200 million monthly active users, the social platform is appealing to a lot more than hardcore gamers. “People online who need to get together and collaborate ... [want] tp have control and create a place,” he says. “That’s not just a gaming need, right? That’s pretty much any community.”
In this episode, Stanislav and Joubin discuss “Discord moments,” hanging out online, IRC and AIM, Fates Forever, good and bad stress, leadership coaches, Claire Hughes Johnson, socializing online, heart surgery, Slack, Jason Citron, in-browser voice chat, Reddit, authentic CX, hiring slowly, Mitch Lasky, “playing moneyball,” React, deprecation plans, and collaborative projects.
Chapters:
02:09 Discord’s scale and importance
07:35 What is Discord?
09:43 Hammer and Chisel
13:18 How Stanislav’s role has changed
15:17 Imposter syndrome
17:47 Doing stuff for the first time
21:22 Final Fantasy XI and Stanislav’s parents
25:12 YOLO
27:02 Games as social networks
30:49 The evolution of Discord
35:58 Inherent virality
39:04 Building the company
41:39 The COVID effect
43:08 Hiring for slope
46:43 Pivoting back to gaming
51:27 The Discord Store and Nitro
54:30 Emotional stakes
56:09 Midjourney and AI art
59:58 Virtual worlds
01:01:30 Who Discord is hiring and what “grit” means to Stanislav

[@amitgota]

just absolute great of the conversation... so much value learning and true great I mean you are not sure if you were going to live after certain age, and you still would come everything and be the center of this magnificent journey.... even though I’m not a gamer I totally understand without friends. It’s nothing.