In this week's Launched, I explored the early days of Discord.

A single post on the Final Fantasy XIV subreddit attracted the first 600 users.

But how did this balloon into 3M users in Discord's first six months? ⬇️

Discord started its life as Hammer & Chisel, a studio that developed iPad games.

The company's first title, "Fates Forever," got great critic reviews - but struggled to attract users.

So, the team decided to pivot to what was working: the game's text and voice chat features.

The company re-launched in 2015 as a messaging tool for Final Fantasy.

On May 16, u/chreescawk asked in the game's subreddit: "Just switched to a program called Discord for our VOIP, has anyone else tried it?"

This post drove the first 600 signups!

www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/366fgd/just_switched_to_a_program_called_discord_for_our/

The team leaned in to the Final Fantasy community.

They ran ads targeting legacy tools TeamSpeak & Skype, published game guides, and gave away collectibles.

The co-founders also personally fielded dozens of user Qs. Self-described "dev" u/illumina_ is CEO @jasoncitron 😎

Read more about how Discord converted this early traction into a user base of 150M MAUs (and growing!) in this week's Launched:

readlaunched.substack.com/p/6ad0bfd5-d92f-42cc-ab04-74f22efbfea6

Side note - four issues into Launched, I'm finding that Reddit is a key source of early customer acquisition for many consumer unicorns!

It's pretty much unparalleled as a way to reach niche communities for low (or no) cost...

(cc @alexisohanian 👀)