Roblox CEO David Baszucki (EXTENDED VERSION)

David Baszucki, Roblox CEO & Co-Founder speaks with Emily Chang about building an online gaming platform with over 50 million daily users, cultivating a civil digital community, and scaling a future metaverse.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So in real life you're the CEO of Roadblocks, but
on Roadblocks your builder man, you know that name. We
just thought it up when um is, maybe two weeks
after we launched, and we were all picking our own
user names and everyone picked one night. So you've had
the same avatar since two thousand four. That's right, that's awesome.

(00:22):
Do you still play? I do. I wish I could
play the whole day. I have to be a CEO.
So how often do you play? I'm probably on every day,
but not as much as I would like. I have
four kids. I have a nine year old son who's
on Roadblocks a lot. He said his favorite games are
the Tycoon games. Oh, lumber Tycoon, theme Park Tycoon. I

(00:44):
love those. I love all of those. I have a
bit of a theory. I have four kids, and yeah
they're now they've grown up watching me do this and
other they're pretty savvy social media people. But I'm optimistic
someday they're going to be using Roadblocks for some other reason,
like communicating or more working or something like that, and

(01:06):
then they're going to be, oh gosh, as like forest
to the Roadblocks. Hi everyone, I'm Emily Chang and welcome
to this edition of the bloom Brook Studio One point
Oh podcast. On this edition of Boombrook Studio at one
point Oh, we're speaking with Roadblocks CEO and co founder
David Bazuki, or as he's known on Roadblocks Builderman, a

(01:29):
portmanteau of robots and blocks. Roadblocks started as a three
D world where users could build, share, and play games.
Thanks to the pandemic, it has boomed into a global
online gaming juggernaut that kids are obsessed with, racking up
ten billion plus hours on the platform a quarter. It's
been a slow build. Roadblocks launched in two thousand four

(01:50):
and was building its version of the Metaverse long before
Mark Zuckerberg changed Facebook's name to Meta. In this episode,
Bazooky paints his vision for the immersive and interconnected future
where users can not only play roller coaster games, but
attend town halls, go to school, industry conferences, concerts, and
even political rallies one day. Is this future really possible?

(02:14):
And how far out is it? And how do we
cultivate a civil digital society within it that keeps kids safe?
Joining me now on this edition of Bloombrook Studio At
one point Oh, Roadblocks CEO and co founder, David Buzuki.
David's so great to have you here. I really appreciate it.
It's wonderful to be with you. Well, I'm a parent,
I'm a mom, and so I've been really excited um

(02:35):
to have this conversation for parents and anyone out there
who still doesn't quite understand what exactly our kids doing
on roadblocks. Yeah, kids on roadblocks aren't just playing, they're learning.
They're hanging out together when they can't be together in
real life. They're hanging out on roadblocks. They could be
playing hide and go seek. They could be pretending they're

(02:57):
running a store or a pizza arler. They could be
making the next big game or adventure. So it's really
a wide range of things, and it involves doing things together,
pretending you're together. So right now it's mostly games or
experiences for kids by kids. How old are these players,
How old are these developers? Yeah, so what's really exciting.

(03:20):
It's almost like in the old days people to have
a paper route or something like that, and now in
today's world, we see young players starting to build these
experiences on roadblocks. And one thing that a lot of
people don't realize everything on Roadblocks has been built by
the community, millions of experiences, avatars, what people wear, the clothing,

(03:40):
all of that. We have young players who are getting
interested in coding, who are getting interested in designing things.
But more and more of the community on Roadblocks has
blossomed into this super rich ecosystem. Thousands of developers making
a living on the platform. Some of the studios this
year will have over a hundred people in the studio.

(04:01):
Some of these developers are making tens or twenties or
fifty millions of dollars a year. A lot of people
are starting to make a living on the platform. So
how many of these developers are really kids? And how
many of these developers are now grown ups? Yeah, well
I think two million plus developers. A lot of them
are grown ups, and more and more, in addition to
the natural organic people that started on Roadblocks, we're starting

(04:23):
to studios come in on the platform as well. Professional
game developers who are developing on other platforms starting to
take a look at it. So our developer demo naturally
leans a little bit older, although we've had kids as
young as thirteen come to our developer conference and actually
pay to bring their parents to the Developer Conference, which

(04:44):
is ACT, which is amazing. Of the users on roadblocks,
which there's over fifty million every day we recently passed,
the majority of them are over thirteen rather than under thirteen,
so they've they've grown up with us and they've stayed
with us. Interesting. Is there something about preserving the ability
for young kids to be able to make games for

(05:05):
other kids? I mean, because obviously if you have you know,
fancy studios muscling in UM, does that change the dynamic
of the PLATF I think it does. I think we
see more interesting new ideas that are maybe riskier that
we might not see from a professional game studio. We
see interesting game dynamics. UM. One of my favorite experiences

(05:28):
as natural disasters that's been on the platform forever by
one of our early developers. It's not the kind of
thing that I think a normal studio would ever think of,
but when developed by young creator, you know, we're gonna
be we're gonna be hanging out together and there's gonna
be a hurricane and we've got to like run away
from it, or there's gonna be a lightning storm, like

(05:49):
that kind of stuff. We see a lot of that
creative gameplay coming from the younger developers. Um, what were
you into as a kid? Were you a gamer? I
was kind of a nerd when I was a kid.
I was studied really hard. I luckily grew up in
Eden Prairie, Minnesota. At the time, it was out in
the boonies from Minneapolis, Minnesota's there were sand pits and

(06:11):
so we did a lot of model rockets, and we
built go carts, and you know, it's kind of one
of these idyllic childhoods. The one key thing that happened
to me very early on as we had a computer
lab in the school, and then my parents bought me
an Apple two at the time, and that kind of
got me interested in this. I also heard you were
the captain of your high school TV quiz team. Yeah,

