What Is David Baszucki's Net Worth and Salary?
David Baszucki is a Canadian-born American entrepreneur, inventor, and engineer who has a net worth of $2.4 billion. David Baszucki earned his fortune as the co-founder and CEO of the video game developer Roblox Corporation. He was previously the co-founder and CEO of Knowledge Revolution, which MSC Software acquired for $20 million in 1998.
Early Life
David Baszucki was born on January 20, 1963, in Canada. David has a brother named Greg, and he attended Eden Prairie High School in Minnesota. As a high school student, he was the captain of the TV quiz team. After graduation, Baszucki enrolled at Stanford University to study computer science and engineering, and in 1985, he graduated from college as a General Motors Scholar in electrical engineering.
Career
In the late '80s, David and Greg designed an educational supplement that would make the creation of 2D physics experiments possible. They called this simulation "Interactive Physics," and the brothers co-founded the company Knowledge Revolution to distribute it. "Interactive Physics" won numerous awards, and the Baszucki brothers followed it with "Working Model," a mechanical design software. In late 1998, they sold Knowledge Revolution to the simulation software company MSC Software. David served as MSC's vice president and general manager from 2000 to 2002, then he left to launch the angel investment firm Baszucki & Associates, which he led from 2003 to 2004. While running Baszucki & Associates, David provided seed funding to the social networking service Friendster.
Roblox
In 2004, Baszucki and Erik Cassel (the former VP of Engineering at Interactive Physics) started working on a Roblox prototype that was originally called DynaBlocks. In 2005, the name was changed to Roblox, and the website launched the following year. According to the website, "Roblox is powered by a global community of millions of developers who produce their own immersive multiplayer experiences each month using Roblox Studio, our intuitive desktop design tool." The company that owns Roblox is called the Roblox Corporation, and David's stake in the company (approximately 13%) is worth an estimated $4.2 billion. Baszucki has said that he will donate net proceeds from Roblox's New York Stock Exchange listing to philanthropic causes.
In late 2021, "The New York Times" alleged that David and his relatives used the Qualified Small Business Stock tax break several times to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes.
2020 Compensation
In 2020 David earned a total of $6.8 million from Roblox.
2021 Compensation
According to filings submitted to the SEC in April 2022, David's 2021 total compensation from Roblox was $233 million. The vast majority of his comp was a package of restricted stock options that vest over several years and are dependent on a variety of milestones.
(Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images)
Personal Life
David lives in San Francisco with his wife, Jan Ellison, author of the "USA Today" bestseller "A Small Indiscretion: A Novel," and their four children. After the 2020 murder of George Floyd, Baszucki wrote a blog post in which he stated, "With the recent tragedy in my hometown of Minneapolis, we are faced with another occurrence of injustice against the Black community. Many people in our country have justifiably lost faith in the American dream and the prospects of a fair society. For Black Americans who have endured years of systemic injustice, this loss of faith is sadly not new. We are seeing people speak up and take to the streets to demand equality, and many of us are grappling with what to do to make our world a more just and fair place."
From 2016 to 2021, David and Jan donated $6 million to UC San Francisco, and in December 2021, the university established the Baszucki Lymphoma Therapeutics Initiative, which is dedicated to increasing "the effectiveness and availability of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) therapy for lymphoma patients." Jan's father nearly died of lymphoma, but he survived with the help of CAR T therapy. In March 2021, the couple formed the philanthropic organization the Baszucki Group, which soon established the Baszucki Brain Research Fund. The Milken Institute partnered with the Baszucki Brain Research Fund to launch a grant program "aimed at advancing therapeutic discovery for bipolar disorder."
Awards and Honors
Baszucki was included in Goldman Sachs' list of the "100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs" in 2017 and 2018. "Comparably" named him one of the "Best CEOs for Diversity" in 2018 and 2019, and "Bloomberg Businessweek" featured David on its "Bloomberg 50" list of "the people and ideas that defined global business in 2021."
