The Exchanges

Q Can I ask you, when you went out to speak to investors in the early days, what was the number one reason why they said no?

A Well, in the very early days, we started the, the path that, that I, that I sort of took us on, um, had some twists and turns. And, and at the very beginning, what I thought we needed to do and the approach we took was actually, we started by building a multiplayer game, a cooperative and competitive, like a team-based competitive game on mobile. And Um, my, my thought was that we needed to build this game to kind of bootstrap the, the network of the group chat app. And, and so a lot of investors said no, cause they didn't think the game was going to be successful. And I suppose they were right. Like the game had, had a really nice following. I was very proud of it. It was called Fates Forever. Um, but it was not going to be a venture scale business. Like content is tricky. It wasn't a hit and it didn't amass the kind of following that we needed to bootstrap a network. But by going through the process of building the game, we identified, um, Like a path to market with a group chat app that didn't need a game to bootstrap it. And then, so we built discord actually in 2015. Um, so the journey, it's one of those funny things where we were like stubborn on the vision, but flexible in the details. And it all sort of worked out over time. And, you know, as we keep talking, that that's kind of the theme of the story.

AI assessment note: “a lot of investors said no, cause they didn't think the game was going to be successful”

Q I don't disagree with you. Which was the hardest round?

A So we, we, we definitely had hard rounds. Um, our series a was actually pretty hard because a lot of investor, this was before we had discord. So when we were working on our game title, this was, I think maybe, And at the time, what I was, what I was fundraising on was this vision to build a big gaming business around a group chat app, starting with a game. And most people said no, because they thought the game wasn't gonna, wasn't gonna get there. Um, so we got a lot of no's in that round and Mitch Lasky from Benchmark said yes. And he thought the vision was exciting and he thought we would figure it out. And, um, and, and so that was a hard round, but, um, But I'm very grateful to Mitch for, for, for, uh, seeing what I saw and supporting us in that. Um, but once we got to Discord and, you know, the charts were all up and to the right, it was much easier.

AI assessment note: “our series a was actually pretty hard”

Q I heard another story I had to discuss was Rockstar Games, where apparently you walked in feeling pretty confident with bags of cash, um, expecting to buy a ton of IP. What happened there, Jason?

A Yeah, so we went to New York. This was around the time when we were building, um, our PC game store in late 2018, and I went to, to go visit with the Rockstar folks to talk to them about, um, whether they would list their upcoming title, uh, I think it was Red Dead Redemption, um, on our store. And, um, they were very gracious folks, and we chatted with them, and discussed a lot about, like, what their priorities were, and, you know, tried to do the normal BD thing, like, what's going on over here? And, and what I realized as we were coming back was that the, Games store business at the time was such that they only wanted, well, basically what I realized was that we were going to have to spend a lot of money and minimum guarantees to get developers to put their games on our store. And it wasn't just Rockstar, but, but that trip to New York was like one of the moments where I realized that the best games are going to cost us a lot of money. In that moment in time, Other people had just launched game stores as well. You know, the PC game store industry was kind of slow moving for a while, and in that window, like Epic launched theirs, we launched one, Microsoft was coming, and I realized that to compete in this business, we were gonna have to spend a lot of money on minimum guarantees on a lot of titles, and I didn't feel like it was gonna really be worth it. So, um, I decided we…

AI assessment note: “I decided we weren't gonna give, spend the money... and we shut down the game store”

Q actually. And I've thought a lot about how money influences an investor's mindset. I'm interested, you sold your prior company for a hundred and four million dollars to be precise. I love the, the four, like a hundred wasn't quite right. Yeah, well done for pushing that one. Um, my question to you was, do richer founders make better founders? And how do you think about the financial cushion benefits?

A It, it certainly helps to in a sense that every successful company along its journey gets acquisition offers. And so by having a cushion, it made it easier to turn down offers because we could just go for the big, you know, outcome and, and try to build a generational company. So in that regard, um, it, it does make it easier, I think, to build a, a more impactful, more important. Company, but I think the real, the real impact from being a second time founder actually has to do with the levels and how there are a lot of levels I had already played once in my previous company, so there were things about building my second startup, about building discord that were easier in the beginning because I had done them before.