(06:34):
so think of think of Minnesota in the nineteen seventies
and eighties where every weekend two different schools compete for
students from each school, you know, in a really funny
four by four configurations on a quizzble thing. So yeah,
Eden Prairie had a pretty good quiz Bowl team. I

(06:54):
love that. You eventually made it to Silicon Valley, went
to Stanford. You started a company called knowledge revolution in
the eighties where users could create and test physics experiments.
That's right. So the science kid in you coming to life. Yeah,
you know, went to school, had a couple of hard
years with jobs that weren't really that exciting. Took a

(07:14):
few months off and I got really excited about there's
this whole blossoming educational software marketplace in the Macintosh had
just been introduced, and it was just really interesting, exciting.
I did a survey of all of that, and a
lot of the educational software was very pre canned. So
when we looked at physics, it was a whole different idea.
Could we make a wide open laboratory where you could

(07:37):
build anything, any physics experiment, bring it to life, measure it,
see what it feels like. And a funny anecdote of
all of that is when we went to watch students
playing with interactive physics at the time, a lot of
them were just building stuff, building cars and buildings and
playing around. Really, you sold that company, made some money,

(07:58):
you became an investor, and you invested in friends Ster.
Oh yeah, wow, I had a friends Store account. I'm
dating myself a little bit here, but I had a
friend's stir account. Um, I'm curious what you learned from
the early days of social media. Yeah, so one thing
I learned is it was really fun to invest, but
it's not my sweet spot. Like my sweet spot is

(08:19):
trying to build and create things. I remember I think
having account number seventy nine on Friends there and just
seeing that wonderful thing of finding other people friend of friends,
playing around with that early user interface. It's a little
bit almost thinking of interactive physics where we were simulating
the world, and then friends they're seeing how important social is.

(08:42):
Those are a couple of the components that have come
together in roadblocks. Google almost bought friends stir right, and
I don't know, but those are the early days of
social networking, you know, Friendster or kid my Space, pre Facebook.
I mean, this was things were just getting rolling. I
just wonder if that had happened, what if something might
have been different? Right? Yeah, I hate to, of course

(09:05):
roll back the clock on that company. Um, you know,
there there were some things I think that added friction
to them, and ultimately they didn't end up being the
dominant player. Any thoughts about Twitter, who should buy it? Oh?
Such a difficult thing, you know, I think the philosophical question,
is Twitter and newspaper that's heavily edited, or is it

(09:27):
a platform which is kind of the spigot of all
the world's information or somewhere in between. Is a very
difficult job to be the CEO of Twitter and figure
out what how do we moderate? What's our vision of
what kind of content is on that platform? Do you
think Elon Musk could do it better than the job
has been done so far. I'm a big believer in

(09:47):
these platforms trying to have a lot of consistency, and
we think about right now roadblocks when we think about
how we run civility and safety, which is just so
important for us. Because we lean so heavily into civility
and safety, we almost have an easier job. Whereas a
platform like Twitter, with just such a wide range of

(10:08):
stories and news and people. What is information? What is disinformation?
What is fact? What is not? I think it's a
very difficult job. Interesting, So what do you think the
solution is we, I mean are I'll talk about roadblocks
and our vision because we we do imagine there's a
time when platforms like Roadblocks are for play, for learning,

(10:29):
for working together. Someday there may even be political rallies
on a platform like Roadblocks, and so thinking through when
would we allow that, when would we not? It takes
a lot of visionary thinking. One thing that's very interesting
about these platforms is that we do have a set
of laws and guidelines and things that we're used to

(10:50):
in the real world. Like we're we kind of know
what we can do in the physical world. Could you
do this? Some things, of course we could. We can
rent a stadium, we can get together with people. Some
things of course we can't. You know, we can't call
for violence, we can't sell certain things. So tuning in
on the laws of the physical world is actually an
interesting starting point for thinking about how we might run

(11:12):
a metaverse that someday has a lot of different people
on it. So when you started Roadblocks in two thousand four,
were you thinking about any of this or what was
the idea back then? I wasn't thinking about this question
right now, which is so difficult. Um what I was
thinking about And I think this started well beyond before
two thousand four. There was a trip I was taking once.

(11:35):
I was driving across the country to northern Canada. It
was snowing for two days. I was visiting my grandparents,
and in the midst of that, the feeling of this
new category for me started feeling almost inexorable. It's a
category that people have been talking about in sci fi
for many, many years. We've seen futurists talk about it.

(11:55):
We've seen a lot of movies. So I started seeing
this category is going to happen. But we weren't thinking
about all these complex issues. We were thinking, Yes, immersive
three D coexperience. What's the next evolution from the from
you know, telephone to video call to immersive three D call.

(12:15):
That started to seem very very natural. Kids flocked to
Roadblocks during the pandemic. We went public in the middle
of the pandemic. Dollar market cap we spoke on that day.
Even you have said that kind of growth won't keep up.
What kind of growth can we expect from roadblocks in
normal times? Yeah, well this is It's what's so exciting

(12:37):
for us running this company. It's almost as if um
it's ten years after Mr Bell developed the phone. You know,
it's very early on in this, but this is ultimately
a category we believe every It's gonna be a part
of all of our lives. It's going to be the
way we communicate how people get to go to school
when they can't get into school, how people they're going

(12:59):
to go to school in roadblocks. I think ultimately some
people who can't go to physical school will use immersive
three D technology to go beyond video school, so that
if we if I happen to be taking my science
class and I can't get into the classroom and we're
dissecting a frog, will probably dissect a frog in something
like roadblocks on a simulation, which I think is going

(13:22):
to be very, very powerful. And for our company, where
there's a lot of people that are going to end
up working all around the world, some of us will
be in the office, some won't. Having a common three
D place where we can have those water cooler conversations
where everyone has a desk, but we get that serendipitous
thing where we both happen to go over and chat.
I think also is going to be very big. So

