Page 4 - Forbes Magazine-September 30, 2018

ROBLOX
ROBLOX

hen Alex at making games that attract other kids. “It’s almost as if we’re running Ameri-
Binello was Globally, Roblox sees more than 70 mil- can Idol for up-and-coming game devel-
13, he started lion unique visitors a month. Accord- opers,” Baszucki says.
playing games ing to comScore, 6- to 12-year-olds spend Roblox has its origin in a compa-
on a website more time on Roblox than any other ny Baszucki founded in 1989, an educa-
Wcalled Rob- site on the internet. Among teenagers, it tion tech startup called Knowledge Rev-
lox. He loved spending time with titles ranks second, just behind Google’s sites, olution. Th at company built a program
like Work at a Pizza Place and Down Hill including YouTube. Th at translates into that served as a 2-D lab where students
Smash! so much that he was inspired to some pretty impressive numbers: Ro- and teachers could model physics prob-
build his own. Now, 11 years later, he is blox is cash-fl ow-positive on an estimat- lems with virtual levers, ramps, pulleys
the creator of MeepCity, a sprawling role- ed $100 million in revenue last year (this and projectiles.
playing game that got 15 million visitors year that fi gure should be north of $200 What Baszucki discovered as his soft -
in July on the Roblox platform. Forbes es- million) and has raised some $185 million ware made it out into the student com-
timates the cartoonish game has earned in venture funding, valuing the compa- munity was that kids were using the pro-
Binello millions since its inception in ny at around $2.5 billion. Baszucki’s stake gram to do things far beyond textbook
2016. Th e 23-year-old, who has never is worth an estimated $300 million. (Ro- physics problems. Instead, students were
taken a single computer programming blox’s other founder, Erik Cassel, died of modeling cars crashing, buildings falling
class, now employs a salaried creative di- cancer in February 2013.) over and other fun stuff that the program’s
rector and uses six other freelance work- Part of the reason for this growth is physics tools enabled them to build.
ers to keep his game updated. “Roblox has the sheer number of games being pro- “Creativity by the players themselves
just been part of my life,” he says. “I feel duced. Nearly one million games are cre- was so much more engaging than the con-
raised by it a little bit.” ated every month by more than 4 mil- tent from the physics books,” he says.
Roblox, based in San Mateo, Califor- lion developers on the platform. Th ese In 1998, Knowledge Revolution was
nia, is a combination gaming and so- games cover a wide variety of genres, acquired for $20 million by an engineer-
cial media platform. Th ere are millions from traditional racing and role-play- ing soft ware company called MSC Soft -
of games that players—most- ware, so Baszucki decided to take
ly young people—can explore some time off and fi gure out what
with their friends, chatting he wanted to do next. Inspired by
and interacting all the way. the worlds kids had built in his
But what’s unique about Ro- interactive physics program, he
blox is that the gaming com- and Erik Cassel, who had been
pany isn’t in the business of vice president of engineering at
making games—it just pro- Knowledge Revolution, “went
vides the tools and the plat- into a room for over a year and a
form for kids to make their half” to build the fi rst version of
own unique creations. Most Roblox.
impressively, Roblox has “Right when we started, we
turned its tween audience into imagined a new category of
an army of fresh-faced en- IN 2017 UP-AND-COMING GAME people doing things together,”
trepreneurs. Developers can Baszucki says. “A category that
charge Robux, a virtual cur- DEVELOPERS EARNED NEARLY involved friends, like social net-
rency, for various items and $40 MILLION ON ROBLOX. THIS working; a category that involved
game experiences, and they immersive 3-D, like gaming; a
can exchange the Robux they YEAR THAT NUMBER SHOULD category that involved cool con-
earn for real money: 100 TOP $70 MILLION. tent, like a media company; and
Robux can be cashed out for fi nally a category that had unlim-
35 cents. (Players can buy 100 ited creation, like a building toy.”
Robux for $1.) ing games to the popular “cops and rob- For the fi rst few months aft er Roblox’s
“A lot of the developers on Roblox grew bers” game Jailbreak to more mundane 2005 beta deployment, the user commu-
up on the platform,” says Dave Baszucki, simulations like Snow Shoveling Simulator nity was tiny—during peak periods about
Roblox’s 55-year-old cofounder and CEO. and Work at a Pizza Place. Th e platform 50 people were playing at the same time
“And many of them are now starting to has even spawned its own genres, such as (today that number averages over a mil-
earn their living on the platform.” “obbys,” complex, hard-to-navigate obsta- lion), but the small size of the communi-
Kids, as it turns out, are pretty good cle courses. ty enabled Baszucki and Cassel to hang

108 | FORBES SEPTEMBER 30, 2018