Discord

A community of communities beats any single community

Shaan's rule: individual communities are mediocre businesses, but a platform hosting many communities (Discord, Reddit, Collabland) can be a $10B company, so invest in the platform not the token.

“Community of communities of communities can be great big businesses. Discord is a community of communities. Reddit is a community of communities. And both of those are like $10 billion-ish sized companies.”

Steal thisDon't bet on one community; build or back the platform that lets thousands of communities launch and grow.

Deliberate action: the trait Elman saw in every billionaire founder

Elman's observation of founders like the Robinhood and Discord teams: they aren't fast, snap-decision makers; they take 'deliberate action.' They're voracious and do a huge amount, but can always give a clear reason for every hire, meeting, or choice, including why something that failed still made sense at the time.

“And the reality is I like to call it deliberate action, which is they're really deliberate about just about everything they do, whether it's a hire, whether it's a meeting they're going to take, whether it's a person they're going to spend time with. But they do a lot of things. They're kind of voracious. They just are like nonstop accumulating information, doing things. But if you ask them why, why did you do that? Why did you go here? Why did you think about that thing? Why did you say that? They actually always have a good reason.”

Discord was the first unbundling of Reddit

Greg argues Discord grew by colonizing Reddit communities: it started in the League of Legends subreddit, recruited mods from that network, then spread horizontally to CS:GO and Dota by building exactly what those communities already needed.

“My belief is that since, you know, 2016-ish, Discord was the first example of the unbundling of Reddit. Then Discord was built on top of Reddit. It started in the League of Legends subreddit. It was a product for that community. Then they went to CS:GO, then they went to Dota. They just basically looked at what they needed. They spread themselves on top of that network. They recruited mods from that network and kind of went horizontally.”

The Discord playbook: become one with the subreddit, then build

Greg's full process for unbundling a community: pick a trending subreddit, map the user's week visually with a designer, spend 2-3 weeks asking members open-ended questions about the legacy tools they use, then build the replacement with no-code.

“So, you know, you're at one with the community, you map out the ecosystem, and you should do it like visually, like work with a designer, 'cause I think like actually like seeing it visually is gonna help you. And then you spend some time doing like speaking to people about like, hey, what do you think, you know, in the case of let's say Discord, when Discord was coming out, say, hey, what do you think of TeamSpeak? Do you like TeamSpeak? You know, how often do you use it? Oh, you know, what would you— and ask open-ended questions.”

Steal thisSpend 2-3 weeks asking a community open-ended questions about the legacy tool they hate, then build the replacement.