AI assessment note: “by having a cushion, it made it easier to turn down offers”

Q How many direct reports do you have today, Jason?

A I have seven today. We're a functional organization, so I have, like, engineering. I have, like, EPAD, which is, you know, engineering and design and analytics and then marketing and finance and that sort of thing, but, but I work with the directors and the ICs, so when we do these product reviews, I have the frontline, like, the people doing the work actually, um, prepare usually, uh, like, loom recordings, like, video recordings, and they send them to me, And I will watch like a 15 or 20 minute walkthrough of a feature, and then I'll go look at the Figma, for example, or read the strategy doc after they talk me through it in a video, and then I often respond with a video recording, and I'll talk for like 20 minutes and give them feedback. And then only if there are questions do we have a meeting. And it's, it's incredible. I have so much free time, and I'm able to give feedback on so many things, because I, you know, I watch the videos at two X. I can always find time to watch a video. I can respond to the, to the video. And then these meetings where you, you know, I used to have these meetings with, like, 20 people, and we'd walk through a product. It was a 45 minute meeting. And then, like, everyone wants to talk. If I give feedback, people are defensive. Oh, the CEO's being, you know, giving feedback. They want to respond to it. It's like this whole ceremony. It's ridiculo…

AI assessment note: “I have seven today. We're a functional organization”

Q How do you do that? That's very hard to do.

A Yeah. The short version is that I don't expect them to do any work for the first, like, 60 days. They come in and they just need to learn. I just want them to meet the people, learn what we're doing, figure out why we're doing things, and every day what I expect them to do, I have a meeting, I, I'll set a 30 minute meeting with them every day for like the first 45 days, and I want them to ask me questions about the business. Like, they need to learn and understand the, there's so much context. They need to learn and develop a point of view on their talent, on the projects for their area, and then sort of in the second month start to express some of that viewpoint with me, And then by the end of the third month, like, they take over and they're running their team. Um, and I have found this, like, sort of, sort of, like, learning transition really sets them up for success, because if you expect someone to come in on day one and, like, run it, they don't know what's going on.

AI assessment note: “I don't expect them to do any work for the first, like, 60 days.”

Q How does AI change the interaction side? How we engage with these games as consumers?

A Again, I don't know, but, but some things that I think about which could be pretty compelling are, um, you could imagine how today, you know, you, you might play a game, you know, like Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, for example, or Tears of the Kingdom. One of these big open world adventure games where you're a character and you're in this fantasy land and there's people and adventures to go on. That gets handcrafted by a team of people. And, and because the nature of it, it's an amazing game. But there's a lot of repetition for how the sort of structures play out because you just can't make bespoke content for 90 hours in a game like that. But you could imagine if you have AI that like every one of those characters can have a complete backstory, can respond to you in, in, in, in the totality of all the decisions you've made inside of a game world. And you could have literally hundreds of hours of bespoke content customized to your experience that just never ends as long as you want it to go. And And I think that, you know, being able to explore and play in a, in a, in a game world that you're passionate about forever could be really compelling. You know, you think about, like, watching TV shows and how it's always bittersweet when a, when a, when a series ends, because you're like, I'm done being in that world.

AI assessment note: “every one of those characters can have a complete backstory, can respond to you”

Q I don't disagree with you. Which was the hardest round?

A So we, we, we definitely had hard rounds. Um, our series a was actually pretty hard because a lot of investor, this was before we had discord. So when we were working on our game title, this was, I think maybe, And at the time, what I was, what I was fundraising on was this vision to build a big gaming business around a group chat app, starting with a game. And most people said no, because they thought the game wasn't gonna, wasn't gonna get there. Um, so we got a lot of no's in that round and Mitch Lasky from Benchmark said yes. And he thought the vision was exciting and he thought we would figure it out. And, um, and, and so that was a hard round, but, um, But I'm very grateful to Mitch for, for, for, uh, seeing what I saw and supporting us in that. Um, but once we got to Discord and, you know, the charts were all up and to the right, it was much easier.

