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Every day, teams across Roblox solve complex technical challenges and build innovative solutions that bring our vision and mission to life. To accelerate this work, Roblox continually looks for startups that can bring new domain expertise, skills, and capabilities that can advance the Roblox platform.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cRoblox is a highly innovative company with a very broad product and technology surface area. Our Corporate Development strategy accelerates innovation by bringing in talented and innovative startups that are vision-aligned,\u201d said Kyle Price, Chief of Staff & Head of Corporate Development.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We spoke with eight former founders that join Roblox through acquisition. Below are their stories about why they decided to join and stay at Roblox. Five key themes quickly emerged from these conversations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Our vision to reimagine the way people come together guides everything we do from the decisions we make to where we invest our time and resources. For Jim Greer, co-founder & CEO of Bash Video, Roblox\u2019s vision echoed the core of what he and his team were aiming to do with Bash, a social-video conferencing platform they founded in 2018. Always passionate about building communities and enabling developer success, Jim recalled, \u201cFrom the start [Bash\u2019s] vision and approach dovetailed well with Roblox\u2019s mission of connecting people with civility.\u201d<\/p>\n This was also true for Clint Sereday, co-founder of Byfron Technologies, a company dedicated to developing software that safeguards against reverse engineering and tampering in-game. \u201cWe had a common vision for safe and civil gaming experiences. This shared aspiration reinforced that it wasn\u2019t just a transaction, but an opportunity for us to really accelerate the impact of what we were trying to accomplish in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n Roblox\u2019s vision offered Rebecca Kantar, who leads Education Partnerships at Roblox, an opportunity to continue her mission-oriented work. In 2015, Rebecca co-founded Imbellus, a company that developed simulation-based assessments for use in education and employment contexts. \u201cThere is a huge opportunity to think about gaming as just the first vertical Roblox tackles,\u201d she shared. \u201cNow, we\u2019re thinking about how we can enable learning and teaching with Roblox.\u201d<\/p>\n Roblox acquired Imbellus in 2020 and began using its assessment technology as part of its hiring process and applying the team\u2019s knowledge about the education market to start thinking of new opportunities. \u201cWe were fortunate to meet Dave in 2020 and started talking about how Roblox had an exciting application for our technology,\u201d said Rebecca. \u201cOur partnership came to life because Roblox\u2019s aspirations to expand into new verticals, like education, aligned very well with the domain expertise and capabilities we brought.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2016, Mahesh Ramasubramanian and Kiran Bhat launched a startup called Loom.ai, which built plugins that created personalized, expressive 3D digital avatars generated from photographs. The underlying technology used machine learning and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n From Mahesh\u2019s point of view, it was also Roblox\u2019s focus on the future vision that impressed the Loom.ai team. \u201cWe believed that the future was 3D. Roblox was already in the world of 3D and they really understood the range of applications \u2013 that consumers could use avatars, video, and messaging in 3D on a daily basis\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe were sort of on the early side of bringing AI-driven technologies to a consumer audience,\u201d said Kiran. \u201cWe ran several experiments and discovered that other game engine platforms run into problems when trying to bring four, even five people into the same 3D space. But with Roblox, we saw that they could support hundreds of avatars in a complex scene. Overall, there was a lot of synergy between what we were doing and where Roblox was going.\u201d<\/p>\n A common theme that we also heard from a number of founders was that Roblox\u2019s scale would enable them to accelerate their impact. Eli Brown joined Roblox from Guilded, a chat platform for gaming communities, 4 years after founding Guilded. \u201cRoblox is a platform with millions of daily users and has an incredibly robust developer community. At the time, Roblox had room for growth in the communication space. We happened to be building communication technology that we could scale to the millions of users that Roblox had and would be a valuable new capability.\u201d<\/p>\n In October 2019, Brina Lee founded Hamul. They built a tool that added video overlays to games, letting users connect with friends while playing. The tool became a pandemic hit, but it wasn\u2019t until Brina and the team began discussions with Roblox that the full extent of the business opportunity came into focus.