(13:45):
UM this is a very big category. I believe it's
ultimately going to be just as natural as video or phone.
We're all gonna have it. But it's very early on
in that UM. There are now more than two million
experience ances on roadblocks right you mentioned the possibility of
political rallies. We've seen concerts. A Little nas concert drew

(14:07):
thirty three million people. How is it that experiences right
now rise to the top and how do you see
that evolving as the platform grows. Yeah, so it's really exciting.
I met Little Naz at the Grammys. Awesome, And the
concert was really exciting for us because for artists who

(14:29):
are used to either Okay, I'm music online streaming or
I'm doing a physical concert. It's almost as if it's
the third possible way. It's an immersive, three D concert
where so many people can come. What was his feedback, Oh,
we talked about the songs that we used. I shared
that I watched the concert with my daughter. Um. I

(14:52):
got a really great picture with him. He was very
busy because he had just performed, so we didn't get
to hang out too much. Um. But anyways, No, I
I do think that, I mean, artists really excited about
that this potential, right, I think so, I mean it's
it's almost like when Disney said We're going from black
and white to color. There's a new medium here for artists.
I really think this is a third way to perform

(15:14):
and connect with fans, and I can see I see
a future where artists who might want a more intimate venue,
maybe a thousand people, they can connect with simul performing
with a live audience of a thousand and a digital
audience of ten million, all at the same time, so
they can kind of get feedback from that. So I
really think it's early and it's a huge opportunity for

(15:36):
artists to connect with their fans. So what happens to
real world concerts? What changes about the real world if
there are so many opportunities in the digital world. I
think real world concerts are here forever. I mean, they're
so intimate and they're so awesome. But I think what
may happen is some artists may choose more intimate venues

(15:59):
where you know, the fans they're participating with our closer
to them, so they can connect and make eye contact
and all of that. And it may be that the
fans that are all the way in the top of
the stadium still want to be there in person, so
that's not going to go away. But instead of sixty
thou fans, I think there'll be ten million fans and

(16:19):
there'll be a lot more room for other fans. There's
a big concern about how, you know, the rise of
digital experiences or the metaverse will impact real world connections,
real life connections. So you know, you and I have
done interviews virtually, and I can say, sitting with you
here right now, it's a it's a totally different and
much richer experience. Do you worry about that at all? Yeah,

(16:41):
we think about this a lot, and we think about
other technologies that have influenced that. You know, the telephone,
pure audio versus in person. It's sometimes harder to get
a connection when we're on the phone then we're in person.
We're pretty optimistic about this, and we're pretty optimistic that
between all all the different ways people connect phone, video, SMS,

(17:05):
ultimately super high quality immersive three D, the people will
naturally choose the balance of them. But yeah, even within
our companies, M me personally, I think it's hard to
beat physical connection in most cases. Everybody is talking about
the metaverse as something that's going to happen in the future,
but there's an argument to be made that Roadblocks has

(17:26):
already built a metaverse. What do you think I think
we've started And um, it goes back to how exciting
it is to have a company in this space that
I think is ultimately got so many years of growth
to it, and as a new category following other types
of technologies, there's still so much innovation to be done

(17:47):
and there's so much invention to be done in this
category that's mind boggling. We're still very far away from
that that little nas concert having fifty thousand people in
the stadium and having it feel real. Um, we're still
far away from when you and I communicate rather than
calling on the phone, we're gonna do a roadblocks three
D call. You know, we're ways away from that. So's

(18:08):
just still so much innovation and invention to happen here.
The critics think that metaverse, the term is just marketing.
How do you respond to that? Yeah, I I really
think this is a huge new category, going all the
way back to snow crash. You know, it's inexorable. This
type of technology is much more difficult than the net

(18:29):
or the web, which was another huge thing that we
saw predicted and has started to come. But but I
think we're seeing early signs of it. We're seeing in
addition to playing on roadblocks um first robotics, for example,
getting into learning where you know, building robots in a competition.
Not everyone has access to all of that hardware and

(18:50):
all of those tools. So starting to think about, oh
my gosh, there's a digital version of it where we
can build their robots together and go compete. We're starting
to see those kind of things, and so I'm I'm
very optimistic that this category is really big. When Mark
Zuckerberg announced his plan to own the metaverse and change
Facebook's name to Meta as if it was something new,

(19:12):
did that kind of bother you, Um, No, of course not.
I mean, this is the This is so big and
so early, it's really hard to predict. In five to
ten or twenty years, what are the companies that really
figure it out. And there's so many elements of innovation
that are needed. Um, having a U g C community

(19:34):
one of our strengths. We think that's like a huge
starting point for us. But we're early in our quest
for innovation here. I think having these platforms based on
civility is a huge thing. I'm very proud that we
started from a younger audience because we've had to focus
so much on that. So so thinking of these platforms

(19:55):
is a place where the world ultimately gets better. People
learn civility on platforms like this, maybe even where they
don't in the real world. So I'm very optimistic about that.
Are you optimistic about Meta's ability to do that? Because
I've spoken to other gaming executives who don't think Facebook
is an innovative company. You know, I can't call like
I get. I think everyone's trying really hard, and I

(20:18):
think everyone realizes this is a huge emerging opportunity. Once again,
following on telephone video, what's it going to be? It's
still so early. Every company is trying to figure out
their own view of this. It's so early that everyone
has a different viewpoint on what this is. And the
key point is, I think there's five or ten more

(20:40):
big inventions and innovations that are going to have to
happen along the way to make this possible. So still
very early. Roadblocks has built a huge business selling row bucks,
the in game currency. I want you to talk to
us a little bit about what that is. You can
use it to buy a new outfit for your avatar,
for example. Does this evolve into a much bigger marketplace? Well,

(21:04):
I think, um, this is how we've been able to
go from hobbyists to that paper route for a thirteen
year old who maybe earns a hundred dollars a month,
to deciding whether to make this a full time job,
to start a studio, and everything in between. And it
was this revelation that people would ultimately make a living