AI assessment note: “our series a was actually pretty hard because a lot of investor”

Q Not at all, but listen, I have interviewed 800 of the best CEOs of the last probably 10 years, and a commonality amongst many of them is they excelled at gaming, ironically, in the early years of their life. And I wanted to ask you, why do you think gaming is such good preparation for CEO-ship?

A You know, games are like these little sandboxes of life, right? And, you know, you think about what you're doing when you play games, You're, um, you're, you're encountering challenges. You're trying to figure out how to solve them. You're failing. You're thinking about what mistakes you made, how you could do it better. You do it again, and you keep doing this over and over until you, you overcome your challenge. Like that's growth mindset, right? Like, isn't that incredible? Like we're like kids are experiencing this, you know, just by playing games, or you think about, um, playing games with your friends and against other people. And what do you need to do? You have to learn how to cooperate. How do you divide up tasks? Who steps in a leadership role? How do you be a good, a good follower? When do you trade those places? How do you learn how to be a good, you know, not a sore loser and not a sore winner? Like these things all happen when you play Fortnite. So like games are such amazing, um, little simulation sandboxes to get to, to, to interact with these things that are basically like microcosms of real life. And you can learn these skills in safe places. And my guess is there's something to do with, Being able to, to do those things over and over and over and over and over again in a way where you don't even realize you're, you're learning those skills because just having…

AI assessment note: “may translate to the kind of things you need to do to run a company”

Q I, I have to touch on that. 200 to a thousand. The scaling there, incredible. Um, PG obviously famed for many things, but you know, obviously this blog post has been incredibly viral. How do you reflect and think about founder mode when you reflect on the journey with discord and the 200 to a thousand?

A Yeah, that period for us when we went from 200 to a thousand in basically two and a half years was the moment in time when I think I made the, the most management mistakes at, at Discord. And a lot of it is, is where basically I hired a lot of people and, and because it was a new level that I hadn't really, you know, dealt with before, and it was hyperscaling and all this craziness, I kind of followed the best practices. And I hired a bunch of executives and, and set the vision and delegated that work to them. And, um, everything ground to a halt. We did a lot of things that didn't end up resonating with our customers. And, um, I have, you know, I, I think I, I kind of realized this maybe at this point now, maybe almost two years ago, it was like a couple, it took a couple of years. And then I realized that and went on this journey to try to fix it, but it was hard because it, I was essentially trying to undo all of the best practices that everyone thinks that you should be doing when you're running a company.

AI assessment note: “I was essentially trying to undo all of the best practices”

Q Do you think the best CEOs are the best resource allocators?

A Resource allocation is certainly important. For, as being a CEO, because, you know, if you have a, a large group of people, um, the first thing you need to do is figure out, like, how do you want to organize them together against what problem sets? But I do think that, um, selecting the right problem sets is It is probably more important than the resource allocation to some extent. Like if you have the right problems, but your resource allocation is sort of wrong, you'll notice that and then you can correct it later. But if you have the wrong problems and the resource alloc, then the resource allocation can't be right. So I don't know that it's, that it's like you just have to be a resource allocator and that's it.

AI assessment note: “selecting the right problem sets is It is probably more important than the resource allocation”

Q Problem selection is down to you. It's also down to your execs. You mentioned kind of some challenges in terms of scaling exec teams there. It's a really hard thing to scale an exec team. When you think back to mishires on exec teams, what are some of the biggest lessons for you on that element?

