Dave Baszucki

A few years after graduating from Stanford University in 1985, Mr. Baszucki started a software company, Knowledge Revolution. He sold it in 1998 for $20 million. Around 2004, after a brief detour into radio, Mr. Baszucki teamed up with a former colleague, Erik Cassel, on a new venture. Mostly using Mr. Baszucki’s money, they spent two years writing the computer code that would become an early version of Roblox, which they publicly introduced in 2007. Baszucki owns approximately 13% of Roblox. The stake is worth about $470 million, a figure based on the $4 billion valuation Roblox reportedly fetched from an Andreessen Horowitz-led funding round in February 2020 —and adjusted for the 10% discount Forbes places on private firms. Roblox is attempting to build something similar to Epic Games’ Fortnite: an immersive online world where players can customize their appearances and live out a rich digital existence Baszucki started work on Roblox back in the early 2000s, launching its beta version in 2005. It didn’t take off until he and cofounder Erik Cassel opened up Roblox to outside developers. By 2012, it had 7 million unique visitors per month. In the following year, Baszucki found himself forced to lead the business alone after Cassel died of cancer.