Since the Discord drama, I keep getting some variation of the same question:
“Tawny, seize this opportunity. This is huge for efchat.”
I’m focused on slow, steady technical progress. Why?
- Our team is very, very small.
- We have limited funds.
- We have technical gaps that we must bridge.
- Once we bridge the technical gaps, we need a monetization strategy.
I don’t think Discord will be able to reverse course. They’re a behemoth, and they will suffer from lag because of the size of their organization. We have to stay focused on delighting you all, rather than flair.
My belief about products is to make things that people love, find joy in using, and that bring utility to their lives. I think if we do this, efchat has a place for itself in the world. And we must always put you all first: privacy, security, integrity.
We’re building in a very adversarial environment - from trolls or anons who seek to disrupt or cause chaos, to nation-states that want to limit their people from communicating freely, to other platforms that wish to exploit humans. Most platforms give up here, and I think we’re on a visionary course to correct some of these industry mistakes and give people a product that they can feel good using. This, I believe, will win the day. ♡
Last thing. I think other platforms are hyper-Discord-focused. They wish to build a clone of Discord and think they can compete with the Discord model and build an alternative. I think this has been tried over and over, and it always fails. People have tried YouTube clones, Instagram clones, Twitter clones - none of these work. Why? Because people already have those things. So our strategy is different: build things that people love, build things that respect people, and surprise and delight.