A There's two things that come to mind. One is that hiring execs is, is a bit tricky because by the time you're hiring someone, by the time someone's an executive and they're interviewing for a role at that level, they're probably very good at communicating and they're very good at talking about the work. And so I have found that Actually interviewing execs and very sort of more senior experienced people is really good for getting a feel for whether I would enjoy working with them. Can we brainstorm? Can we debate? Do I enjoy, you know, being with them? But I rarely find that folks like fail the, the sort of capabilities test in, in those kinds of interviews. I mean, sometimes they do of course, but, but I find by the time, like, you know, someone gets to me, like, They, they, they can, they're sort of qualified for the job. So the thing is you have to reference check the heck out of executives because it's really hard to fake it for like three years if you work at a company. So when I, what I have, basically what I do when I hire execs now is I meet them to get a sense for like, do I enjoy being with this person? Can we, can we debate and, and, and, and have a good conversation? And then I call like everybody I know who, who has ever worked with them. To try to figure out what, what they're actually like to work with. And that's where you get the real insights. And since I start…

AI assessment note: “you have to reference check the heck out of executives because it's really hard to fake”

Q How does AI change the interaction side? How we engage with these games as consumers?

A Again, I don't know, but, but some things that I think about which could be pretty compelling are, um, you could imagine how today, you know, you, you might play a game, you know, like Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, for example, or Tears of the Kingdom. One of these big open world adventure games where you're a character and you're in this fantasy land and there's people and adventures to go on. That gets handcrafted by a team of people. And, and because the nature of it, it's an amazing game. But there's a lot of repetition for how the sort of structures play out because you just can't make bespoke content for 90 hours in a game like that. But you could imagine if you have AI that like every one of those characters can have a complete backstory, can respond to you in, in, in, in the totality of all the decisions you've made inside of a game world. And you could have literally hundreds of hours of bespoke content customized to your experience that just never ends as long as you want it to go. And And I think that, you know, being able to explore and play in a, in a, in a game world that you're passionate about forever could be really compelling. You know, you think about, like, watching TV shows and how it's always bittersweet when a, when a, when a series ends, because you're like, I'm done being in that world.

AI assessment note: “every one of those characters can have a complete backstory, can respond to you”

Q Do you regret the expansion into more verticals to attract more people? And did you learn anything from that? Like audience creep?

A I do not regret it. It introduced discord to a lot of people. And many of those people continue to use, to use discord today. So we, you know, while we, we went in a bunch of different directions to try to be useful to all those folks that maybe, um, didn't yield as much of a, of a, of a business impact that I was hoping we certainly Uh, our business grew tremendously during that period, and I learned a lot about how do you manage the company at the next level? You know, we went from 200 to a thousand employees in that time period, which was like totally crazy. The whole founder mode thing is interesting. I kind of went through my own experience of that, and now realizing, you know, other people had similar experiences was kind of interesting. Um, but yeah.

AI assessment note: “I do not regret it. It introduced discord to a lot of people.”

Q Do you lose participation and discussion with that Loom, async, response, response, response?

A Yes, but that's kind of by design. Like most things don't actually need a lot of participation in discussion. Like the team has done a tremendous amount of work and they're trying to get feedback from me and the forum of the, of a 20 person product review turns it into like this bizarre ceremony. I actually don't want everyone to talk. I want to give them my feedback. And I want to be direct and kind, but I want it, but I want to give them the feedback. And then, um, and some of it is just questions. Some of it is try harder here. Some of it is like, I want to see another version of this. Some of that is like, this is amazing. Here's the 10 reasons why I love it, you know? But, but the other amazing thing about that is those videos are all public. So if you're not in the meeting, anyone can watch, like there's a archive of me giving feedback on stuff that anyone can watch at any point. So if you miss the meeting, you're sick. Any, everyone on the team can, can, can, can, can, Can you hear that feedback from me without having to be in the meeting, which improves the, the coordination cost is just, it goes down.

AI assessment note: “Yes, but that's kind of by design. Like most things don't actually need”

Q So do you agree with the principle of build it and they will come?