(21:25):
on platforms like this that started this digital currency is
very roadblocks centric in that where a system's company or utility.
So rather than being a roadblocks way that people monetize,
our developers are very creative. They in birds Simulator UM
it's all free. The majority of people on our platform

(21:46):
never pay anything, but if you want to be an
eagle more quickly, you can use a few roebucks and
the developer will contribute that. Or if you want to
buy motor scooter and work at a pizza place, you
can use a few roebucks. So it has formed this
robust economy. It's allowed us to keep robocks, you know,
roadblocks is free for the vast majority, and it's created

(22:07):
this new living. I think it's very very early because
as we start to get into UM ways of working
on platforms like this, on concerts, on other forms, there's
a there's a huge economic opportunity on this platform. So
you have Roebucks. Meta is working on something similar. Internally,
they call it zack Box again you Um, we're very

(22:32):
proud of Roebucks, right, it's it's tied into our name.
UM would Roadblocks have a partner with some of these
other companies working on the metaverse, whether it is Meta
or Unity or Epic or Microsoft, there's We're always open
to partnerships, and so when we think about the types
of partnerships, I think some of these are going to

(22:52):
be very easy. Some are going to be very difficult.
The core technology of you know, how are we going
to ultimately support fifty people in real time on a
phone going to a concert together and waving it your friends.
I think that's gonna be a lot of engineering work
that each company is going to be working on, you know,
probably individually, and it's going to be really hard. As

(23:14):
far as ultimately can an avatar go from one place
to another, I think they'll be lightweight ways of starting
to think about that. We're already great partners with Microsoft.
We're on Xbox. We love it so UM love being
partners with them. We're great partners with Google, We're great
partners with Apple, and there's a lot of other platforms
that we might want to be partners with, and of

(23:36):
course Facebook's got Oculus Quest, which is a VR headset,
which we're we'd like to be partners with as well.
So when you talk about the technological difficulties, does this
mean Roadblocks whose code would need to change in order
to enable more integration with some of these other parties.
Not really, because the code we write on Roadblocks right
now already runs on PCs and Max on iOS and Android,

(23:58):
on Xbox or actually in this wonderful position where adding
new platforms is pretty simple and straight interesting. So do
you envision a bunch of different walled gardens or one
large garden. I think it's too early to tell, Like
everyone's trying to figure out what it's almost so early,
it's like we're almost feel like we're in the CompuServe,

(24:19):
or you know, it's really early. We just went from
bulletin boards to CompuServe and the net hasn't been invented
yet and everyone's still very very early. So figuring out
what ultimately does this evolve two is is really hard.
I think at some point in the time, how who

(24:40):
knows how far out in the future you could imagine
the same thing that happened on the web. There's the
lamp stack, there's open standards, and you know, we we
all kind of connect together. I think it's just a
question of how far and how long that time is.
I'm curious about the role you think Apple and Google
should play here roadblocks back Apple in the Epic Games suit? Um,

(25:04):
why is that? And what role should Apple and Android
play in the metaverse? Yeah, so we've been very neutral
in the suit and both with the Apple and Google
that typically what we say is, look, um, any money,
if there was a change in those store fees, if
those store fees went down, that's money we would just
move directly to our developer community. They're making all of this,

(25:25):
and the more the more money that flows through to them,
the better the creations can go in the In this
specific example, there is just one key point and I
wouldn't even you know, you can call it backing Apple
or whatever, where there's a point around whether platforms, for
either safety or security reasons can moderate the content on

(25:47):
their platform. And because we're so we believe safety and
civility is so important for us. That's when we said
we agreed with the cord on we do think a
platform should be able to moderate the content on the platform,
but it wasn't a universal like yes, yes, yes, So
what role do you think Apple and Android should play
in the metaphors and what their policies need to change

(26:09):
to really support this vision? Yeah, I think right now
we're you know, once again, the biggest thing we would
take advantage of if it were to happen, is a
change in those store fees. We we stay out of it.
We like Google and Apple kind of run their businesses.
But when we think about more and more developers making

(26:29):
a living on platforms like us and having to build stuff, Um,
if those store fees were to change, we would move
most of that money back to our developers. So, as
you said, and you said this earlier, your goal is
to build an entirely new category of human co experience,
the next phase of human interaction. How do you moderate

(26:55):
that on such a massive scale and are you doing
a good enough It's it's in tremendously important to us.
And in the third week when we were live, you
can go imagine Eric and myself back in our small office.
Eric and I said, oh my gosh, safety and civilities
that we're going to have to do it. We had
maybe a hundred people at the time chatting on Roadblocks.

(27:19):
We saw a few not that egregious, but early signs
and we just made the call, this is going to
be the foundation of what we do. In the early
years of Roadblocks, the four of us then as Matt
and John came on board. Every day one of us
was the head moderator and we did it ourselves, so
we learned how important this is. As we've gotten bigger,

(27:41):
we've gotten to the point where there's thousands of moderators.
Every image that goes on our platform gets human reviewed.
We filter text very stringently, especially for thirteen and under players.
We use a lot of AI and mL to help
do this. We're always getting better, but it is a
key thing for us, and with six employees in the company,

(28:05):
we have a lot of parents working at Roadblocks, some
on our civility team who have kids on the platform,
so it helps reinforce the importance of that. Who do
you outsource moderation too, and how does that process actually work?
We don't really outsource, like we build all of the
safety and moderation tools we do. We use people there.

(28:28):
They act as roadblocks employees who are trained to join
our team. There's thousands of them, but we treat them
like employees. I mean, it's it's one of contracting. This
is one of the most important jobs in the company, really,
is that those teams that help us moderate. How optimistic
are you about AI and tech being able to do that.
I'm really actually optimistic that if we were to um

(28:53):
we would never compare to the real world because our
standards are so much more stringent. But I do believe
over time, rather than being ten or a hundred times whatever,
safer or whatever, this will just keep getting better and better.
And I think over time it will get to the
point where if a six year old is on our platform,
it's literally as if the parents wanted to be there

(29:15):
with them watching everything. We'll be able to offer that
type of thing. Now, a lot of parents are terrified.
They're terrified they don't know what their kids or understand
what their kid is doing on World blocks. They're terrified
of a future metaverse. They don't understand the parental controls.
Do you understand that feeling? We do? We actually have to.

