The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 22 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Jason Citron calls alignment a 'four-letter word' and demands opinionated decision-makers
“I now say alignment is a four letter word. Like I don't want alignment. I want highly opinionated people making decisions and then being accountable for them, right?”
Jason Citron explains why Discord rejected Microsoft's acquisition offer
“Microsoft has been a really fantastic partner for us. And there certainly are things that we could have done together with them that we can't do independently, but ultimately it was about You know, controlling your own destiny, I suppose, and really seizing th…”
Jason Citron calls scaling Discord to 1,000 employees his biggest management mistake
“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 most management mistakes at Discord. And a lot of it is, is where basically I hired a lot of people and because it was a new…”
Jason Citron personally selects all Discord product projects top-down
“I pick all the projects Very tops down on what the strategy is and how we're allocating resources, how these things are sequencing together over time so it, it's coherent to our users.”
Jason Citron says 20-person synchronous product reviews become performative ceremonies
“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.”
Jason Citron expects new Discord executives to do zero work for 60 days
“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 the…”
Jason Citron predicts AI will let 20-person teams build games like Elden Ring
“I mean, I think it's gonna dramatically lower the cost to create incredible content, which means that if you don't, which means you're gonna get, I think you're gonna get games like Elden Ring that are made by teams of, like, 20 people, not 300, and then it's …”
Jason Citron views 'empowerment' and 'alignment' as symptoms of management mistakes
“Words today that trigger me, which I think are shadows of this, are words like empowerment, alignment.”
Jason Citron says building a durable gaming company requires a distribution advantage
“The thesis back in 2012, at the time, my sense was that the way you built a durable company in gaming over time was you actually needed to have some kind of established distribution advantage, and so I kind of put these things together and thought that, like, …”
Jason Citron admits Discord's non-gaming expansion led to strategic dead ends
“Over a few years sort of following that realized that we kind of went down some dead ends a little bit 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 refocus on gaming this year.”
Discord rejected a higher Series A valuation to partner with Benchmark's Mitch Lasky
“In fact, I got an offer I think our series A, I had one other offer for a little bit of a better valuation, but I really wanted to work with Mitch. So I chose to work with him.”
Jason Citron shut down Discord's PC game store 45 days after launch
“I decided we weren't gonna give, spend the money, you know, the bags of cash on, on, on that title or on any titles, and we shut down the game store. 45 days later, and completely pivoted out of that business, which I had just raised a round of funding off of.”
Jason Citron says video games are safe sandboxes for learning leadership skills
“Games are such amazing little simulation sandboxes to get 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 do those things …”
Jason Citron's prior exit cushion allowed Discord to reject early acquisition offers
“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 try to build a generational …”
Jason Citron says the main second-time founder advantage is early-stage experience
“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 easi…”
Jason Citron says choosing the right problems is more critical than resource allocation
“But I do think that 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 i…”
Jason Citron says reference checks are far more critical than executive interviews
“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 lik…”
Discord gained its first 50 users from a Final Fantasy subreddit post
“We got 50 users that day from that post. And then that 50 turned into a hundred the next day and it sort of started to snowball.”
Jason Citron says developing a major AAA video game costs $200 million today
“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?”
Jason Citron says Discord has raised nearly $1 billion in total capital
“I guess I am a good fundraiser. We've raised almost a billion dollars.”