Roblox CEO David Baszucki (EXTENDED VERSION)

but not as much as I would like. I have four kids. I have a nine year old son who's on Roadblocks a lot. He said his favorite games are the Tycoon games. Oh, lumber Tycoon, theme Park Tycoon. I love those. I love all of those. I have a bit of a theory. I have four kids, and yeah they're now they've grown up watching me do this and

other they're pretty savvy social media people. But I'm optimistic someday they're going to be using Roadblocks for some other reason, like communicating or more working or something like that, and then they're going to be, oh gosh, as like forest to the Roadblocks. Hi everyone, I'm Emily Chang and welcome to this edition of the bloom Brook Studio One point

Oh podcast. On this edition of Boombrook Studio at one point Oh, we're speaking with Roadblocks CEO and co founder David Bazuki, or as he's known on Roadblocks Builderman, a portmanteau of robots and blocks. Roadblocks started as a three D world where users could build, share, and play games. Thanks to the pandemic, it has boomed into a global online gaming juggernaut that kids are obsessed with, racking up ten billion plus hours on the platform a quarter. It's

been a slow build. Roadblocks launched in two thousand four and was building its version of the Metaverse long before Mark Zuckerberg changed Facebook's name to Meta. In this episode, Bazooky paints his vision for the immersive and interconnected future where users can not only play roller coaster games, but attend town halls, go to school, industry conferences, concerts, and even political rallies one day. Is this future really possible?

And how far out is it? And how do we cultivate a civil digital society within it that keeps kids safe? Joining me now on this edition of Bloombrook Studio At one point Oh, Roadblocks CEO and co founder, David Buzuki. David's so great to have you here. I really appreciate it. It's wonderful to be with you. Well, I'm a parent, I'm a mom, and so I've been really excited um to have this conversation for parents and anyone out there who still doesn't quite understand what exactly our kids doing

on roadblocks. Yeah, kids on roadblocks aren't just playing, they're learning. They're hanging out together when they can't be together in real life. They're hanging out on roadblocks. They could be playing hide and go seek. They could be pretending they're running a store or a pizza arler. They could be making the next big game or adventure. So it's really a wide range of things, and it involves doing things together, pretending you're together. So right now it's mostly games or

experiences for kids by kids. How old are these players, How old are these developers? Yeah, so what's really exciting. It's almost like in the old days people to have a paper route or something like that, and now in today's world, we see young players starting to build these experiences on roadblocks. And one thing that a lot of people don't realize everything on Roadblocks has been built by the community, millions of experiences, avatars, what people wear, the clothing,

all of that. We have young players who are getting interested in coding, who are getting interested in designing things. But more and more of the community on Roadblocks has blossomed into this super rich ecosystem. Thousands of developers making a living on the platform. Some of the studios this year will have over a hundred people in the studio. Some of these developers are making tens or twenties or fifty millions of dollars a year. A lot of people

are starting to make a living on the platform. So how many of these developers are really kids? And how many of these developers are now grown ups? Yeah, well I think two million plus developers. A lot of them are grown ups, and more and more, in addition to the natural organic people that started on Roadblocks, we're starting to studios come in on the platform as well. Professional game developers who are developing on other platforms starting to

take a look at it. So our developer demo naturally leans a little bit older, although we've had kids as young as thirteen come to our developer conference and actually pay to bring their parents to the Developer Conference, which is ACT, which is amazing. Of the users on roadblocks, which there's over fifty million every day we recently passed, the majority of them are over thirteen rather than under thirteen, so they've they've grown up with us and they've stayed

with us. Interesting. Is there something about preserving the ability for young kids to be able to make games for other kids? I mean, because obviously if you have you know, fancy studios muscling in UM, does that change the dynamic of the PLATF I think it does. I think we see more interesting new ideas that are maybe riskier that we might not see from a professional game studio. We

see interesting game dynamics. UM. One of my favorite experiences as natural disasters that's been on the platform forever by one of our early developers. It's not the kind of thing that I think a normal studio would ever think of, but when developed by young creator, you know, we're gonna be we're gonna be hanging out together and there's gonna be a hurricane and we've got to like run away from it, or there's gonna be a lightning storm, like that kind of stuff. We see a lot of that

creative gameplay coming from the younger developers. Um, what were you into as a kid? Were you a gamer? I was kind of a nerd when I was a kid. I was studied really hard. I luckily grew up in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. At the time, it was out in the boonies from Minneapolis, Minnesota's there were sand pits and so we did a lot of model rockets, and we built go carts, and you know, it's kind of one

of these idyllic childhoods. The one key thing that happened to me very early on as we had a computer lab in the school, and then my parents bought me an Apple two at the time, and that kind of got me interested in this. I also heard you were the captain of your high school TV quiz team. Yeah, so think of think of Minnesota in the nineteen seventies and eighties where every weekend two different schools compete for students from each school, you know, in a really funny

four by four configurations on a quizzble thing. So yeah, Eden Prairie had a pretty good quiz Bowl team. I love that. You eventually made it to Silicon Valley, went to Stanford. You started a company called knowledge revolution in the eighties where users could create and test physics experiments. That's right. So the science kid in you coming to life. Yeah, you know, went to school, had a couple of hard

years with jobs that weren't really that exciting. Took a few months off and I got really excited about there's this whole blossoming educational software marketplace in the Macintosh had just been introduced, and it was just really interesting, exciting. I did a survey of all of that, and a lot of the educational software was very pre canned. So when we looked at physics, it was a whole different idea.

