Jason Citron

Citron is originally from Long Island, New York. He graduated from Full Sail University in 2004, began his career in game programming and started his own ventures in 2008.⁠[1]

Citron founded the social mobile gaming platform OpenFeint in August 2008 and served as its chief executive; based in Burlingame, California, it had more than 75 million registered users by April 2011.⁠[2]

On April 21, 2011, Japan’s GREE announced it would pay $104 million for all of OpenFeint’s outstanding securities, plus additional capital for growth; structured as a triangular merger, the deal made OpenFeint a wholly owned subsidiary under GREE International, and the merger agreement was signed and completed the same day.⁠[2]

In April 2012 Citron set up the game studio Phoenix Guild, whose first project was the mobile MOBA Fates Forever; Stanislav Vishnevskiy joined in April 2013. In summer 2014 the studio, renamed Hammer & Chisel, launched Fates Forever, whose built-in voice chat, text chat and forums laid the groundwork for Discord.⁠[3]

In May 2015 Citron and Vishnevskiy released the first version of Discord, a gaming-focused chat app for desktop and mobile built to solve how friends could talk while gaming together.⁠[3]

On January 31, 2024, Citron, as chief executive of Discord, appeared as a witness alongside MetaMetaMeta (Meta Platforms, Inc.) is a publicly listed American technology company, renamed from Facebook in 2021, that operates social communication, digital advertising, virtual reality, smart glasses and artificial intelligence businesses.Open the full entry’s Mark ZuckerbergMark ZuckerbergMark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook, Chairman and CEO of Meta, and a co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. His work spans social networking, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry, Snap’s Evan SpiegelEvan SpiegelEvan Spiegel is an American entrepreneur who, while a student at Stanford University in 2011, developed the disappearing-photo app Snapchat with Bobby Murphy and others, and has served since 2012 as Chief Executive Officer of its parent company, Snap Inc. Snap went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2017 with non-voting shares; he has made a long-running bet on the augmented reality glasses Spectacles and Specs.Open the full entry, TikTok’s Shou Chew and X Corp.XX (X Corp.) is the company that operates the social platform of the same name, carrying on Twitter’s public conversation service; its main businesses include advertising, business promotion, and paid subscriptions.Open the full entry’s Linda YaccarinoLinda YaccarinoLinda Yaccarino is an American media and advertising executive who served as chief executive officer of the social platform X (formerly Twitter) from June 2023 to July 2025. Before that she led advertising sales at NBCUniversal for more than a decade; her tenure at X saw an advertiser exodus, brand-safety controversies and lawsuits against advertising-industry groups. After leaving X, she became chief executive officer of the telehealth company eMed Population Health in August 2025.Open the full entry at the US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis,” presided over by Chair Dick Durbin; the committee published his written testimony on its website.⁠[4]

On May 10, 2024, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry published the a16z Podcast episode “How Discord Became a Developer Platform,” in which a16z general partner Anjney MidhaAnjney MidhaAnjney Midha is an entrepreneur, investor, and researcher, the founder of AMP, and a visiting scientist in applied physics at Stanford University. He co-founded Ubiquity6, led developer platform ecosystem work after the company was acquired by Discord, joined Andreessen Horowitz in 2023 to work on AI investing, and currently serves at the firm as a Venture Partner.Open the full entry, who merged his company Ubiquity6 with Discord in 2021, talked with Citron, then Discord’s co-founder and chief executive. The episode traced Citron’s work building tools and infrastructure for games since 2009 and discussed community-driven product development, Discord’s expansion from serving gamers to serving developers, its long-standing commitment to platform extensibility, and its newly released embeddable apps that make it easier for developers to build on the platform; the episode page stated that Discord had “over 200 million monthly active users.”⁠[5]

The video was uploaded to the a16z YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel under the same title on June 23, 2024.⁠[6]

On April 23, 2025, Discord named Humam Sakhnini as chief executive; Citron, chief executive since the company’s inception, remained on the board of directors and moved into an advisory role to the new chief executive. “Building Discord over the last decade has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life,” Citron said.⁠[7]

Citron serves on the board of Campus and formerly served on the Bay Area Leadership Board of the Seneca Family of Agencies.⁠[1]

Discord: Official website: https://discord.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]