(29:35):
I think it creates a higher standard for us because
I think we can't assume every parent is going to
get that involved with their kids and maybe decide, look,
I only want my my family chatting with friends, or
my I only want my family playing in these certain places.
So it's one of the reasons why we take this
so seriously as we're building a platform um, even for

(29:58):
parents who maybe don't have the time to be involved.
There have been some serious content challenges, you know, stories
about roadblocks being a playground for virtual fascists. There was
just this story about Kim Kardashian's own child seeing an
ad for a game that claimed to have a sex
tape of her. What happened there? That was very unfortunate.

(30:19):
There was a text blurb very shortly that very very
few people saw we um, but one of them happened
to be her. We took the place down, We moderated
that user, and they're off our platform. It was not
the video was never on our platform. There was no
imagery on our platform. It was a very short mention,
but very unfortunate, and um, well, you know, our vision

(30:42):
is to be the most civil place for everyone. Do
you worry about how these communities can shape young people?
We do. I mean, we're optimistic that the better a
job we do rather than being in a defensive posture,
and we can be in an optimistic posture. And I
think the posture we would like to be is parents

(31:03):
feel WHOA, my kids are on roadblocks, and I actually
know they're getting some nudges towards civility so that it's
not even neutral, it's there. We're learning this. We treat
everyone with respect, we don't tolerate bullying, we don't tolerate hate.
So I'm actually optimistic we can go in a positive direction.
I asked him our Protrive, the CEO of Alphabet and Google,

(31:25):
this question about kids and tech habits and screen time,
and he said it's something that even stresses him out.
You know, this is the guy who runs one of
the most powerful technology companies in the world. Um, I
have four kids. You have four kids. Did it stress
you out? Like? How did you deal with your kids?
You know, it's probably inconsistently right, harder on the first
born and then easier and easier and easier as we

(31:46):
got used to it. And I think it highlights how much.
Um it's a responsibility of both platforms like us as
well as parents. You know, we're all trying to figure
this out. So we're for those parents, you know who
have kids on our platform, We're trying to be the
most civil, safe, awesome place that they can be. But

(32:06):
it is a we're all still trying to figure it out.
I think the one thing that we're very encouraged is
that the time spent on roadblocks tends to be more
like hanging out together or being on the phone together,
or doing stuff together, and a lot less of it
is isolated either consuming content by myself or grinding away

(32:28):
at something by myself. So we do like the fact
that most of this is either social or involved in creation.
And your own kids played roadblocks, they did, they were
that's probably you know, they played very early. They saw
the very earliest versions of it. Um. I had many
wonderful moments coming. I remember one moment when my daughter said,

(32:49):
stopped playing for a while, and I came in the
family room and one was on the phone and one
was a computer, and they were laughing, and they were
pretty They were older at the time, and um, but
now you know they're into their twenties. Um, they don't
quite play as well. Did you learn through their eyes?
You know? Did you make product tweaks through their eyes
based on their I still continued today and I my

(33:09):
daughters and my son are all very savvy social media consumers.
You name the product, they consume it and they give
me a lot of wonderful feedback. So for parents who
might be concerned about just how much time their kids
are spending on technology now that your kids are more grown,
as there like a light at the end of the tunnel,
I think there's a light at the end of the

(33:29):
tunnel that I think there's a formative time when kids
do need guidance and parents should be very involved. But
I think as kids get to be eighteen and they
have a phone, I mean beyond that, it's it's what
have they learned? And have they learned to self regulate?
So I think there's both a guiding, interacting time and
then a time when you know, I have no control

(33:50):
of you. We need more government regulation here do we need?
You know? I've you know, there's talk about you know,
device level regulation, like how do you know for sure
the age of the kids that are on the platform? Yeah,
I would say in general, we take such a firm
stand on a lot of these issues ethically, safety, morally,
all of those kind of things. I personally don't believe

(34:12):
government regulation is going to help roadblocks better. We're very
open to feedback and all of that. I do think
there's some exciting technologies coming down the road that that
someday may help. I don't want to predict what Google
or Apple are gonna do, but I do think someday
probably it will be possible to set the age on
the phone, and then all apps will be able to

(34:34):
look at that common age and make decisions of it.
Like that should happen now. Yeah, I don't want to
get involved in Apple or Google's product roadmap or the
legal thing, but if that were to be there, we
would take advantage of it. Okay. Now, so for roadblocks,
how do you balance you know, your own desire too
to help shape you know, healthy young kids and screen

(34:58):
time with the idea to build engagement, you know, the
desire to build and scale a massive platform. How do
you balance those two things? Yeah, I think it's um.
We're always running from a moral ethical standard because we
have so many people within roadblocks with kids, so we're
always trying to keep that balance. We we are more
and more when we think about what people do on
the platform we tend to stay away from chatty kind

(35:22):
of thing we tend to lean into. Is this authentic
human communication that we're hosting. Are we hosting creation? UM?
I think we'll see more and more creation on the platform.
And I think a lot of people are excited about creation,
whether it's making my own fashion, or whether it's designing
a race car, or whether it's learning to code. So

(35:43):
I think like we have wonderful ways to grow that
we feel are positive UM, either human connection or human creation.
What about time limits like the platform itself, you know,
pop up, you've been playing for fifteen minutes or you've
been on here for an hour, time to go run outside?
I think we UM are looking into that. I could
see that being an aid to parents who want to

(36:03):
get involved in that. I think that could be an
interesting thing to think about. You've been investing in high
fidelity graphics. What is the endgame here for? You know,
more human, more realistic avatars? Yeah, this is UM. I'll
look way out like a science fiction writer and talk
about it, and I'm what I'm talking about now super difficult.