Could we make a wide open laboratory where you could build anything, any physics experiment, bring it to life, measure it, see what it feels like. And a funny anecdote of all of that is when we went to watch students playing with interactive physics at the time, a lot of them were just building stuff, building cars and buildings and playing around. Really, you sold that company, made some money, you became an investor, and you invested in friends Ster.

Oh yeah, wow, I had a friends Store account. I'm dating myself a little bit here, but I had a friend's stir account. Um, I'm curious what you learned from the early days of social media. Yeah, so one thing I learned is it was really fun to invest, but it's not my sweet spot. Like my sweet spot is trying to build and create things. I remember I think having account number seventy nine on Friends there and just seeing that wonderful thing of finding other people friend of friends,

playing around with that early user interface. It's a little bit almost thinking of interactive physics where we were simulating the world, and then friends they're seeing how important social is. Those are a couple of the components that have come together in roadblocks. Google almost bought friends stir right, and I don't know, but those are the early days of social networking, you know, Friendster or kid my Space, pre Facebook.

I mean, this was things were just getting rolling. I just wonder if that had happened, what if something might have been different? Right? Yeah, I hate to, of course roll back the clock on that company. Um, you know, there there were some things I think that added friction to them, and ultimately they didn't end up being the dominant player. Any thoughts about Twitter, who should buy it? Oh?

Such a difficult thing, you know, I think the philosophical question, is Twitter and newspaper that's heavily edited, or is it a platform which is kind of the spigot of all the world's information or somewhere in between. Is a very difficult job to be the CEO of Twitter and figure out what how do we moderate? What's our vision of what kind of content is on that platform? Do you think Elon Musk could do it better than the job

has been done so far. I'm a big believer in these platforms trying to have a lot of consistency, and we think about right now roadblocks when we think about how we run civility and safety, which is just so important for us. Because we lean so heavily into civility and safety, we almost have an easier job. Whereas a platform like Twitter, with just such a wide range of stories and news and people. What is information? What is disinformation? What is fact? What is not? I think it's a

very difficult job. Interesting, So what do you think the solution is we, I mean are I'll talk about roadblocks and our vision because we we do imagine there's a time when platforms like Roadblocks are for play, for learning, for working together. Someday there may even be political rallies on a platform like Roadblocks, and so thinking through when would we allow that, when would we not? It takes

a lot of visionary thinking. One thing that's very interesting about these platforms is that we do have a set of laws and guidelines and things that we're used to in the real world. Like we're we kind of know what we can do in the physical world. Could you do this? Some things, of course we could. We can rent a stadium, we can get together with people. Some things of course we can't. You know, we can't call

for violence, we can't sell certain things. So tuning in on the laws of the physical world is actually an interesting starting point for thinking about how we might run a metaverse that someday has a lot of different people on it. So when you started Roadblocks in two thousand four, were you thinking about any of this or what was the idea back then? I wasn't thinking about this question right now, which is so difficult. Um what I was thinking about And I think this started well beyond before

two thousand four. There was a trip I was taking once. I was driving across the country to northern Canada. It was snowing for two days. I was visiting my grandparents, and in the midst of that, the feeling of this new category for me started feeling almost inexorable. It's a category that people have been talking about in sci fi for many, many years. We've seen futurists talk about it. We've seen a lot of movies. So I started seeing this category is going to happen. But we weren't thinking

about all these complex issues. We were thinking, Yes, immersive three D coexperience. What's the next evolution from the from you know, telephone to video call to immersive three D call. That started to seem very very natural. Kids flocked to Roadblocks during the pandemic. We went public in the middle of the pandemic. Dollar market cap we spoke on that day. Even you have said that kind of growth won't keep up. What kind of growth can we expect from roadblocks in

normal times? Yeah, well this is It's what's so exciting for us running this company. It's almost as if um it's ten years after Mr Bell developed the phone. You know, it's very early on in this, but this is ultimately a category we believe every It's gonna be a part of all of our lives. It's going to be the way we communicate how people get to go to school when they can't get into school, how people they're going

to go to school in roadblocks. I think ultimately some people who can't go to physical school will use immersive three D technology to go beyond video school, so that if we if I happen to be taking my science class and I can't get into the classroom and we're dissecting a frog, will probably dissect a frog in something like roadblocks on a simulation, which I think is going

to be very, very powerful. And for our company, where there's a lot of people that are going to end up working all around the world, some of us will be in the office, some won't. Having a common three D place where we can have those water cooler conversations where everyone has a desk, but we get that serendipitous thing where we both happen to go over and chat. I think also is going to be very big. So

UM this is a very big category. I believe it's ultimately going to be just as natural as video or phone. We're all gonna have it. But it's very early on in that UM. There are now more than two million experience ances on roadblocks right you mentioned the possibility of political rallies. We've seen concerts. A Little nas concert drew thirty three million people. How is it that experiences right now rise to the top and how do you see

that evolving as the platform grows. Yeah, so it's really exciting. I met Little Naz at the Grammys. Awesome, And the concert was really exciting for us because for artists who are used to either Okay, I'm music online streaming or I'm doing a physical concert. It's almost as if it's the third possible way. It's an immersive, three D concert where so many people can come. What was his feedback, Oh, we talked about the songs that we used. I shared

that I watched the concert with my daughter. Um. I got a really great picture with him. He was very busy because he had just performed, so we didn't get to hang out too much. Um. But anyways, No, I I do think that, I mean, artists really excited about that this potential, right, I think so, I mean it's it's almost like when Disney said We're going from black and white to color. There's a new medium here for artists.

