18. Discord

Founders: Jason Citron (CEO), Stanislav Vishnevskiy
Launched: 2015
Headquarters: San Francisco
Funding: $1.1 billion
Valuation: $14.7 billion (PitchBook)
Key technologies: N/A
Industry: Media
Previous appearances on Disruptor 50 List: 2 (No. 13 in 2022)

Once a platform dominated by gamers, Discord has developed into a major social media platform for communication via voice, video and text. It has grown from a small startup to an acquisition target of big tech with 150 million monthly active users across 19 million active servers per week and 4 billion conversation minutes daily. 

One of the key aspects of the Discord business model that made it stand apart early from bigger rivals like Facebook was its creative approaches toward monetization — i.e. not relying on ad revenue. Discord subscription services give users special features including higher quality streams and customization abilities. This approach has become more popular across social media, especially in the current advertising downturn. Under Elon Musk, Twitter recently moved to a subscription service for users to verify their accounts and receive additional account benefits. 

But with Discord's growth, it has run into many of the big issues that have dogged social media giants: safety and misinformation. Social media is also facing one of its greatest legal challenges ever, with the Supreme Court poised to review whether Section 230 statute of the Communications Decency Act should provide these companies with immunity from user content liability claims, as has been the case throughout their rise.

Harassment reports on Discord became a big problem in recent years, an especially sensitive issue given its generally younger demographic. In its latest transparency report, published in December 2022, the company said it had disabled 42,458 accounts and removed 14,451 servers for child safety violations during the third quarter of 2022, a 92% decrease in the number of accounts disabled when compared to the previous quarter. 

The company has been investing heavily to combat this problem, acquiring Sentropy, an AI-based software company focused on fighting abuse and harassment online, and creating AutoMod, a moderation tool designed to protect communities. Discord says it has helped remove 20 million unwanted messages in since its launch.  

Along with new safety tools, Discord launched features such as Forum Channels, which help community servers hold conversations without drowning users out, and Activities, which allow users to hang out with one another in more interactive ways. A cheaper subscription option called Nitro Basic came out last year, and the new Server Subscriptions feature lets community-enabled servers monetize their servers.  

It is also trying to promote a more positive use of social media among teens, with its recent acquisition of Gas, a quickly growing app popular with students that is designed around positive affirmations.

But the issues won't go away. Case in point: Discord was at the center of the recent major national security leak when it was reported Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira allegedly used the platform to share classified documents.