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The Tim Ferriss Show · 3 min · Nov 5, 2025
Roblox bet on 3D mobile before most of its team did
David Baszucki saw people watching movies on phones as evidence that 3D games could work there. Most of the company disagreed, but phones later became Roblox’s largest platforms.
David Baszucki is founder and CEO of Roblox.
Co-founded Roblox and has led it as CEO since 2004, serving more than 100M daily users.
Tim Ferriss, Host · Host, The Tim Ferriss Show
Wrote The 4-Hour Workweek; an early investor or advisor in Uber and Shopify.
About this segment
David Baszucki saw people watching movies on phones as evidence that 3D games could work there. Most of the company disagreed, but phones later became Roblox’s largest platforms.
From “The Path to 150M+ Daily Roblox Users, Ketogenic Therapy for Brain Health, and More — CEO of Roblox”, Nov 5, 2025. Watch the full episode
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
“probably 90% of the company said, no way is this one going to work, but we took the risk on it.”
David Baszuckiat 1:20:15 · The Tim Ferriss Show1:20:15Takeaways
- The team initially saw 3D phone gaming as unlikely.
- Movie viewing on phones informed the mobile bet.
- Phones became Roblox’s largest platforms.
In this episode
Full episode- 16:55Baszucki explains his hypothesis for why keto helped his son4:47
1:18:41Roblox bet on 3D mobile before most of its team did2:46
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 1:18:53
things well one thing we did really well was roblox was initially a pc macintosh company and there was a time when people did not believe that 3d stuff should happen on a phone phone games were two-dimensional you know more puzzle type thing there was a technological leap that just like with the iphone you know all of a sudden websites that were used to being these big pc websites with a pinch and a zoom would work on an iphone the exact same website there's no more of this separate mobile web stuff it was a huge innovation and i think we did it right thinking that this 3d immersive metaverse you know holodeck stuff would ultimately work on a phone as well and most roblox games run on a phone or a big screen at the same time and that has really i'd say turned to pass and worked out really well for us why did you have confidence in that when others didn't it
- 1:20:02
just seemed inevitable i think the reason we felt it was inevitable is people were watching movies on their phone at that time and movies are kind of three-dimensional and teams are starting to approach movies it just seemed inevitable and but that you're right that was a little bit of me and a couple other people in the company believed it, but that was a pivotal time when probably 90% of the company said, no way is this one going to work, but we took the risk on it.
- 1:20:34
What was the risk? Distraction. Yeah. Like we're going to spend all this time on this iPhone version of Roblox, but that same kind of stuff, taking that big, long leap, there was a really fun, very simple game called Survive the Natural Disaster on Roblox. Early on in the prototyping phase, I had a version running on a very old iPhone, and it was that same feeling as the virtual economy. It's just, this is going to work. Boom. Now iPhones and Androids are the biggest platforms for Roblox. The inevitability part is worth underscoring. I'll just share a quick