David Baszucki, Co-Founder of Roblox — The Path to 150M+ Daily Users, Critical Business Decisions, Ketogenic Therapy for Brain Health, Daily Routines, The Roblox Economy, and More (#834)

David Baszucki (@DavidBaszucki) is the co-founder and CEO of Roblox. TIME named Roblox one of the “100 Most Influential Companies,” and it has been recognized by Fast Company for innovation on their “Most Innovative Companies” and “Most Innovative Companies in Gaming” lists.

Previously, David founded Knowledge Revolution, where he and his brother Greg created Interactive Physics, a leader in educational physics and mechanical-design-simulation software.

Please enjoy!

This episode is brought to you by:

• Qlosi prescription eye drop used to treat age-related blurry near vision (presbyopia) in adults
• AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement
• Wealthfront high-yield cash account

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Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Audible, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the interview on YouTube.

Transcripts

• This episode
• All episodes

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

• Connect with David Baszucki:

Roblox Profile | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube

Featured David Baszucki Resources

• Roblox
• Baszucki Group
• Metabolic Mind
• Tech Talks With David Baszucki
• Doctors Said My Son’s Bipolar Disorder Couldn’t Be Healed by Diet. They Were Wrong by Jan Ellison Baszucki | San Francisco Chronicle
• I’m David Baszucki, CEO of Roblox, and This Is How I Work | Lifehacker

Tools & Applications

• Atmospheric Calm Spotify Playlist
• Continuous Ketone Monitoring (CKM)
• FreeStyle Libre
• Oura Ring
• Precision Xtra Ketone/Glucose Meter

Notable Roblox Games

• Bird Simulator
• Dress to Impress
• Grow a Garden
• The Mimic
• Natural Disaster Survival
• 99 Nights in the Forest

Recommended Reading

• Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health-and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More by Christopher M. Palmer
• Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility by James P. Carse
• Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health by Casey Means, MD and Calley Means
• The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
• Mutiny on the Bounty: A Novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
• The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Dr. Fei-Fei Li

Movies

• 2001: A Space Odyssey

Music

• White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane (from Surrealistic Pillow)

People

• Roald Amundsen
• Matthew Baszucki
• Jan Ellison Baszucki
• James P. Carse
• Captain James Cook
• Dominic D’Agostino
• Harley Finkelstein
• Wim Hof
• Pablos Holman
• Andrej Karpathy
• Alan Kay
• Fei-Fei Li
• Tobi Lütke
• Ferdinand Magellan
• Casey Means
• HAL 9000
• Chris Palmer
• Kevin Rose
• Robert Falcon Scott
• Simon Sinek
• Joshua Slocum
• Adam Smith
• Dick Tracy

Health Concepts & Metabolic Resources

• Bipolar Disorder
• Continuous Glucose Monitoring
• Cyclical Ketogenic Diet
• Exogenous Ketones / Ketone Esters
• Gluconeogenesis
• Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
• Intermittent Fasting
• Ketogenic Diet
• KetoNutrition
• McLean Hospital
• Metabolic & Mental Health at Baszucki Group
• 10 Best and Worst Fats to Eat on the Keto Diet | Everyday Health
• 10+ Best Keto Fat Bomb Recipes | Delish
• 15 Best Keto Coffee Drinks | Insanely Good
• Chronic Schizophrenia Remission Brings Hope | Metabolic Multiplier
• Dom D’Agostino — The Power of the Ketogenic Diet | The Tim Ferriss Show #172
• Evidence for Altered Energy Metabolism, Increased Lactate, and Decreased PH in Schizophrenia Brain: A Focused Review and Meta-Analysis of Human Postmortem and Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Studies | Schizophrenia Research
• History and Origin of the Ketogenic Diet | Epilepsy and the Ketogenic Diet
• Ketogenic Diet Helps Young Ecuadorian Twins Improve Their Schizophrenic Symptoms | Chris Palmer, MD
• The Ketogenic Diet for the Treatment of Mood Disorders in Comorbidity With Epilepsy in Children and Adolescents | Frontiers In Pharmacology
• The Life-Extension Episode — Dr. Matt Kaeberlein on The Dog Aging Project, Rapamycin, Metformin, Spermidine, NAD+ Precursors, Urolithin A, Acarbose, and Much More | The Tim Ferriss Show #610
• Metabolic Psychiatry: A Patient-Provider Discussion with Christin Kehoe & Christopher Palmer, MD | Metabolic Health Summit
• My Life Extension Pilgrimage to Easter Island | The Tim Ferriss Show #193
• Peter Attia, M.D. — Fasting, Metformin, Athletic Performance, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show #398
• Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John J. Ratey and Eric Hagerman
• Study Shows Keto Diet Can Help You Sleep Better | Sleep Foundation
• Top 13 Common Keto Mistakes and How to Fix Them | Perfect Keto
• What is Metabolic Psychiatry? | Stanford Medicine

