MidJourney Rode Discord to AI Stardom

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Hi Operators ⚙️

Are you familiar with the Trojan Horse story? You know, when the Greeks, tired of fighting for ten years, pretended to give up and gifted their enemies, the Trojans, a giant wooden horse. 

The Trojans thought, "Wow, what a nice gift from our bitter enemies!" So they brought the horse inside the walls of the impenetrable city of Troy. By nightfall, the Greeks came out of the wooden horse and they took over Troy and finally beat the Trojans. Total bamboozle.

It’s such a sneaky and effective tactic that people are still pulling it off today.

Let me introduce, MidJourney.

MidJourney pulled off their version of this ancient hack—only instead of warriors inside a wooden horse, they snuck in a generative AI tool on Discord and quietly infiltrated servers packed with artists, designers, and curious creatives.

Before anyone even knew what was happening, MidJourney had an army of users spreading the word—one art prompt at a time. 

Mind you, AI tools are a growing industry that’s saturated with startups. There are over 80,400 AI companies worldwide as of this writing. Just last July, it was only around 70,000.

Many of these tools died off pretty quickly, despite the heavy marketing. 

MidJourney survived with no hard sell, no giant ad campaigns—just a clever little trick that worked like a charm.

Here’s how Midjourney pulled this off.

MidJourney rode Discord to AI stardom

In case you’ve been out of the loop, MidJourney is a tool that creates content from text prompts. You can make essays, memes, audio, and images.

You type in a description—like, say, “a futuristic city at sunset with flying cars”—and MidJourney generates a unique piece of art based on that. 

It’s been a game-changer for people who need quick, creative visuals without having to spend hours sketching or using complicated software.

The groundwork for Midjourney began in August 2021, after founder David Holz left Leap Motion.

Along with eight developers, one legal staff member, one finance staff member, and no marketing expert in sight, Holz and his team focused on developing the product. 

The result of the efforts…

• Speed: As of this writing, MidJourney is one of the fastest image generators out there. It can take as fast as one minute of GPU time to get your desired image after using a prompt. Yes, one minute is actually pretty fast.

• Quality: Like most image generators, MidJourney had a shaky start in terms of quality. The V6 model that launched this July is almost close to reality (which is actually scary, now that I think about it). Hands aren’t problematic anymore!

• Ease of use: MidJourney’s machine learning is excellent. It doesn’t matter if you’re new to tools like these, you’ll find it easy to generate quality images in no time with the right prompts. 

And if you have something like this, the immediate thought would be, “this product is perfect! Let’s go all out on a launch!” But here’s where MidJourney took a different route to growing.

While other AI startups launched websites to make their product available to the public. Holz and his team took the unconventional approach of launching a bot and a community on Discord.

But of all the messaging apps, why Discord?

For starters, the team did research on which platforms are good for MidJourney. As it turns out, AI fans preferred Discord over anything else.

The app was also very popular with streamers, content creators, creatives, and artists, who were the exact people that MidJourney was trying to cater to. It also doesn’t hurt that Discord had 175 million users when MidJourney was introduced. 

But this wasn’t the nail in the coffin that solidified their platform of choice.

The MidJourney team was mostly remote, so the office used Discord to chat amongst themselves. They began using bots and found out two things: they were fun and easy to use. Using MidJourney was as simple as talking to others on Discord. 

Once you get MidJourney bot running, just type /imagine followed by your prompt. Wait a few minutes, and poof. You’ve got yourself an AI generated image.

The official server of MidJourney had a newbie section where users could learn how to generate their images. Like AI themselves, users learned. They also began to do more.

1. A user sees AI generated art by MidJourney.

2. The same user tries Midjourney.

3. The user shares their art on other channels.

A cycle was created and MidJourney was at the center of it. The startup’s initial 11-member team didn’t need a marketing expert because the users were doing all of the advertising they’d ever need.

MidJourney was first available as an invite-only server where users shared their AI masterpieces.

After a successful few weeks, they switched to a new invite system. Paid subscribers could now invite five friends to the server. This resulted in more user exposure, demand, and FOMO (the perfect ingredients for success).

They grew from 0 users to over 20.77 million paying users in a little over 2 years. In an interview, founder David Holz says that the company was already making a profit by August that year.

To put that into perspective, startups generally start making a profit at least 4 years into their operations.

But if you analyze the strategic decision to launch slowly on Discord, there was another thing that Holz and his team were tapping into: user feedback.