(36:24):
The end game? Sometimes we talk about we would go
together to a rock concert or whatever concert you like. Um,
we would be there with fifty thou other people. It
would feel like a movie. It would feel like real life.
We might be on our TV, we might be on
a VR headset, we might be on our phone. We'd
be talking to each other, we'd be dancing, we would

(36:46):
wave across the stadium at someone. It would be indistinguishable
from real life movie, the video that we're on today,
and UM, when we imagine that that, it's pretty mind
blowing and it's it's a pretty fun, interactive thing that
feels both very connected with the artist and very real.

(37:08):
So are you pushing towards something like meta Horizon World is?
Does that found you know, more experiences like that for adults? Yeah?
I think this is what when we think about this,
this is just a really big opportunity, and I think
it goes beyond any specific product. It goes into We
sometimes think of roadblocks ultimately as fading into the background

(37:31):
as a utility like the electric grid. Um, even though
it's photo realistic and there's all these awesome avatars and
connection and identity around the world, the things we start
seeing built on this are a wide range of things
we have, all the things our kids might play, We
have musical interactions. We have the Roadblocks office simulation, as

(37:52):
do others, where we go hang out by the water cooler,
we have people going to school, so we think of
it like as a broad utility platform. So you imagine
this not just for kids but for everyone. Absolutely, is
that that the vision everyone in the world on Roadblocks? Um,
maybe a more humble way to see it is, you know,
if it's ten years after Alexander Bell came up with

(38:15):
the phone, ten ten years after that saying everyone in
the world is going to have a telephone. That might
have seen a little crazy at the time, but we
do think it's the same type of technological shift. What
about entertainment? Would Roadblocks ever make a Netflix show? Um?
What we would like? But when I go back to
this hope that we're a utility platform, we would love

(38:36):
it if one of our developers made a Netflix show,
so we would we would feel much more authentic. If
one of the creators on Roadblocks, who's coming up with
avatars and stories and ideas and characters like that, we
want them to be in the limelight. I think the
ni there's just an award from Nickelodeon. Actually, Like, what's
one of the best um games of the year, and

(38:57):
I think one of our developers won it, which which
we actually thought was wonderful. It's not Roadblocks, it's one
of our creators, um Riot Activision. They're all producing movies
and TV shows as I understand it. So how are
you thinking about i P or is that something that
comes back to the developers. I think we would like
to be an i P generation factory, but the i

(39:21):
P is owned by our creators, and the Roadblocks is
the utility where the i P is generated, where interesting
new ideas come up from our players. You know, whether
it's Brookhaven, a dot Me, Blocksberg, you name it, where
they think of stories and situations and they're the famous
ones more than Roadblocks. Roadblocks Shares took a dive on

(39:44):
the back of Netflix results, which obviously plummeted our investors
reading too much into the connection there um for our company.
I think our company is somewhat unique, and what is
very exciting to go to work and be the c
EO is being in a market like this. You know,
where we think ultimately billions of people are going to

(40:06):
use this type of technology, and in a market where
we ultimately imagine billions of people using this around the world, working, playing, learning,
There's a lot of headroom and there's a lot of
ways to grow both the age of our users, the
types of uses they're in, where they are around the world. Um,
and the other exciting thing about this market there are

(40:29):
so many big inventions that still have to happen. It
feels like we're pretty mature that inside our company we
realize like there's six or seven big inventions we need
to make to get to that next step. So there
are big concerns that we just hit a plateau in
the streaming market. Do you think people are wrong about that? Um,
that's a different market, right, That's a market for how

(40:49):
much video we consume, and who are the players in
that market? I think and pau in that market. I
don't want to comment on that, but I think what's
exciting about at our businesses, I think it's it's so early.
We have so much headroom to where we're going to go.
So everyone has an idea for how Netflix can change,
and advertising is a big one of them. Would Roadblocks

(41:11):
ever consider more in game advertising? Yeah, there's a funny
trivia note I would share to all the Roadblocks fans
out there. There was a time the very first way
we monetize was advertising, and then there was also a
time when we had pre roll video on roadblocks. UM
that's all gone now. It's gone for a couple of reasons.
We didn't want it to interfere with the user experience,

(41:34):
and also our our virtual economy has become such a
powerful way to power this that we are able to
take that down in the future. Though. I think there's
a certain type of advertising that is kids safe, that
is um immersive, that doesn't get in your way, that
involves people who want to interact with their brands. UM.

(41:54):
There's a lot of people out there who love Vans
for example, you know, and UM if we do it
in the right way where they want to wear their
vans or they want to skateboard for a while while
they're doing that. I think there's gentle ways to imagine
a whole different type of advertising. So would it be
like virtual billboards or branded objects, and it would it
look more like Shopify. I think the way we think

(42:16):
about this, we we like to think about what's the
most far out visionary way to do that, and that
would be if I'm a fan of Vans, UM I
clearly know I'm going to a Vans hosted experience, just
like when I'm in the mall, I know I'm going
into the Van store. I'm using them as one example
of many. It could be Gucci, it could be Nike,
it could be anyone else. Um. I think then the

(42:37):
advertising is really more a connection with the brand. I'm
as less of a brand experience. I'm just I'm going
to the Van's place to hang out, try on the shoes, um,
try some tricks on my skip And how do you
make sure that doesn't take away from the ethos of
what makes roadblocks gran? Yeah? I think are the people
on roadblocks, you know, they're they're to authentically connect with

(42:59):
their friends, and they're there there. It's almost as if
we together were walking around them all together deciding what
do we want to do. Do we want to go
grab coffee and just chat. Do we want to go
into someone's store and look at some stuff. Do we
want to go outside and go for a walk. I
think the players are very sophisticated on these platforms, and
as long as um what we're doing with these brands