TIMESTAMPS

• [00:00:00] Start.
• [00:01:48] Kicking off with custom kettlebells.
• [00:03:00] How David and I connected through Dominic D’Agostino and metabolic health research.
• [00:04:30] Matthew Baszucki’s eight-year journey with bipolar disorder before keto breakthrough.
• [00:08:14] Rescuing Matthew from the streets with a strategic hospital admission.
• [00:18:18] Matthew’s disappearance from his mother’s perspective.
• [00:19:37] Understanding how the ketogenic diet helps people with bipolar disorder.
• [00:24:21] Meeting the challenges of ketogenic diet compliance.
• [00:30:06] Measuring ketone levels.
• [00:32:17] The clandestine Canadian CKM smuggling ring.
• [00:33:07] The calm optimism, mental clarity, and reduced sleep requirements of ketosis.
• [00:35:19] Breath hold experiments.
• [00:37:44] Optimizing my sleep and minimizing my OCD on ketosis.
• [00:40:18] How exogenous ketones improve verbal acuity of relatives with Alzheimer’s
• [00:41:49] Lyme disease and ketosis.
• [00:44:37] Talk therapy vs. mechanical therapy: Fixing the machinery first.
• [00:45:47] Dangers of talk therapy without physiological foundation: Learned helplessness.
• [00:46:49] Atmospheric Calm playlist: Ambient music for focus and productivity.
• [00:49:16] How Roblox fits in with human connection evolution to the tune of 120 million daily users.
• [00:52:50] Emergent games within the Roblox ecosystem.
• [00:54:32] Roblox’s safety infrastructure: Built for all ages from day one.
• [00:55:24] Future of 3D work: Virtual meetings replacing video calls, concerts, and political rallies.
• [00:56:57] The inevitability of innovation.
• [00:58:07] From early revenue challenges to a creator community earning over $1 billion a year.
• [01:02:52] Taking economic inspiration from Adam Smith.
• [01:03:54] Building the successful Robux system with a 20-person team in three months.
• [01:10:17] How does Roblox guard against IP theft among its digital creators?
• [01:14:32] Best company decisions made at Roblox thus far.
• [01:19:35] Missteps and mistakes.
• [01:21:07] When intuitive tech predictions pay off.
• [01:25:49] David’s favorite niche Roblox games.
• [01:28:41] Roblox kid safety: Filtered communication, parental controls, future AI age estimation, and clustering.
• [01:32:02] Roblox AI infrastructure: Hundreds of models for safety, translation, 3D creation, and procedurally generated dreaming.
• [01:33:33] Predictions: Sci-fi becoming reality, holodeck timeline, AI movies in 3-5 years, photorealistic virtual concerts.
• [01:37:24] Product development and challenges of being a public company CEO.
• [01:41:35] David’s self-care routine.
• [01:45:20] Roblox wellness: CGMs for all employees, snack labeling system, employee transformations.
• [01:47:11] Exploratory reading.
• [01:49:32] “Feed Your Head”: David’s Jefferson Airplane-inspired billboard.
• [01:50:24] Whole cream vs. half-and-half for coffee and other parting thoughts.

DAVID BASZUCKI QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“[Our son with bipolar] tried a ketogenic diet, and literally within three weeks or four weeks, we saw progress that we had never seen with any drug or medication. Mind blown, really, and a miracle.”

— David Baszucki

“One other way to predict the future, I think, is many things are just inevitable. There are enough smart people around that the wheel was inevitable.”

— David Baszucki

“Roblox was always what is called a user-generated content platform, which means creators are making stuff, people are learning STEM, people are getting excited. Even the ego burst of having three friends play a game can really motivate a young person to get into computer science.”

— David Baszucki

“If you’re having a mental health crisis, work on your body and your machinery, maybe, before you work on the talk therapy. Get the strategic things right first.”

— David Baszucki

“If we were to tabulate the number of new entrants into computer science or graphic arts or economics that had been inspired by Roblox, it probably is in the millions, given just that experience that people have had on our platform.”

— David Baszucki

“What’s interesting is I’ve never really ever liked any business books ever. … The books I was obsessed with in my youth were the books about Magellan and Captain Cook and Mutiny on the Bounty and Joshua Slocum and just all of these crazy explorers, Amundsen and Scott and all of that stuff.”

— David Baszucki

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Want to hear another episode exploring the groundbreaking power of metabolic psychiatry? Listen to my conversation with Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Chris Palmer, in which we discussed his pioneering work using ketogenic diets to treat psychiatric disorders, the brain energy theory of mental illness, extraordinary case studies of recovery from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, how mitochondrial function affects mental health, and much more.