We also examine various challenges the company faces, as well as what the future holds. But the question remains whether Discord’s ad-free model will be able to support further growth and eventual profitability.īelow, we dive into Discord’s untraditional strategy for making money as it grows. This makes Discord somewhat of an outlier, as other big social apps - such as Facebook, Instagram, or WeChat - rely heavily on ads.Īccording to Discord CTO and co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy, “ We have intentionally pursued a business model that does not rely on monetizing our users’ data.” To this end, Vishnevskiy and the rest of the executive team are sure enough of the company’s ability to grow revenue that they turned down a $12B acquisition offer from Microsoft. Instead, the platform makes money through sources like premium subscriptions and game distribution. Notably, this revenue does not come from ads.
This user growth has helped drive Discord’s growing revenue, with the platform bringing in $130M in revenue in 2020 - nearly triple the $45M it made the year prior. And this diversity of communities happened by design, beginning with rebranding efforts in recent years that have taken the app beyond its initial focus on gamers. (For reference, chat platform Slack has an estimated 32M MAUs.)ĭiscord users rely on this platform to organize study groups, run meetings, watch movies together, plan community events, and more. As users flocked to online communities during the Covid-19 pandemic, Discord saw usage soar - reaching around 19M weekly active servers and 150M monthly active users (MAUs) as of July 2021, an impressive rise from 56M MAUs in 2019. Millions of people from gaming and non-gaming communities alike use Discord to connect, socialize, and work. But since launching in 2015, it has become so much more. Online chat platform Discord was initially built to give gamers a home online.
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