(43:21):
is very clear, non deceptive, appropriate for those ages, I
think they'll they'll figure out the balance of how much
time do we go into a store versus how much
time do we go to a crazy adventure tycoon and
you know, build an amusement park together. So either way,
this could be a huge new revenue stream. I believe
it's an awesomely huge revenue stream, and at the same

(43:42):
time we've been very gentle towards it. How huge UM Well,
when we look at UM I don't want to once
again give any forecasts, but if we look at the
potential engagement time on our platform, you know, I think
we're at around ten billion hours per quarter. That's a
lot of engagement time, and so thinking of gently monetizing

(44:02):
some of that with advertising is it's a big opportunity.
So as you look ahead, what do you think are
the biggest challenges roadblocks will face if our vision plays out,
which we hope it does, and we have people of
all ages on the platform and we're around the world,
I think maintaining that civility as we grow, as we
have older people who might want to go to a

(44:23):
political rally, thinking ways to do that in a systemic way,
that's a big challenge. It takes a lot of thought.
I think thinking through the technology. I really like, we're
very technology driven company. So it's fun to be running
a company where we have to do these seven big
inventions and you know, what we're doing right now isn't

(44:44):
going to cut it. So knowing that technology challenges super interesting.
And then people right where our whole company is based
on awesome people and you know, finding the right people,
the people who share our values bringing them into the company.
That's also big one. We do a little rapid fire
section just to spontaneous as I can. UM. First question,

(45:08):
what's your morning routine? Wake up, go outside of my porch,
do a CrossFit, workout, take a shower, go to work.
Where are you most productive? Home or office? Both? Um?
Different types of productivity homes and state flow state at
time office connecting, being together, brainstorming post work or nighttime routine,

(45:33):
hang out with the family, eat dinner together, maybe watch
a show together. What's your favorite show right now? What
are you binging? Oh my gosh, I can't. I don't
even want to get into the TV that I watch.
It's embarrassing. I actually sit around. I do a lot
of surfing YouTube videos. Really, what's your what are your
favorite go to Oh my gosh. If if you look
at my YouTube history, it's it's this weird mechanical stuff

(45:56):
off road vehicles and rockets and ships and big waves.
It's kind of weird. Are you still building stuff in
real life like you did as a kid? I wish
I did. I guess, I guess. I it's pretty much
you know, fitness, family, sleep, and roadblock. Uh um. Mostly nonfiction,
so I would say, just read Marco Polo Adventure. Really cool. Um,

(46:22):
one of my favorite sci fi books for the metaverse
light of other days, very little known sci fi book,
not as popular as a lot of the other highly recommended. Okay,
good to know, best life hack. Oh I um. I
think it all gets down to the joy of health. Really,

(46:45):
like if if I'm not, you know, feeling centered, but sleep, exercise, diet,
all of that, everything else just completely falls apart. What
are your health what are your go choose to stay
healthy other than CrossFit? I mean, are you eating blueberries
and drinking red wine? Are not mine? I'm pretty I'm
pretty particular about my diet. I don't eat a lot
of carbs. So that's my pretty basic, pretty straightforward exactly. Okay,

(47:11):
you used to have a talk radio show. Now that
I've met you in person, I get this. I see
how you you'd be. You'd be pretty fun to listen to. Yeah,
what were your I mean, what was your style like?
So my gam was I would say starting in college,
when I would have insomnia at two am, I would
turn on talk radio and you know all those famous

(47:32):
KGO people, Bill Wattenberg, Retelia Pharaoh, all that just listened
to the people calling in. So I um, after knowledge
revolution was acquired and I had a year, I had
a little time to dabble. My jam was really trying
to talk about outrageous topics, you know, gambling, other controversial things.

(47:53):
It was in a small market in Santa Cruz. I
would typically it's really hard to get people to call in,
so it's really scary if you're a DJ and no
one's calling inside. I made it really controversial. I have
people come on and debate interesting kind to pull some
old tapes or something. I think those have all I

(48:13):
think I have the only tapes and they're safe. I
don't think we want those getting Um, if you could
have dinner with Steve Jobs or Walt Disney, who would
you pick both? You can't pick both. I probably I
respect them both. What's interesting about both of them is
innovation driven companies UM year after year after year, and

(48:39):
companies that take topological leaps, that take big risks UM.
And one of the innovations we try and do at
roadblocks is, you know, there's a certain type of innovation
where it's about two to three years out, we know
it's technically feasible. We try to do that guided innovation.
I think both of them did that. I guess I

(48:59):
would have to slightly lean Disney just because he was
not just the usher of the innovation but actually was
kind of part of the sum of the innovation. But
I think Steve leaned much more on finding the people
to drive that innovation. Best advice for your twenties, Um,
don't freak out if between the age of twenty two

(49:21):
and twenty five everything is a disaster. Why not, because
there's a lot of opportunity in life. You're gonna learn
a lot. You know, my first two to three years
out of college as calling my parents every day just like,
oh my gosh, my job is terrible, Like what am
I gonna do? And and also I'd say organically try
things to figure out what is natural for you. It

(49:42):
might not be. It might be more about trying things
than being analytical. I remember I had a spreadsheet of
twelve careers like waited, Like that's not gonna work. Best
advice for your forties. Um, life is short. It's such
a valuable commodity every day. What you do, your friends,

(50:05):
your time, your family is so important. So how do
you define work life integration? I don't like the word balance. Yeah,
I would say, can I make my roadblocks job better
than anything else I would do? Like? Can it be
better than retiring? Can it be better than a hobby?
Can I figure out what my unique job as a CEO?

