Baszucki chose building Roblox over taking another CEO job

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 3:34

   That's exactly right. That's when you took the sabbatical. That's correct. Explain to me how you knew that you were being logical instead of following your intuition during this sabbatical. What do you mean by logical? I think logical goes to what's someone trying to optimize for? Literally, at that time, I had been a CEO. And so in a way, I was optimizing for being another CEO and dropping into CEO-ness.

2. 4:00

   When, in fact, a lot of the magic of knowledge revolution had been about inventing new stuff. And that was actually, for some of the early knowledge revolution people and myself, that was actually our superpower. It wasn't like just that being a CEO thing. So when I came out of knowledge revolution, I actually went and looked at a bunch of CEO jobs that seemed like the logical thing. Wait, applying to be a CEO of a company you didn't start?

3. 4:29

   That's right. What a mistake, right? What's your distinction between the difference between a founder and a CEO? Well, I kind of learned at that time. Like, actually, my founder kind of mode from Knowledge Revolution, I couldn't find a position. Obviously, it was a mistake to be looking for that type of thing. That was much more of a founder. You're a world builder. That's right. No way you're going to jump into somebody else's world.

4. 4:53

   What you're describing is literally like a vision I had one night where like I was on this path and there was like this big barrier there. But this path, which was more world builder creators, it's like, boom, I got it. And that's when Roblox started. Okay, we got to pause here because there's like almost like a paradox between you. So I had dinner with Honam, who's been one of the earliest investors in Roblox.

5. 5:18

   Yeah. This guy's been telling me about Roblox for as long as I've known him. I think he's been involved for, you know, a decade and a half. And he's like, the thing about Dave is if you ask Dave the time, he'll build you a clock. It's one of the most unique descriptions of another human being I've ever heard. So you're known as this really, you know, essentially like eccentric genius systems builder.

6. 5:38

   But then I watch your talk at Stanford and all you're talking about is following your intuition. Can you reconcile those two things for me? They're both very valuable. And so I would say that early CEO lesson was definitely a sign of not following my intuition. is like logically be another CEO rather than follow my intuition and build Roblox. I would say combining intuition with tenacity and taking the long view, if those things can coexist, it's super, super powerful.

7. 6:06

   And I think along the way with Ho, for example, that metaphor of building a clock, it's funny because when we started Roblox, we used to joke, we want to start a perpetual motion machine. And what is a perpetual motion machine? It's something that can keep going, get better and better. That's what kind of the notion of building a cloud 3D UGC system. We keep building that system. Creators are going to make more and more amazing content.

8. 6:36

   We can keep tuning the system and we'll get kind of that perpetual motion machine. And the metaphor of that clock thing is really interesting because if we dive into that, it's harder to build a clock. But if you ask me the time every day for the next 20 years, it's probably easier to build the clock than to tell you the time every day for the next 20 years. And that was part of the thought behind Roblox.