HACKER Q&A
📣 gtirloni

Why isn't Discord marketing to companies?


It seems the whole "for gamers" thing is a missed opportunity considering how much marketshare Slack has. Their app is consistently recommended on HN as replacement too. Are they better off as a "gamer" chat/voice app?


  👤 muzani Accepted Answer ✓
I helped a Slack competitor with sales for one job. They said they avoided marketing to tech companies because it's really hard to convince techies that Slack is better than X, and many were fanatically attached to it.

However, they have a very good market share with non-tech companies - food industry, construction, hospitals, etc.

It wasn't so much that it was a bad app for tech industry, more that it's hard to penetrate the market. The other industries were dealing with WhatsApp groups and needed something better, and even considering building a solution themselves.


👤 davidmott
I spent around a year building a game on iOS with a couple colleagues and we only really communicated via Discord. However, whenever I'm building a product for someone else outside of the gaming industry I mostly use Slack/Skype. I tend the think the reason for this is that Discord is just a little more on the casual side and they seem to be doing very well within their market. Thus, sometimes it's better not to fix what isn't broken.

👤 andrewfan
It might be that Discord does no want to compete with Slack/Teams but wants to fully take a gaming/community niche while bigger players are fighting.

👤 unlinked_dll
It doesn't satisfy business needs (saved history for all time mainly) while it supplants WhatsApp and Facebook messenger group chats for casual groups very well