I really think this is a third way to perform and connect with fans, and I can see I see a future where artists who might want a more intimate venue, maybe a thousand people, they can connect with simul performing with a live audience of a thousand and a digital audience of ten million, all at the same time, so they can kind of get feedback from that. So I really think it's early and it's a huge opportunity for artists to connect with their fans. So what happens to

real world concerts? What changes about the real world if there are so many opportunities in the digital world. I think real world concerts are here forever. I mean, they're so intimate and they're so awesome. But I think what may happen is some artists may choose more intimate venues where you know, the fans they're participating with our closer to them, so they can connect and make eye contact

and all of that. And it may be that the fans that are all the way in the top of the stadium still want to be there in person, so that's not going to go away. But instead of sixty thou fans, I think there'll be ten million fans and there'll be a lot more room for other fans. There's a big concern about how, you know, the rise of digital experiences or the metaverse will impact real world connections,

real life connections. So you know, you and I have done interviews virtually, and I can say, sitting with you here right now, it's a it's a totally different and much richer experience. Do you worry about that at all? Yeah, we think about this a lot, and we think about other technologies that have influenced that. You know, the telephone, pure audio versus in person. It's sometimes harder to get a connection when we're on the phone then we're in person.

We're pretty optimistic about this, and we're pretty optimistic that between all all the different ways people connect phone, video, SMS, ultimately super high quality immersive three D, the people will naturally choose the balance of them. But yeah, even within our companies, M me personally, I think it's hard to

beat physical connection in most cases. Everybody is talking about the metaverse as something that's going to happen in the future, but there's an argument to be made that Roadblocks has

already built a metaverse. What do you think I think we've started And um, it goes back to how exciting it is to have a company in this space that I think is ultimately got so many years of growth to it, and as a new category following other types of technologies, there's still so much innovation to be done and there's so much invention to be done in this category that's mind boggling. We're still very far away from that that little nas concert having fifty thousand people in

the stadium and having it feel real. Um, we're still far away from when you and I communicate rather than calling on the phone, we're gonna do a roadblocks three D call. You know, we're ways away from that. So's just still so much innovation and invention to happen here. The critics think that metaverse, the term is just marketing. How do you respond to that? Yeah, I I really think this is a huge new category, going all the

way back to snow crash. You know, it's inexorable. This type of technology is much more difficult than the net or the web, which was another huge thing that we saw predicted and has started to come. But but I think we're seeing early signs of it. We're seeing in addition to playing on roadblocks um first robotics, for example, getting into learning where you know, building robots in a competition. Not everyone has access to all of that hardware and

all of those tools. So starting to think about, oh my gosh, there's a digital version of it where we can build their robots together and go compete. We're starting to see those kind of things, and so I'm I'm very optimistic that this category is really big. When Mark Zuckerberg announced his plan to own the metaverse and change Facebook's name to Meta as if it was something new, did that kind of bother you, Um, No, of course not. I mean, this is the This is so big and

so early, it's really hard to predict. In five to ten or twenty years, what are the companies that really figure it out. And there's so many elements of innovation that are needed. Um, having a U g C community one of our strengths. We think that's like a huge starting point for us. But we're early in our quest for innovation here. I think having these platforms based on civility is a huge thing. I'm very proud that we started from a younger audience because we've had to focus

so much on that. So so thinking of these platforms is a place where the world ultimately gets better. People learn civility on platforms like this, maybe even where they don't in the real world. So I'm very optimistic about that. Are you optimistic about Meta's ability to do that? Because I've spoken to other gaming executives who don't think Facebook is an innovative company. You know, I can't call like I get. I think everyone's trying really hard, and I

think everyone realizes this is a huge emerging opportunity. Once again, following on telephone video, what's it going to be? It's still so early. Every company is trying to figure out their own view of this. It's so early that everyone has a different viewpoint on what this is. And the key point is, I think there's five or ten more big inventions and innovations that are going to have to happen along the way to make this possible. So still

very early. Roadblocks has built a huge business selling row bucks, the in game currency. I want you to talk to us a little bit about what that is. You can use it to buy a new outfit for your avatar, for example. Does this evolve into a much bigger marketplace? Well, I think, um, this is how we've been able to go from hobbyists to that paper route for a thirteen year old who maybe earns a hundred dollars a month, to deciding whether to make this a full time job,

to start a studio, and everything in between. And it was this revelation that people would ultimately make a living on platforms like this that started this digital currency is very roadblocks centric in that where a system's company or utility. So rather than being a roadblocks way that people monetize, our developers are very creative. They in birds Simulator UM

it's all free. The majority of people on our platform never pay anything, but if you want to be an eagle more quickly, you can use a few roebucks and the developer will contribute that. Or if you want to buy motor scooter and work at a pizza place, you can use a few roebucks. So it has formed this robust economy. It's allowed us to keep robocks, you know, roadblocks is free for the vast majority, and it's created

this new living. I think it's very very early because as we start to get into UM ways of working on platforms like this, on concerts, on other forms, there's a there's a huge economic opportunity on this platform. So you have Roebucks. Meta is working on something similar. Internally, they call it zack Box again you Um, we're very proud of Roebucks, right, it's it's tied into our name.