A No, I do not. I think the Discord story was actually a perfect example of how build-in they will come may not always work. Now, sometimes, maybe it works sometimes, but at least for us, it didn't. And, um, you know, when we got to this place where we had 20 DAU, we actually were having a hard time figuring out how to get more people to use the product. We were like, how do we get the word out? Because everyone was actually very skeptical about a group chat app for gaming. People would say, this is the dumbest idea ever. Like, no one's going to use this. And even people who played games Some, many of them thought, like, why would I want this? I already have, you know, whatever app I'm using. And, and so we were having a hard time getting other people to try it, but we ended up figuring out, um, Kind of a, a, a way to get the word out that people responded to positively that caused them to start trying it. And then it started to grow on its own. But there was like a period of three or four weeks where I remember we were sitting around and thinking like, well, we like this, but maybe no one else does. Like we had built the product and we just hadn't figured out how to get the word out.

AI assessment note: “No, I do not. I think the Discord story was actually a perfect example”

Q What do you do then, Jason? Like, do you go back to the drawing board and go, what features can we do to supercharge this?

A Yeah. It's a combination of, of, of thinking about how do you continue to make the existing product more useful and, and, and, um, better for the people who are using it today for what they're trying to do. And then you got to try to think about like, how do you make it, you know, more approachable for people that aren't using it today? And, you know, these are some of the areas where we, you know, during the COVID years kind of branched out in a way to, to, To try to help be more useful to so many people because of what was going on during COVID and over a few years sort of following that realized that we kind of went down some dead ends a little bit and, and that people were not resonating as much with some of the features we were building. So we kind of pulled it back in to, to refocus on gaming this year.

AI assessment note: “It's a combination of... thinking about how do you continue to make the existing product more useful”

Q I, I have to touch on that. 200 to a thousand. The scaling there, incredible. Um, PG obviously famed for many things, but you know, obviously this blog post has been incredibly viral. How do you reflect and think about founder mode when you reflect on the journey with discord and the 200 to a thousand?

A Yeah, that period for us when we went from 200 to a thousand in basically two and a half years was the moment in time when I think I made the, the most management mistakes at, at Discord. And a lot of it is, is where basically I hired a lot of people and, and because it was a new level that I hadn't really, you know, dealt with before, and it was hyperscaling and all this craziness, I kind of followed the best practices. And I hired a bunch of executives and, and set the vision and delegated that work to them. And, um, everything ground to a halt. We did a lot of things that didn't end up resonating with our customers. And, um, I have, you know, I, I think I, I kind of realized this maybe at this point now, maybe almost two years ago, it was like a couple, it took a couple of years. And then I realized that and went on this journey to try to fix it, but it was hard because it, I was essentially trying to undo all of the best practices that everyone thinks that you should be doing when you're running a company.

AI assessment note: “was the moment in time when I think I made the, the most management mistakes”

Q How do you think about creating an environment of ownership when one is told bluntly direction like that and they're not making choices?

A I think that the mistake was pushing those decisions to the wrong elevation in the company. So like when I, when I go to a team and I say, hey guys, like I want you To think about how reactions work and how we can make this better for people. And here's some specific ideas for how to make it better. What I'm actually saying to them is like, I now want you to use your incredible creativity and energy to try to explore this part of our, of our, of our sandbox. So they have extreme ownership over, okay, like these are two or three ideas that Jason has that he really wants us to do. They can tell me they think I'm crazy and then we'll argue about it. Maybe they're right. Sometimes I'm wrong. I mean, I'm not, I'm not right all the time, but, but also there's a problem space there and they can explore and ideate and think within that problem space, but then they're going to pitch those ideas back to me and I'm going to pick the ones that they're going to do. So they still get to have ownership and accountability and creativity on like what the work is, but they're not, you know, accountable necessarily for, Um, should we even work on reactions now? Like, that's, that's somewhere else in the organization. You know, that might be me, or that might be me with a VP or something, and, and the VP's advocating for me, and I'm like, yeah, ok, that's good, let's go do that. But, but the, the …

AI assessment note: “they still get to have ownership and accountability and creativity on like what the work is”

Q What is the meeting that is most required for the discussion, for the engagement, and could not be done in that way?

