A few days ago, Roblox raised a $150 million round on a $4 billion valuation. It’s been somewhat of a renaissance for gaming startups, propelled by the success of Fortnite and other. The social features in games are so good these days that many people view them as hangouts. Often, voice chats in Fortnite sound better than calls over Zoom. And of course, just to ruin every single cool thing, a VC tweets that Fortnite is the “new golf” after an intro was made on the platform.
Well, I am happy with all this. I’ve always thought that games are significantly undervalued despite their impactful in our lives. And if gaming = social, then Roblox = the OG.
Roblox has a special place in my heart because it is where I got my first start as a PM. Many PMs I know got into product because of a lucky break, and Roblox was my lucky break. I remember flying from LA to SF and cramming Getting Real on the plane to prepare for my interviews. In 2016, Roblox was a ~200 person startup in a — what I would generously call — a nondescript office in downtown San Mateo. Still, there was something special about building products for kids, and I saw that in the folks who worked there in the early days.
Since then, Roblox’s valuation has increased about 20x. And while, Roblox might not be a household name to us, any teenager today could probably tell you all about Roblox, hats, and tickets. I’ve been stopped on the sidewalk while wearing my Roblox hoodie, and at every new job, someone would mention that their kid is a big fan.
I was only at Roblox for a few months, but in that time, I’ve learned some awesome lessons that I still carry with me today.
Building good products takes time
When I was working on Superpod, I focused too much on hitting my short term goals. I became obsessed with growing our weekly active user count from 100 to 200, and wasted a lot of time optimizing when I should have been building. A product is greater than the sum of its part, and for many years, I didn’t have the confidence to defend features that added value but didn’t move the metrics.
It took Roblox about 10 years to reach 10 million monthly active users and then a year to get to 30. When I asked people why this happened, they mostly shrugged and said that Roblox finally reached a tipping point of compelling features. And, there was certainly no shortage of features. Roblox had its own gaming engine and developed full-fledge studio software that young developers can build on. They hosted servers that connected kids in the US with those in South Korea, Russia, and Brazil. There’s a yearly (very weird) award show called The Bloxys streamed to YouTube. There’s a trading platform for digital items that responded to supply and demand like a digital NASDAQ. And of course, lots and lots of hats.
Telamon is (allegedly) employee #1. Cool guy.
Roblox employees have created thousands of unique items over the years, and many had amazing descriptions like the one above. Did the time spent on descriptions really move the needle? Probably not, but players love them and it helped endear Roblox to millions of young fans.
To this day, I still don’t know how to measure delight. How do we know that the time spent making a customer smile is worth it in the long run? The same goes for building features that have Big Business Impact versus fixing something that people have been complaining about for years. To make these calls, we need a deep understanding of our users, which brings me to my next point…
We don’t know our users (and sometimes we can’t know)
Roblox is weird. The most popular games on the platform are poorly designed and riddled with bugs. It’s not easy to add and find friends. Everyone speaks a different language in chat. And, its homepage looks like this:
Trust me, Weight Lifting Simulator 3 is not fun. Who commissioned 2 sequels?
No doubt, its weirdness probably turned off a lot of applicants over the years. But, Roblox is not built for us. Even if I could design better, more polished games than some random 12 year old (and believe me, I can), I wouldn’t be successful on Roblox. I am not 12 anymore. I can’t floss. I don’t know what they like. So, we just didn’t bother trying. We provided the tools, basic guidance, and let the kids create. The most amazing part is seeing kids self-organized in the forums. They would form independent studios and recruit for artists, musicians, and developers to join their team. We’ve even hired a few talented young developers to work at Roblox full-time!
Now, at Homebase, I am once again in uncharted territory. Our customers own restaurants, security companies, bakeries, and bike shops. I don’t even own the car I drive. But, to build great products, I need to understand their needs and motivations. Luckily, most people I’ve met so far love talking about their entrepreneurial journey. Sometimes, I even get free gelato! I know that at some point, I will get lazy and become overconfident about understanding their needs, which is why Roblox (and its godawful homepage) is a great reminder.
That’s it for this week. I think I met the deadline since it’s still Friday. I’ve been working out Houston since Monday and almost didn’t publish a post, but when I saw the news, I knew I had to. I am sending this off on a plane heading home, so I will see you all in SF soon!