UM would Roadblocks have a partner with some of these other companies working on the metaverse, whether it is Meta or Unity or Epic or Microsoft, there's We're always open to partnerships, and so when we think about the types of partnerships, I think some of these are going to be very easy. Some are going to be very difficult. The core technology of you know, how are we going to ultimately support fifty people in real time on a phone going to a concert together and waving it your friends.

I think that's gonna be a lot of engineering work that each company is going to be working on, you know, probably individually, and it's going to be really hard. As far as ultimately can an avatar go from one place to another, I think they'll be lightweight ways of starting to think about that. We're already great partners with Microsoft. We're on Xbox. We love it so UM love being

partners with them. We're great partners with Google, We're great partners with Apple, and there's a lot of other platforms that we might want to be partners with, and of course Facebook's got Oculus Quest, which is a VR headset, which we're we'd like to be partners with as well. So when you talk about the technological difficulties, does this mean Roadblocks whose code would need to change in order to enable more integration with some of these other parties.

Not really, because the code we write on Roadblocks right now already runs on PCs and Max on iOS and Android, on Xbox or actually in this wonderful position where adding new platforms is pretty simple and straight interesting. So do you envision a bunch of different walled gardens or one large garden. I think it's too early to tell, Like everyone's trying to figure out what it's almost so early, it's like we're almost feel like we're in the CompuServe,

or you know, it's really early. We just went from bulletin boards to CompuServe and the net hasn't been invented yet and everyone's still very very early. So figuring out what ultimately does this evolve two is is really hard. I think at some point in the time, how who knows how far out in the future you could imagine the same thing that happened on the web. There's the lamp stack, there's open standards, and you know, we we

all kind of connect together. I think it's just a question of how far and how long that time is. I'm curious about the role you think Apple and Google should play here roadblocks back Apple in the Epic Games suit? Um, why is that? And what role should Apple and Android

play in the metaverse? Yeah, so we've been very neutral in the suit and both with the Apple and Google that typically what we say is, look, um, any money, if there was a change in those store fees, if those store fees went down, that's money we would just

move directly to our developer community. They're making all of this, and the more the more money that flows through to them, the better the creations can go in the In this specific example, there is just one key point and I wouldn't even you know, you can call it backing Apple or whatever, where there's a point around whether platforms, for either safety or security reasons can moderate the content on their platform. And because we're so we believe safety and

civility is so important for us. That's when we said we agreed with the cord on we do think a platform should be able to moderate the content on the platform, but it wasn't a universal like yes, yes, yes, So what role do you think Apple and Android should play in the metaphors and what their policies need to change to really support this vision? Yeah, I think right now we're you know, once again, the biggest thing we would take advantage of if it were to happen, is a

change in those store fees. We we stay out of it. We like Google and Apple kind of run their businesses. But when we think about more and more developers making a living on platforms like us and having to build stuff, Um, if those store fees were to change, we would move most of that money back to our developers. So, as you said, and you said this earlier, your goal is to build an entirely new category of human co experience,

the next phase of human interaction. How do you moderate that on such a massive scale and are you doing a good enough It's it's in tremendously important to us. And in the third week when we were live, you can go imagine Eric and myself back in our small office. Eric and I said, oh my gosh, safety and civilities that we're going to have to do it. We had maybe a hundred people at the time chatting on Roadblocks.

We saw a few not that egregious, but early signs and we just made the call, this is going to be the foundation of what we do. In the early years of Roadblocks, the four of us then as Matt and John came on board. Every day one of us was the head moderator and we did it ourselves, so we learned how important this is. As we've gotten bigger, we've gotten to the point where there's thousands of moderators. Every image that goes on our platform gets human reviewed.

We filter text very stringently, especially for thirteen and under players. We use a lot of AI and mL to help do this. We're always getting better, but it is a key thing for us, and with six employees in the company, we have a lot of parents working at Roadblocks, some on our civility team who have kids on the platform, so it helps reinforce the importance of that. Who do you outsource moderation too, and how does that process actually work? We don't really outsource, like we build all of the

safety and moderation tools we do. We use people there. They act as roadblocks employees who are trained to join our team. There's thousands of them, but we treat them like employees. I mean, it's it's one of contracting. This is one of the most important jobs in the company, really, is that those teams that help us moderate. How optimistic are you about AI and tech being able to do that. I'm really actually optimistic that if we were to um we would never compare to the real world because our

standards are so much more stringent. But I do believe over time, rather than being ten or a hundred times whatever, safer or whatever, this will just keep getting better and better. And I think over time it will get to the point where if a six year old is on our platform, it's literally as if the parents wanted to be there with them watching everything. We'll be able to offer that type of thing. Now, a lot of parents are terrified. They're terrified they don't know what their kids or understand

what their kid is doing on World blocks. They're terrified of a future metaverse. They don't understand the parental controls. Do you understand that feeling? We do? We actually have to. I think it creates a higher standard for us because I think we can't assume every parent is going to get that involved with their kids and maybe decide, look, I only want my my family chatting with friends, or my I only want my family playing in these certain places.