A Sometimes you will have, um, more on the, sometimes there'll be, there'll be situations where you need to have like an expansive brainstorm, where it's like, we are going to explore something together. And it's not a presentation. It's not necessarily a decision to be made. It's like, we're going to explore something together. So we'll get in a room and the creativity and the back and forth, the result of the meeting is like 15 options or, or a wide open idea. Um, I find that those are good discussions. And then sometimes there are discussions where, you know, there's different points of view and you, it's clear that from like sort of the initial sort of presentation and the reaction, there's still Things to be hashed out. And then you get in the room and you have the debate, but you've already had, everyone's already done this back and forth. So you come in fully loaded up on the context and you can have a really rich conversation and figure it out in, you know, 30, 45 minutes.

AI assessment note: “situations where you need to have like an expansive brainstorm”

Q Do you think the best CEOs are the best resource allocators?

A Resource allocation is certainly important. For, as being a CEO, because, you know, if you have a, a large group of people, um, the first thing you need to do is figure out, like, how do you want to organize them together against what problem sets? But I do think that, um, selecting the right problem sets is It is probably more important than the resource allocation to some extent. Like if you have the right problems, but your resource allocation is sort of wrong, you'll notice that and then you can correct it later. But if you have the wrong problems and the resource alloc, then the resource allocation can't be right. So I don't know that it's, that it's like you just have to be a resource allocator and that's it.

AI assessment note: “selecting the right problem sets is It is probably more important than the resource allocation”

Q Problem selection is down to you. It's also down to your execs. You mentioned kind of some challenges in terms of scaling exec teams there. It's a really hard thing to scale an exec team. When you think back to mishires on exec teams, what are some of the biggest lessons for you on that element?

A There's two things that come to mind. One is that hiring execs is, is a bit tricky because by the time you're hiring someone, by the time someone's an executive and they're interviewing for a role at that level, they're probably very good at communicating and they're very good at talking about the work. And so I have found that Actually interviewing execs and very sort of more senior experienced people is really good for getting a feel for whether I would enjoy working with them. Can we brainstorm? Can we debate? Do I enjoy, you know, being with them? But I rarely find that folks like fail the, the sort of capabilities test in, in those kinds of interviews. I mean, sometimes they do of course, but, but I find by the time, like, you know, someone gets to me, like, They, they, they can, they're sort of qualified for the job. So the thing is you have to reference check the heck out of executives because it's really hard to fake it for like three years if you work at a company. So when I, what I have, basically what I do when I hire execs now is I meet them to get a sense for like, do I enjoy being with this person? Can we, can we debate and, and, and, and have a good conversation? And then I call like everybody I know who, who has ever worked with them. To try to figure out what, what they're actually like to work with. And that's where you get the real insights. And since I start…

AI assessment note: “you have to reference check the heck out of executives”

Q When did you have the strongest intuition that turned out to be wrong?

A At Discord, we, in 2000, late 2018, we built a A PC game store, which I ended up shutting down after like four months. So that didn't work. Um, so I, yeah, I, I, there's a long list of things where I have made the wrong calls. Um, but I think the, the thing that I've come to learn is that I am still more right than I am Than a new executive joining my company. Like, I still have more context than most people who join me, given the nature of how long I've been doing this, and, and, and you also, I also learn over time, and I think this is the trick, one of the challenges with like, trust your intuition, trust your gut as advice, is like, you don't know where your gut is right and wrong. And so, one of the things I've come to learn over the years is the kinds of things where my intuition tends to be right. And the kinds of things where my intuition tends to be wrong, and so when it's one of those things, I give, I discount myself a little bit.

AI assessment note: “in late 2018, we built a A PC game store, which I ended up shutting down”

Q Do you worry about what that does to Discovery? So I worry, like, I think that's amazing, the democratization, but with democratization comes a massive increase in supply, and with that increase in supply, Discovery just becomes a war, and often in that case, it's just a game of who has the most dollars. Do you worry about Discovery being that problem?

