>>6785209(they have none)
Discord had venture capitalists funding them as they offered a good quality, simple reliable chat service where no one else did. They and took over the market as a result. RaidCall had just gone went down, Skype was too personal, exposed your IP capped the number of people in a call, and had no persistence, Steam still had shittily implemented hard-to-use voice chat, and no one wants to set up or pay for their own TS or Vent server. Discord also works in a browser so requires literally no investment beyond clicking a link.
People were suspicious of where they made their money because of the "if you're not a paying customer you're the product" mantra, but Discord has always been pretty transparent about that, with a solid privacy policy, communication, and no real scandals. They've even confirmed that once you delete a message, not even they can recover it.
It wasn't philanthropy though. User-bases are more valuable than a good product. Now they're everywhere, they completely control the market, they offer Nitro, a premium service which gives you games and custom emoticons and what not, and they're also now a game-selling platform like Steam.
I'm glad they provide the service they do, and I'm glad the Steam is going to have some actual competition really soon here.