So it's one of the reasons why we take this so seriously as we're building a platform um, even for parents who maybe don't have the time to be involved. There have been some serious content challenges, you know, stories about roadblocks being a playground for virtual fascists. There was just this story about Kim Kardashian's own child seeing an ad for a game that claimed to have a sex tape of her. What happened there? That was very unfortunate.

There was a text blurb very shortly that very very few people saw we um, but one of them happened to be her. We took the place down, We moderated that user, and they're off our platform. It was not the video was never on our platform. There was no imagery on our platform. It was a very short mention, but very unfortunate, and um, well, you know, our vision is to be the most civil place for everyone. Do you worry about how these communities can shape young people?

We do. I mean, we're optimistic that the better a job we do rather than being in a defensive posture, and we can be in an optimistic posture. And I think the posture we would like to be is parents feel WHOA, my kids are on roadblocks, and I actually know they're getting some nudges towards civility so that it's not even neutral, it's there. We're learning this. We treat everyone with respect, we don't tolerate bullying, we don't tolerate hate.

So I'm actually optimistic we can go in a positive direction. I asked him our Protrive, the CEO of Alphabet and Google, this question about kids and tech habits and screen time, and he said it's something that even stresses him out. You know, this is the guy who runs one of the most powerful technology companies in the world. Um, I have four kids. You have four kids. Did it stress you out? Like? How did you deal with your kids?

You know, it's probably inconsistently right, harder on the first born and then easier and easier and easier as we got used to it. And I think it highlights how much. Um it's a responsibility of both platforms like us as well as parents. You know, we're all trying to figure this out. So we're for those parents, you know who have kids on our platform, We're trying to be the most civil, safe, awesome place that they can be. But it is a we're all still trying to figure it out.

I think the one thing that we're very encouraged is that the time spent on roadblocks tends to be more like hanging out together or being on the phone together, or doing stuff together, and a lot less of it is isolated either consuming content by myself or grinding away at something by myself. So we do like the fact that most of this is either social or involved in creation. And your own kids played roadblocks, they did, they were that's probably you know, they played very early. They saw

the very earliest versions of it. Um. I had many wonderful moments coming. I remember one moment when my daughter said, stopped playing for a while, and I came in the family room and one was on the phone and one was a computer, and they were laughing, and they were pretty They were older at the time, and um, but now you know they're into their twenties. Um, they don't quite play as well. Did you learn through their eyes?

You know? Did you make product tweaks through their eyes based on their I still continued today and I my daughters and my son are all very savvy social media consumers. You name the product, they consume it and they give

me a lot of wonderful feedback. So for parents who might be concerned about just how much time their kids are spending on technology now that your kids are more grown, as there like a light at the end of the tunnel, I think there's a light at the end of the tunnel that I think there's a formative time when kids do need guidance and parents should be very involved. But I think as kids get to be eighteen and they have a phone, I mean beyond that, it's it's what

have they learned? And have they learned to self regulate? So I think there's both a guiding, interacting time and then a time when you know, I have no control of you. We need more government regulation here do we need? You know? I've you know, there's talk about you know, device level regulation, like how do you know for sure the age of the kids that are on the platform? Yeah, I would say in general, we take such a firm stand on a lot of these issues ethically, safety, morally,

all of those kind of things. I personally don't believe government regulation is going to help roadblocks better. We're very open to feedback and all of that. I do think there's some exciting technologies coming down the road that that someday may help. I don't want to predict what Google or Apple are gonna do, but I do think someday probably it will be possible to set the age on the phone, and then all apps will be able to look at that common age and make decisions of it.

Like that should happen now. Yeah, I don't want to get involved in Apple or Google's product roadmap or the legal thing, but if that were to be there, we would take advantage of it. Okay. Now, so for roadblocks, how do you balance you know, your own desire too to help shape you know, healthy young kids and screen time with the idea to build engagement, you know, the desire to build and scale a massive platform. How do you balance those two things? Yeah, I think it's um.

We're always running from a moral ethical standard because we have so many people within roadblocks with kids, so we're always trying to keep that balance. We we are more and more when we think about what people do on the platform we tend to stay away from chatty kind of thing we tend to lean into. Is this authentic human communication that we're hosting. Are we hosting creation? UM? I think we'll see more and more creation on the platform.

And I think a lot of people are excited about creation, whether it's making my own fashion, or whether it's designing a race car, or whether it's learning to code. So I think like we have wonderful ways to grow that we feel are positive UM, either human connection or human creation. What about time limits like the platform itself, you know, pop up, you've been playing for fifteen minutes or you've been on here for an hour, time to go run outside?