A I think Discovery is already a problem for developers. It's gonna get harder to break through, but I think that It's hard to, it's really hard for me to predict how the world will be if there's like 10 times more games, and they're all high quality, because you can imagine when the cost drops so dramatically, the whole business model changes, the whole dynamics change, right? Part of the challenge today is that it's hard to break through, and it costs two hundred million dollars to make a big game, right? But if the costs were much lower, then you could have games where the subject matter is much more niche. And, and then in that world, what happens? Like, You know, imagine if you had 20 Elden Rings, and they all had different themes, and they were all as good, and they, you know, like, you don't need to make seven billion dollars from making Elden Ring. You could make ten million dollars or fifty million dollars. Maybe it's a great business.

AI assessment note: “I think Discovery is already a problem for developers. It's gonna get harder”

Q I spoke to Danny Reimer before this show, and he said that his first encounter with you was probably his most memorable first founder encounter ever. Um, he, I think he described it as an interrogation to be quite blunt. Uh, so, so take me to the first Danny Reimer meeting. Where was it? What did you do? How did it go?

A It's funny. He calls it an interrogation. I, uh, I remember I was meeting with him and I had just read an article maybe the day before. About a company that he had invested in that I think kind of went bankrupt or something. And, um, I wasn't raising money, but I was like, oh, I'll go meet with this guy. People say he's, he knows what he's doing. And he's, and so we met at a coffee shop somewhere in the Mission in San Francisco. I forget which one. And, you know, I'm, I'm a pretty curious person. I love to learn from people. You know, I think that so many, you know, like there's two ways to learn in life. You learn from your own mistakes or from other people's mistakes. And so I love to read books and, and, and talk to other people to learn about like, what are their mistakes and what can I learn from? So I'm meeting with Danny and I'm like, well, you know, I don't know what to talk about. I just read this thing. It was really interesting to hear about a company that just went bankrupt. And so I was just really curious about it. So I just started asking him questions about the experience and what happened and what did he learn from it and what did he take away from it? And, and, you know, I have to be honest, I don't even remember what he said at this point. I mean, it was so long ago, but I remember the conversation and, and, and I know it really stood out, um, to him.

AI assessment note: “we met at a coffee shop somewhere in the Mission in San Francisco.”

Q Can I ask you, when you went out to speak to investors in the early days, what was the number one reason why they said no?

A Well, in the very early days, we started the, the path that, that I, that I sort of took us on, um, had some twists and turns. And, and at the very beginning, what I thought we needed to do and the approach we took was actually, we started by building a multiplayer game, a cooperative and competitive, like a team-based competitive game on mobile. And Um, my, my thought was that we needed to build this game to kind of bootstrap the, the network of the group chat app. And, and so a lot of investors said no, cause they didn't think the game was going to be successful. And I suppose they were right. Like the game had, had a really nice following. I was very proud of it. It was called Fates Forever. Um, but it was not going to be a venture scale business. Like content is tricky. It wasn't a hit and it didn't amass the kind of following that we needed to bootstrap a network. But by going through the process of building the game, we identified, um, Like a path to market with a group chat app that didn't need a game to bootstrap it. And then, so we built discord actually in 2015. Um, so the journey, it's one of those funny things where we were like stubborn on the vision, but flexible in the details. And it all sort of worked out over time. And, you know, as we keep talking, that that's kind of the theme of the story.

AI assessment note: “a lot of investors said no, cause they didn't think the game was going to be successful.”

Q What is the biggest misnomer or mistake that people have or think about how AI will impact the future of creation of gaming products?

