Meet the Executive Team Making Roblox a Household Name

Roblox has gained the attention of many children since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is reported that in 2020, more than two-thirds of U.S. children aged between 9 and 12 and more than half of U.S. children under the age of 16 were on the gaming platform.

The mastermind behind Roblox is David Baszucki, an Electrical Engineering graduate from Stanford University. But Roblox was not Baszucki’s first company. In August 1989, he founded Knowledge Revolution, an educational physics and mechanical design software company that he later sold to MSC Software for $20 million. During his time as President of Knowledge Revolution he met the late Erik Cassel, a business partner turned co-founder, who he began working with on Roblox in 2004.

Initially, Roblox was a web platform where users could play games from various developers, but over time, it has become a metaverse where its players can host social events, trade digital currencies and build games for each other.

Continually iterating and improving Roblox’s core offerings is Chief Product Officer Manuel Bronstein. An experienced product manager with over twenty years of experience in the consumer and entertainment space, Bronstein was most recently the VP of Product at Google, where he oversaw Google Assistant. He has also served in leadership positions in companies including YouTube, Zynga and Xbox.

Roblox currently has an estimated 43.2 million daily active users worldwide and its stock price is projected to increase over the next year as the company continues to partner with household name brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and Nike.

Driving awareness to Roblox’s brand is the company’s Chief Business Officer, Craig Donato. Donato joined Roblox in December 2016 and has since been responsible for building immersive experiences and leading engagement and brand partnerships for the company. The Stanford graduate had previously founded his own company, Oodle, which was later acquired by QVC. Donato most recently served as VP of Business Development for Nextdoor.

Roblox made $930 million in revenue in 2020 and its year-over-year revenue increased by 102% in its third quarter in 2021, to $509.3 million. The company also went public through a direct listing in March 2021.

Managing the finances at Roblox is Chief Financial Officer, Mike Guthrie. He was the CFO at TrueCar from 2012 to 2018 and played a pivotal role in spearheading the company’s IPO in 2014. Guthrie has an MBA from Stanford University and a BA in Economics from the University of Virginia.

Currently, Roblox is available in countries all over the world excluding only Jordan, United Arab Emirates and North Korea. Overseeing the Roblox systems and servers ensuring that operations are appropriately streamlined is Chief Systems Officer, Matt Kaufman. The Virginia Tech graduate has over 20 years of experience building marketplace platforms. He was previously the Head of Operations at Crunchbase and has served as SVP Product Development at Oodle.

Crucial to the success of the platform is Chief Technology Officer Daniel Sturman who leads Roblox’s engineering teams. Sturman is an experienced engineering leader who previously served as the SVP of Engineering and Support at Cloudera, overseeing a team of over 600 engineers. He has also worked at Google, where he was the VP of Engineering, leading the development of cloud products. Sturman has a Ph.D. and an MS in Computer Science from the University of Illinois.

If you would like to learn more about Roblox’s team, you can explore their org chart here.