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Minus One · 2 min · Jun 4, 2025

Older users arrive through the creator ecosystem

David Baszucki says Roblox's audience over 13 was growing more than 35% year over year. He points to Dress to Impress as an example of a small creator team reaching young adults.

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 Roblox's audience over 13 was growing more than 35% year over year. He points to Dress to Impress as an example of a small creator team reaching young adults.

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

“a team of five or six people in the uk comes up with this and now all kinds of 20 year olds are playing on campus”
David Baszuckiat 23:15 · Minus One23:15

Takeaways

  1. Building for kids meant developing safety and moderation systems early.
  2. Roblox users over 13 were growing more than 35% year over year.
  3. Creator tools, economics and discovery help new audiences find experiences.

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 ecosystem2:20

  6. 42:26Roblox made email and meeting punctuality cultural norms2:07Up next
  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. 21:30

    You've had so much success building for kids, for young people. Why so much emphasis on building and trying to attract older users now? I would say it's, well, first, I feel the starting young was more difficult, but a huge advantage. Because starting young adds evolution of safety, civility systems, evolving into AI filtering, AI moderation, all of those kind of things. I think, once again, the destiny of the platform is to build for all ages.

  2. 22:07

    That's also very difficult. Safety, civility, policy under 13, 13 through 17, a more vulnerable age, 18 and up. planning for ultimately experience where friends can play poker completely without moderation and the privacy of their own home and everything in between. So I do think that's the most robust architecture is planning for all ages. So we see enormous growth north of 13. Our north of 13 is growing over 35% year on year. And there's enormous amount of opportunity there for us.

  3. 22:48

    What's the strategy for acquiring the North of 18 demographic? The strategy is primarily build the ecosystem very much like the very early days of Roblox. We've always thought, like, what would it take for emergent experiences that are really fun for someone who's 22 to play? It's the technology, it's the economics, it's search and discovery, it's having creators willing to take a risk. that's what happened last summer dress to impress you know a team of five or six people in the uk comes up with this and now all kinds of 20 year olds are playing on campus and vogue magazine is talking about it today so i think it's very similar create an ecosystem platform where that can happen to dress to impress have which was a very big phenomenon did were you able to buy clothes real-life clothes with Robux?

  4. 23:44

    Or is that something that you'd want to see,