I think we UM are looking into that. I could see that being an aid to parents who want to get involved in that. I think that could be an interesting thing to think about. You've been investing in high fidelity graphics. What is the endgame here for? You know, more human, more realistic avatars? Yeah, this is UM. I'll look way out like a science fiction writer and talk about it, and I'm what I'm talking about now super difficult. The end game? Sometimes we talk about we would go

together to a rock concert or whatever concert you like. Um, we would be there with fifty thou other people. It would feel like a movie. It would feel like real life. We might be on our TV, we might be on a VR headset, we might be on our phone. We'd be talking to each other, we'd be dancing, we would

wave across the stadium at someone. It would be indistinguishable from real life movie, the video that we're on today, and UM, when we imagine that that, it's pretty mind blowing and it's it's a pretty fun, interactive thing that feels both very connected with the artist and very real. So are you pushing towards something like meta Horizon World is? Does that found you know, more experiences like that for adults? Yeah?

I think this is what when we think about this, this is just a really big opportunity, and I think it goes beyond any specific product. It goes into We sometimes think of roadblocks ultimately as fading into the background as a utility like the electric grid. Um, even though it's photo realistic and there's all these awesome avatars and connection and identity around the world, the things we start seeing built on this are a wide range of things we have, all the things our kids might play, We

have musical interactions. We have the Roadblocks office simulation, as do others, where we go hang out by the water cooler, we have people going to school, so we think of it like as a broad utility platform. So you imagine this not just for kids but for everyone. Absolutely, is that that the vision everyone in the world on Roadblocks? Um, maybe a more humble way to see it is, you know, if it's ten years after Alexander Bell came up with the phone, ten ten years after that saying everyone in

the world is going to have a telephone. That might have seen a little crazy at the time, but we do think it's the same type of technological shift. What about entertainment? Would Roadblocks ever make a Netflix show? Um? What we would like? But when I go back to this hope that we're a utility platform, we would love it if one of our developers made a Netflix show,

so we would we would feel much more authentic. If one of the creators on Roadblocks, who's coming up with avatars and stories and ideas and characters like that, we want them to be in the limelight. I think the ni there's just an award from Nickelodeon. Actually, Like, what's one of the best um games of the year, and I think one of our developers won it, which which we actually thought was wonderful. It's not Roadblocks, it's one of our creators, um Riot Activision. They're all producing movies

and TV shows as I understand it. So how are you thinking about i P or is that something that comes back to the developers. I think we would like to be an i P generation factory, but the i P is owned by our creators, and the Roadblocks is the utility where the i P is generated, where interesting new ideas come up from our players. You know, whether it's Brookhaven, a dot Me, Blocksberg, you name it, where they think of stories and situations and they're the famous

ones more than Roadblocks. Roadblocks Shares took a dive on the back of Netflix results, which obviously plummeted our investors reading too much into the connection there um for our company. I think our company is somewhat unique, and what is very exciting to go to work and be the c

EO is being in a market like this. You know, where we think ultimately billions of people are going to use this type of technology, and in a market where we ultimately imagine billions of people using this around the world, working, playing, learning, There's a lot of headroom and there's a lot of ways to grow both the age of our users, the types of uses they're in, where they are around the world. Um, and the other exciting thing about this market there are

so many big inventions that still have to happen. It feels like we're pretty mature that inside our company we realize like there's six or seven big inventions we need to make to get to that next step. So there are big concerns that we just hit a plateau in the streaming market. Do you think people are wrong about that? Um, that's a different market, right, That's a market for how much video we consume, and who are the players in

that market? I think and pau in that market. I don't want to comment on that, but I think what's exciting about at our businesses, I think it's it's so early. We have so much headroom to where we're going to go. So everyone has an idea for how Netflix can change, and advertising is a big one of them. Would Roadblocks ever consider more in game advertising? Yeah, there's a funny trivia note I would share to all the Roadblocks fans

out there. There was a time the very first way we monetize was advertising, and then there was also a time when we had pre roll video on roadblocks. UM that's all gone now. It's gone for a couple of reasons. We didn't want it to interfere with the user experience, and also our our virtual economy has become such a powerful way to power this that we are able to

take that down in the future. Though. I think there's a certain type of advertising that is kids safe, that is um immersive, that doesn't get in your way, that involves people who want to interact with their brands. UM. There's a lot of people out there who love Vans for example, you know, and UM if we do it in the right way where they want to wear their vans or they want to skateboard for a while while they're doing that. I think there's gentle ways to imagine

a whole different type of advertising. So would it be like virtual billboards or branded objects, and it would it look more like Shopify. I think the way we think about this, we we like to think about what's the most far out visionary way to do that, and that would be if I'm a fan of Vans, UM I clearly know I'm going to a Vans hosted experience, just like when I'm in the mall, I know I'm going into the Van store. I'm using them as one example of many. It could be Gucci, it could be Nike,

it could be anyone else. Um. I think then the advertising is really more a connection with the brand. I'm as less of a brand experience. I'm just I'm going to the Van's place to hang out, try on the shoes, um, try some tricks on my skip And how do you make sure that doesn't take away from the ethos of what makes roadblocks gran? Yeah? I think are the people on roadblocks, you know, they're they're to authentically connect with

their friends, and they're there there. It's almost as if we together were walking around them all together deciding what do we want to do. Do we want to go grab coffee and just chat. Do we want to go into someone's store and look at some stuff. Do we

want to go outside and go for a walk. I think the players are very sophisticated on these platforms, and as long as um what we're doing with these brands is very clear, non deceptive, appropriate for those ages, I think they'll they'll figure out the balance of how much time do we go into a store versus how much time do we go to a crazy adventure tycoon and you know, build an amusement park together. So either way,

this could be a huge new revenue stream. I believe it's an awesomely huge revenue stream, and at the same time we've been very gentle towards it. How huge UM Well, when we look at UM I don't want to once again give any forecasts, but if we look at the potential engagement time on our platform, you know, I think we're at around ten billion hours per quarter. That's a lot of engagement time, and so thinking of gently monetizing some of that with advertising is it's a big opportunity.

