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Minus One · 2 min · Jun 4, 2025

Creator earnings are spreading beyond the top developers

David Baszucki says creator 1,000's monetization is growing faster than creator 1's, and the curve is flattening. He says creator economies take thousands of small decisions, not one breakthrough.

David Baszucki

David Baszucki is chief blocksmith at Roblox.

Co-founded Roblox and has led it as CEO since 2004, serving more than 100M daily users.

  • DI

    Dylan Itzikowitz, Host · Principal, SPC

About this segment

David Baszucki says creator 1,000's monetization is growing faster than creator 1's, and the curve is flattening. He says creator economies take thousands of small decisions, not one breakthrough.

From “David Baszucki: Roblox, Minus One, Digital Economy, & the Metaverse”, Jun 4, 2025. Watch the full episode

“the monetization growth rate of creator thousand is growing faster than creator one”
David Baszuckiat 48:29 · Minus One48:29

Takeaways

  1. Roblox tracks monetization growth across creators at different ranks.
  2. Creator 1,000's growth outpaces creator 1's.
  3. Creator economies need hundreds or thousands of small improvements.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 10:34Roblox seeded its first viral loop with about $100 a day4:10
  2. 14:41Roblox built its creator economy when growth stopped paying3:56
  3. 27:02Roblox is turning its platform data into creator tools and NPCs3:22

  4. 48:09Creator earnings are spreading beyond the top developers2:14

  5. 21:27Older users arrive through the creator ecosystem2:20Up next
  6. 42:26Roblox made email and meeting punctuality cultural norms2:07
  7. 45:42Roblox held off on NFTs because 3D assets lacked standards2:13
  8. 52:03Roblox chose native clients for 3D performance2:28

Transcript

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

  1. 48:12

    but my question is you mentioned uh top few creators making a large amount of money um but you see the roblox creator economy being a winner take most market like actually i feel it's going in the opposite direction yes and so we do watch the growth rates of creator one ten hundred thousand and the monetization growth rate of creator thousand is growing faster than creator one so the curve that curve if anything is continuing to flatten i think the thesis we would have as as wider ages wider um presence around the world occurs that there's just a lot more opportunity for a flat, flat curve. So we, a long time ago, we were worried, you know, could developer number 1000 support themselves? They definitely can now. So yeah, it's going in a good direction. Thanks again for all the insight. I have two questions. First, I feel as though we

  2. 49:12

    should see more creator economies. And I feel like you've kind of seen firsthand what's worked extremely well. And I think you touched on the perpetual engine, some specific thresholds that you cleared with Roblox. What advice do you give to founders that are constructing creator economies? And then you also mentioned your board construction, or rather, you mentioned conflict within the board. I'd love to hear how you approach the construction of that vehicle for your company. Yeah, I would say it's not easy. I would, you know, every year, there's probably 1,000 small little feature decisions we make to make this work. And we do that year after year after year. So it definitely, we were looking, we're talking actually today in our staff meeting about certain trends. And traditionally, it has always been the culmination of 100 small things

  3. 50:06

    or 1,000 small things over time, rather than one just big breakthrough. So I do think creator economies take an enormous amount of craft to get right. On our board, we have very small board,