A I, I don't know if there's an obvious misnomer. I think that it's really hard to predict what's gonna happen, because we're in this world where the, you know, um, in, in gaming, there's this, there's this concept of a fog of war, which is like, you know, when you're playing a game like Starcraft, you can't see what's going on on the other side of the map until you've been there, and so you have to kind of plan without knowing what's happening in the future, and I feel like we're in a moment in technology, and because of the nature of AI, It's, it, it, it's sort of challenging us to reinvent so much about how we do things in our lives that when I think about, you know, where, where are the capabilities of AI gonna be in 10 years? It's just like so hard to reason through, to reason through what are the implications of that? Like if we actually get AGI, then what happens? I don't know. You know, like there, there's like a tech tree, you know, and, and you can imagine different paths through it that could result in so many different outcomes that it's just very hard to predict. So I, I think anyone who's really certain about what happens is probably wrong.

AI assessment note: “anyone who's really certain about what happens is probably wrong”

Q So if I were at 18 and I said, I have this offer from this great school, should I take it? Or should I go and work at a startup and learn?

A It's so contextual, I think, to the person. It's hard. It's really hard for me to just sort of make a statement and that everyone should follow. It really depends on who you are. You know, like if you, if you're turning down a application, you know, an acceptance letter to an Ivy League school, that means you've already figured out a bunch of things about like how to About some of the stuff I talked about, like you probably have figured out some level of critical thinking and follow through and, and, and, um, you know, focus and you're probably quite smart. Maybe you should actually not go to Harvard and, and go work at a company and start, you know, doing something. But if you're not that person, there may be value in going to a higher education to learn some of those more structured skills.

AI assessment note: “Maybe you should actually not go to Harvard and, and go work at a company”

Q How many direct reports do you have today, Jason?

A I have seven today. We're a functional organization, so I have, like, engineering. I have, like, EPAD, which is, you know, engineering and design and analytics and then marketing and finance and that sort of thing, but, but I work with the directors and the ICs, so when we do these product reviews, I have the frontline, like, the people doing the work actually, um, prepare usually, uh, like, loom recordings, like, video recordings, and they send them to me, And I will watch like a 15 or 20 minute walkthrough of a feature, and then I'll go look at the Figma, for example, or read the strategy doc after they talk me through it in a video, and then I often respond with a video recording, and I'll talk for like 20 minutes and give them feedback. And then only if there are questions do we have a meeting. And it's, it's incredible. I have so much free time, and I'm able to give feedback on so many things, because I, you know, I watch the videos at two X. I can always find time to watch a video. I can respond to the, to the video. And then these meetings where you, you know, I used to have these meetings with, like, 20 people, and we'd walk through a product. It was a 45 minute meeting. And then, like, everyone wants to talk. If I give feedback, people are defensive. Oh, the CEO's being, you know, giving feedback. They want to respond to it. It's like this whole ceremony. It's ridiculo…

AI assessment note: “I have seven today.”

Q How do you think about creating an environment of ownership when one is told bluntly direction like that and they're not making choices?

A I think that the mistake was pushing those decisions to the wrong elevation in the company. So like when I, when I go to a team and I say, hey guys, like I want you To think about how reactions work and how we can make this better for people. And here's some specific ideas for how to make it better. What I'm actually saying to them is like, I now want you to use your incredible creativity and energy to try to explore this part of our, of our, of our sandbox. So they have extreme ownership over, okay, like these are two or three ideas that Jason has that he really wants us to do. They can tell me they think I'm crazy and then we'll argue about it. Maybe they're right. Sometimes I'm wrong. I mean, I'm not, I'm not right all the time, but, but also there's a problem space there and they can explore and ideate and think within that problem space, but then they're going to pitch those ideas back to me and I'm going to pick the ones that they're going to do. So they still get to have ownership and accountability and creativity on like what the work is, but they're not, you know, accountable necessarily for, Um, should we even work on reactions now? Like, that's, that's somewhere else in the organization. You know, that might be me, or that might be me with a VP or something, and, and the VP's advocating for me, and I'm like, yeah, ok, that's good, let's go do that. But, but the, the …

AI assessment note: “So they still get to have ownership and accountability and creativity on like what the work is”