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we began Hamul, we thought we\u2019d only build for teens and adults. But when we talked to Roblox, we realized there was a huge opportunity to build for all ages through their platform.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, Brina and the rest of the Hamul team are bringing their skills and technology to reinvent what everyday communication will look like on Roblox.<\/p>\n Clint also saw joining Roblox as a chance to scale Byfron\u2019s impact. He said, \u201cWe wanted to bring our technology (anti-cheat software) and services to more experiences. I felt like getting the chance to work on the Roblox platform and with a large, passionate developer community meant that even more people could benefit from what we were building.\u201d<\/p>\n Many shared examples about the collaborative process and how the Roblox team actively sought to bring people in with different perspectives, experiences, and ideas.<\/p>\n \u201cThe entire process was just very collaborative\u2026 It felt like the Roblox team cared about us and what we were trying to accomplish,\u201d said Clint. \u201cWe had several conversations about how we were both progressing. We shared our tech and the Roblox team did a really thorough assessment of it, giving us great feedback along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDave knew about our team\u2019s experience with developing browser-based, user-generated content platforms. The team\u2019s capabilities were very aligned to what Roblox was doing,\u201d said Jim. \u201cSo when it came to Bash, it wasn\u2019t necessarily about the technology that we were building. Dave recognized our value as a group of six people who had a successful track record of building things, who would bring additive competencies, and who could help Roblox achieve its vision.\u201d<\/p>\n Teams are given the time and space needed to integrate successfully into Robolox. This creates an environment in which they can balance contributing expertise while retaining a level of autonomy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had six months to operate more independently,\u201d mentioned Eli about Guilded\u2019s acquisition. \u201cFiguring out how to take a team that\u2019s been independent and integrate them thoughtfully into the company \u2013 while maintaining our team identity \u2013 takes a lot of thought and care.\u201d Today, the Guilded team is part of the User Group and Eli\u2019s role has since evolved to leading the Community Team, which is responsible for building a community platform that makes it easy to create and join vibrant communities on Roblox.<\/p>\n As Kiran recalled, \u201cDave instinctively understood how difficult it is to bring personalized avatars using AI and ML to the 3D space. He understood that this challenge takes time to solve. Given our value of taking the long view, once we joined, we were given the time and resources to build as an autonomous group. It takes a lot of patience and rigor to innovate like we need to, but I think that\u2019s where Roblox shines.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I joined Roblox in 2022, I was able to develop my own engineering pod and continue working on what we were doing before,\u201d said Chris Kirmse, founder of Athenascope, a platform for video game content creators to develop video clips. \u201cYou have to take responsibility for what you want to do, but there\u2019s a strong sense of encouragement and support from leadership at every step of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n The founders also shared that Roblox has enabled them to expand their technology and impact. \u201cWhen Kiran and I joined, we wondered how we could make sure we continue to innovate just like we were doing as a startup.\u201d said Mahesh. \u201cWe\u2019ve created a new technology initiative and are taking on more than just avatar emotion. We\u2019re now looking at things like voice safety, body tracking, and more which require new machine learning technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n Mahesh and Kiran are now part of a company-wide effort to build what\u2019s next in terms of avatars and expression. \u201cWe only started this new technology initiative six months back, but it\u2019s great to see the strong interest in keeping innovation going and how committed leadership is to supporting it from where they prioritize resources, investments, all the way to helping us with patents.\u201d<\/p>\n Brina continues to embrace the push for innovation. Building on the expertise she brought from Hamul, she is part of the team that just launched Roblox Connect. Brina summarized, \u201cIt\u2019s been exciting to continue bringing new technologies to market and getting closer to our vision of helping people reimagine how they come together.\u201d<\/p>\nRoblox\u2019s vision and mission is inspiring\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n
Roblox provides an opportunity to scale impact and accelerate technical innovation<\/b><\/h2>\n
The overall process makes people feel valued as teammates and partners\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n
Teams are thoughtfully integrated into the company<\/b><\/h2>\n
Roblox\u2019s culture of innovation continues to fuel the entrepreneurial spirit of these founders<\/b><\/h2>\n