AI uses machine learning to get better the more you interact with it. The people at Midjourney let users pick from four generated images inspired by their prompt.

Not everyone using MidJourney knows it, but their choices actively enhanced the tool through machine learning.

Without overcomplicating things, machine learning uses data and algorithms to help AI learn as humans do, so it gets better and more accurate over time.

So when users pick their favorite image from what MidJourney generates, the tool gradually understands the results we want when giving it prompts.

With a massive user base, a well-developed AI, and money for product development, MidJourney stepped out of its Discord shell and launched its dedicated website last December. 

And all of that because they did a Trojan Horse tactic! Odysseus would be so proud of Holz and his team.

You can penetrate markets with soft launches

If you haven’t pieced it together by now, MidJourney’s Trojan Horse is Discord, which they used to penetrate their market. Minus the Greek mythos comparisons, the company’s growth is simply a perfect case of a perfect soft launch.

Lots of things could’ve gone wrong if MidJourney focused on launching their product on a large scale first.

Worst case scenario, they’d have just been one of those AI startups that were swallowed up by the oversaturation of the market.

An approach like this pays off big in a few ways.

• Cost efficiency: This is one of the major benefits. Soft launches can cost somewhere between $15,000 - $80,000. It can even be much cheaper for certain industries. Launching a game app, for instance, can only cost $500-$1,000. On the other hand, a hard launch can cost $130,000 or more. For an AI company like Midjourney, the soft launch on Discord heavily cut down operating costs during its early days. AI startups have problems with operating costs because of the expenses.

• Low Risk: Soft launches allow you to test various aspects of your product with minimal risk. For MidJourney, it was the price of the subscription and the quality of the image generator itself. It’s a good time to fine-tune things like prices, overall quality, and product-market fit.

• Loyal Following: Psychologist Robert Cialdini wrote in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion that people value things more when they are scarce or exclusive. Liking things before they are cool is a validation that a lot of people seek. Unlike hipsters, consumers don’t leave a product once it gains popularity. They’ll recommend it to people they know!

It’s important to note that you need to set small goals for your soft launch. This can be something as simple as getting feedback from customers which you can use to drive product development. 

It can also be to start exposing your product to a small market till word of mouth makes it grow to larger audiences. Or, you can set multiple goals for it as well.

While launches like these are good in many ways, they can still go wrong. The biggest downside to it is that it can take long before your business gets the traction you want. But considering the upsides, it’s a pretty good trade-off. 

If you really want to make your soft launch successful, the first step is finding the perfect place for it. MidJourney’s developers took their sweet time researching which communication apps to launch their image generator on. Discord wasn’t just a lottery choice.

• Know your audience: First, understand who your target customer is and where they hang out. MidJourney knew that their product would appeal to AI lovers and creatives, so they looked for a platform where there are lots of these.

• Size of the market: A soft launch is all about testing and tweaking, so pick a smaller market that mirrors your larger target audience. Think mid-sized cities or trendy neighborhoods. You want enough people to get feedback from, but not so many that it’s overwhelming.

• Location matters: Make sure the location is easy to get to for your customers, media, and influencers. Places near public transit, malls, or city centers are great options, depending on what you’re launching. If it’s software you’re launching, then do what MidJourney did and find a suitable digital platform to work with.

Soft launches are a strategy that’s been used by many others and I think it’s useful especially if you’re on a limited budget. Pull it off with the perfect Trojan Horse and you’ll be penetrating the market in no time.

Your soft launch isn’t your actual launch.

You can think of it as a preparatory stage for what’s to come when you finally make your product or service available to a wider market.

If we’re going to take a look back at MidJourney’s approach to it, there are three key takeaways to apply for your business.

• Grand launches don’t always work. Especially if you’re in a tough market. MidJourney launched when the AI industry was saturated with tools, including ones made by big names like Open AI and Adobe. Its tactical approach to launching provided a low-risk way to enter the market.

• How and where you launch matters.  Don’t rush getting your business out there. Choose your platforms or partners properly. Ideally, you’d want to launch where you’ll be exposed to your target audience immediately so that you can develop a small but loyal following. 

• Make it a learning experience. Even when MidJourney was a hit on Discord during their first months, it still took them over a year to launch a dedicated platform. They took their sweet time on Discord, improving their product and pay model along the way.

The final thought?

A well-executed good soft launch can lower the risks for bigger ventures in the future.

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