Discord has secured $100 million funding to help finance its efforts to grow its audience beyond the video games consumers it initially targeted.
There are no details on which investors supplied the capital but the deal is mentioned in a new blog post offering an overview of the company’s future direction.The new pitch, and a new funding round of $100 million at a reported valuation of $3.5 billion, will help the company as it looks to erase its legacy as a home for gamers.
As the blog post says,”In asking you what you want Discord to be, we heard that you want Discord to be more welcoming, more inclusive, and more trustworthy so more kinds of communities can find a home here. Many of you told us that the biggest misconception you hear about Discord is that it’s “only for gaming,” but you feel Discord’s for “literally everyone” and “for anyone who likes to talk.”
The site says the investment “comes with the understanding that [founders Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy] will continue to broaden the app’s audience and focus on growing revenue.”
That certainly seems to be the case based on the blog post, which discusses how Discord may have originated as a communications tool for video game players but is now being used for wider purposes. This includes conversations around books, music, art, and even just socialising. The company is now tweaking its branding and communications strategy to reflect this.
“As you’ve used Discord for more and more than playing games, our branding didn’t keep up, and the way we talked about ourselves sent the wrong signal to the world, making it harder for you to bring your broader community on Discord,” Citron wrote.
To address this, the company has changed its onboarding experience to make it easier for new users, added server templates that help them create new servers, and even made the jokes and references in the app “less gaming specific.”