So as you look ahead, what do you think are the biggest challenges roadblocks will face if our vision plays out, which we hope it does, and we have people of all ages on the platform and we're around the world, I think maintaining that civility as we grow, as we have older people who might want to go to a political rally, thinking ways to do that in a systemic way, that's a big challenge. It takes a lot of thought. I think thinking through the technology. I really like, we're

very technology driven company. So it's fun to be running a company where we have to do these seven big inventions and you know, what we're doing right now isn't going to cut it. So knowing that technology challenges super interesting. And then people right where our whole company is based on awesome people and you know, finding the right people, the people who share our values bringing them into the company. That's also big one. We do a little rapid fire

section just to spontaneous as I can. UM. First question, what's your morning routine? Wake up, go outside of my porch, do a CrossFit, workout, take a shower, go to work. Where are you most productive? Home or office? Both? Um? Different types of productivity homes and state flow state at time office connecting, being together, brainstorming post work or nighttime routine, hang out with the family, eat dinner together, maybe watch a show together. What's your favorite show right now? What

are you binging? Oh my gosh, I can't. I don't even want to get into the TV that I watch. It's embarrassing. I actually sit around. I do a lot of surfing YouTube videos. Really, what's your what are your favorite go to Oh my gosh. If if you look at my YouTube history, it's it's this weird mechanical stuff off road vehicles and rockets and ships and big waves. It's kind of weird. Are you still building stuff in real life like you did as a kid? I wish I did. I guess, I guess. I it's pretty much

you know, fitness, family, sleep, and roadblock. Uh um. Mostly nonfiction, so I would say, just read Marco Polo Adventure. Really cool. Um, one of my favorite sci fi books for the metaverse light of other days, very little known sci fi book, not as popular as a lot of the other highly recommended. Okay, good to know, best life hack. Oh I um. I think it all gets down to the joy of health. Really, like if if I'm not, you know, feeling centered, but sleep, exercise, diet,

all of that, everything else just completely falls apart. What are your health what are your go choose to stay healthy other than CrossFit? I mean, are you eating blueberries and drinking red wine? Are not mine? I'm pretty I'm pretty particular about my diet. I don't eat a lot of carbs. So that's my pretty basic, pretty straightforward exactly. Okay, you used to have a talk radio show. Now that I've met you in person, I get this. I see

how you you'd be. You'd be pretty fun to listen to. Yeah, what were your I mean, what was your style like? So my gam was I would say starting in college, when I would have insomnia at two am, I would turn on talk radio and you know all those famous KGO people, Bill Wattenberg, Retelia Pharaoh, all that just listened to the people calling in. So I um, after knowledge revolution was acquired and I had a year, I had

a little time to dabble. My jam was really trying to talk about outrageous topics, you know, gambling, other controversial things. It was in a small market in Santa Cruz. I would typically it's really hard to get people to call in, so it's really scary if you're a DJ and no one's calling inside. I made it really controversial. I have people come on and debate interesting kind to pull some old tapes or something. I think those have all I

think I have the only tapes and they're safe. I don't think we want those getting Um, if you could have dinner with Steve Jobs or Walt Disney, who would you pick both? You can't pick both. I probably I respect them both. What's interesting about both of them is innovation driven companies UM year after year after year, and companies that take topological leaps, that take big risks UM.

And one of the innovations we try and do at roadblocks is, you know, there's a certain type of innovation where it's about two to three years out, we know it's technically feasible. We try to do that guided innovation. I think both of them did that. I guess I would have to slightly lean Disney just because he was not just the usher of the innovation but actually was kind of part of the sum of the innovation. But I think Steve leaned much more on finding the people

to drive that innovation. Best advice for your twenties, Um, don't freak out if between the age of twenty two and twenty five everything is a disaster. Why not, because there's a lot of opportunity in life. You're gonna learn a lot. You know, my first two to three years out of college as calling my parents every day just like, oh my gosh, my job is terrible, Like what am I gonna do? And and also I'd say organically try things to figure out what is natural for you. It

might not be. It might be more about trying things than being analytical. I remember I had a spreadsheet of twelve careers like waited, Like that's not gonna work. Best advice for your forties. Um, life is short. It's such a valuable commodity every day. What you do, your friends, your time, your family is so important. So how do you define work life integration? I don't like the word balance. Yeah, I would say, can I make my roadblocks job better than anything else I would do? Like? Can it be

better than retiring? Can it be better than a hobby? Can I figure out what my unique job as a CEO? Every CEO job is different, like I like doing it? So can I figure out what my role is? Favorite travel destination real or virtual? I guess? Oh my gosh, I wish I could travel more. I was just at Lake Tahoe. I love it. Um, I love the ocean. I was on a ship last summer, But I don't have a favorite. You mentioned your co founder, Eric Castle earlier,

who died tragically of cancer. Um, if he was here today, what do you think he would think of a roadblocks that Roadblocks has become? Wow? I think he'd be proud. It's a good question, Like I think he would. You know, his both of his sons have worked at the company a bit um, so yeah, I think he'd be very seems like you miss him. He's just such a brilliant partner. Yeah. And he also set the standard for taking the long

view on how we engineer things. A lot of the technology at Roadblocks is still like, you know, his vision lives on and it goes back to your advice for you or forties. Life is short, it is, indeed, So take us five years out. What does Roadblocks look like in five years? I think, um, not like it looks today.