(50:27):
Every CEO job is different, like I like doing it?
So can I figure out what my role is? Favorite
travel destination real or virtual? I guess? Oh my gosh,
I wish I could travel more. I was just at
Lake Tahoe. I love it. Um, I love the ocean.
I was on a ship last summer, But I don't

(50:49):
have a favorite. You mentioned your co founder, Eric Castle earlier,
who died tragically of cancer. Um, if he was here today,
what do you think he would think of a roadblocks
that Roadblocks has become? Wow? I think he'd be proud.
It's a good question, Like I think he would. You know,

(51:10):
his both of his sons have worked at the company
a bit um, so yeah, I think he'd be very
seems like you miss him. He's just such a brilliant partner. Yeah.
And he also set the standard for taking the long
view on how we engineer things. A lot of the
technology at Roadblocks is still like, you know, his vision

(51:31):
lives on and it goes back to your advice for
you or forties. Life is short, it is, indeed, So
take us five years out. What does Roadblocks look like
in five years? I think, um, not like it looks today.
I think if some of the inventions that we have
in the pipeline, you know, we have this feeling that

(51:52):
there's certain types of innovations or inventions that you know,
they're unpredictable, um where nothing may happen or they may
change the lands. I think we have some of those
in the pipeline. So I think in five years, we're
getting to the point where it's more common to use
this technology for work. We're getting to the point where, um,
it's more commed to use this for education. I think music,

(52:14):
it's very common. Concerts are it's just it's something we
do all the time. I think there's unexpected uses other
cool technologies telephone or video. You know, who would have
thought with video all of a sudden, Remote tele therapy,
for example, is such a big thing. So I think
there's unpredictable things too. So in five years, will the

(52:34):
metaverse exists in you know, in in in the form
that you imagine, or is it take does is it
going to take much longer? Like what's the time horizon?
You've said many times it's gonna take a long time. Well,
it's really interesting, right because we're right in the middle
of it right now in a sense, with fifty million
people every day on our platform. It's already here. And

(52:57):
at the same time, what is all simately going to
be possible could be five, ten or twenty years out,
So it's it's all The metaverse really has existence since
online dial up MUDs really too d very simple text,
you could call that the metaverse. It's existed in multiplayer gaming.
World of Warcraft exists, exists now with more people, and

(53:20):
in ten or twenty years it will exist photo realistically
with fifty people. Scaling the metaverse is a massive challenge,
how exactly are you going to do that? Well, it
starts with people, So it starts with us, you know,
building an amazing engineering team that's growing all of the time,
and it goes up and down our stack of everything
we're working on. You know, our infrastructure, thousands of servers

(53:41):
around the world, high bandwidth connections, our core server technology
that is growing, getting more parallel, hosting more people, the
client that we're building, the rendering technology, and all of
these things, possibly more devices that I mentioned, including the
our headsets. UM, how we handle social how people are

(54:02):
able to create on the platform? Um? Can you and
I make our own clothing rather than just buy the clothing?
That's super important to us. How we communicate? Um? Are
we How are we doing audio in a safe way
so that it's safe for both young players and we
can use it? Um? How realistic are faces when we're

(54:22):
communicating together. There's just a long range of innovations that
we're going to bring to the platform. Fascinating. What's the
role you see for AI in the metaverse? Could AI
be a real player making its own games, making its
own designs And is that a little scary or exciting? Well,
I think we're ways away from the hell computer. Um.

(54:43):
But what we are going to see is initially even
as part of creation, having AI supercharge artists and supercharge creators.
So there there will be a time when instead of
going and cutting out fabric to make a new piece
of clothe, probably be able to talk and say, look,
I wanted a little tighter, I want the fabric to

(55:03):
be this type of way, and it'll automatically do that.
I think there'll be times when developers want to create
a city where rather than building all the components of
the city will probably use a paint brush and they'll
take a few pictures of the style of the city,
and AI and m L will process that and more
procedurally generate the city, and then longer term, maybe you know,

(55:27):
AI powering characters on roadblocks that can stand in and
help in certain ways. I think that's all in the future.
Where are you on the Singularity And you know the
people who get scared of computers killing humans, Oh man,
now we're getting into really crazy stuff. I actually think
it's much more of an evolution. I don't have any

(55:52):
guests on the timing, but I guess I would personally
believe over time computers will get smarter than people. Well,
and how much, Martyn? What does that mean? Like people?
People still exist? I think people continue to exist. I
don't think any happens suddenly. It's not like we all
disappear or anything like that. And I don't think it's
a threat for future generations. But I think looking out

(56:15):
ten thousand years, it's really hard to predict what that is.
But you think that could happen. I think that could
happen in ten thousand years. Wow, that's really that's like
kinde of quite true. It's kind of scary. Okay, you
clearly have so much passion for this job. Is roadblocks
your final stop on your Journey's definitely my final stop,

(56:37):
I think, you know, working with our executives on the board,
we have to be just watching out how clearly I'm thinking,
you know, and I'm very open to the feedback, like
how long do you do this? Dave? And but I
think there's a lot of time ahead of me here.
So just to be clear, in ten thousand years, humans
might not exist. I think I think humans will still

(56:58):
exist in ten thousand years. I just think I don't know.
I just think computers are going to get really smart.
How smart unpredictably smart to do, like smart enough to
do what UM obviously too. You know, I don't want
to get into any movies or things like that, but
I think it'll be hard to tell whether you're talking
to a human or a computer, for example. Well, how

(57:20):
far out is that? I don't know. I don't want
to predict that. Wow, that's really that's scary. I mean,
does that excite you or does that scare you? I
think it does neither. I think for me, it feels
like a reality, and I think, UM what we think
some things. I think I can't predict the timing on
that as it reflects back to Roadblocks. The way we
think about it is the type of technology we're working on,

(57:44):
whether we develop it, whether some other company develops it.
Over time is going to evolve. We get this unique
opportunity to be good shepherds of the technology and try
to bring it forward in a civil way. Oh. I
love that. I'm glad we pulled that threat. Dave Puzuki
cee Overroadblocks, Thank you so much. Bloomberg Studio one point

(58:05):
O was produced and edited by Lauren Ellis and Brian
Carter Gaynor. I'm Emily Chang your host and executive producer