Gifted a second-hand PC by his grandfather, teenage coder Jason Citron chased a dream of making games—only to watch his ambitious mobile title flop. Out of that setback he forged a friction-free voice-and-chat app to end the pain of talking with friends while gaming, then scaled it into Discord, the community backbone for more than 200 million users. In this series we unpack the pivotal failures, bold pivots, and breakthrough technologies that turned a hobby project into a global platform.