I think if some of the inventions that we have in the pipeline, you know, we have this feeling that there's certain types of innovations or inventions that you know, they're unpredictable, um where nothing may happen or they may change the lands. I think we have some of those in the pipeline. So I think in five years, we're getting to the point where it's more common to use this technology for work. We're getting to the point where, um, it's more commed to use this for education. I think music,

it's very common. Concerts are it's just it's something we do all the time. I think there's unexpected uses other cool technologies telephone or video. You know, who would have thought with video all of a sudden, Remote tele therapy, for example, is such a big thing. So I think there's unpredictable things too. So in five years, will the metaverse exists in you know, in in in the form that you imagine, or is it take does is it going to take much longer? Like what's the time horizon?

You've said many times it's gonna take a long time. Well, it's really interesting, right because we're right in the middle of it right now in a sense, with fifty million people every day on our platform. It's already here. And at the same time, what is all simately going to be possible could be five, ten or twenty years out, So it's it's all The metaverse really has existence since online dial up MUDs really too d very simple text,

you could call that the metaverse. It's existed in multiplayer gaming. World of Warcraft exists, exists now with more people, and in ten or twenty years it will exist photo realistically with fifty people. Scaling the metaverse is a massive challenge, how exactly are you going to do that? Well, it starts with people, So it starts with us, you know, building an amazing engineering team that's growing all of the time, and it goes up and down our stack of everything

we're working on. You know, our infrastructure, thousands of servers around the world, high bandwidth connections, our core server technology that is growing, getting more parallel, hosting more people, the client that we're building, the rendering technology, and all of these things, possibly more devices that I mentioned, including the our headsets. UM, how we handle social how people are able to create on the platform? Um? Can you and I make our own clothing rather than just buy the clothing?

That's super important to us. How we communicate? Um? Are we How are we doing audio in a safe way so that it's safe for both young players and we can use it? Um? How realistic are faces when we're communicating together. There's just a long range of innovations that we're going to bring to the platform. Fascinating. What's the role you see for AI in the metaverse? Could AI be a real player making its own games, making its own designs And is that a little scary or exciting? Well,

I think we're ways away from the hell computer. Um. But what we are going to see is initially even as part of creation, having AI supercharge artists and supercharge creators. So there there will be a time when instead of going and cutting out fabric to make a new piece of clothe, probably be able to talk and say, look, I wanted a little tighter, I want the fabric to be this type of way, and it'll automatically do that.

I think there'll be times when developers want to create a city where rather than building all the components of the city will probably use a paint brush and they'll take a few pictures of the style of the city, and AI and m L will process that and more procedurally generate the city, and then longer term, maybe you know, AI powering characters on roadblocks that can stand in and help in certain ways. I think that's all in the future.

Where are you on the Singularity And you know the people who get scared of computers killing humans, Oh man, now we're getting into really crazy stuff. I actually think it's much more of an evolution. I don't have any guests on the timing, but I guess I would personally believe over time computers will get smarter than people. Well, and how much, Martyn? What does that mean? Like people? People still exist? I think people continue to exist. I

don't think any happens suddenly. It's not like we all disappear or anything like that. And I don't think it's a threat for future generations. But I think looking out ten thousand years, it's really hard to predict what that is. But you think that could happen. I think that could happen in ten thousand years. Wow, that's really that's like kinde of quite true. It's kind of scary. Okay, you

clearly have so much passion for this job. Is roadblocks your final stop on your Journey's definitely my final stop, I think, you know, working with our executives on the board, we have to be just watching out how clearly I'm thinking, you know, and I'm very open to the feedback, like how long do you do this? Dave? And but I think there's a lot of time ahead of me here. So just to be clear, in ten thousand years, humans might not exist. I think I think humans will still

exist in ten thousand years. I just think I don't know. I just think computers are going to get really smart. How smart unpredictably smart to do, like smart enough to do what UM obviously too. You know, I don't want to get into any movies or things like that, but I think it'll be hard to tell whether you're talking to a human or a computer, for example. Well, how far out is that? I don't know. I don't want to predict that. Wow, that's really that's scary. I mean,

does that excite you or does that scare you? I think it does neither. I think for me, it feels like a reality, and I think, UM what we think some things. I think I can't predict the timing on that as it reflects back to Roadblocks. The way we think about it is the type of technology we're working on, whether we develop it, whether some other company develops it. Over time is going to evolve. We get this unique opportunity to be good shepherds of the technology and try

to bring it forward in a civil way. Oh. I love that. I'm glad we pulled that threat. Dave Puzuki cee Overroadblocks, Thank you so much. Bloomberg Studio one point O was produced and edited by Lauren Ellis and Brian Carter Gaynor. I'm Emily Chang your host and executive producer