Why time is Roblox’s secret weapon

Source: Roblox Press Kit

For much of the world, “Roblox” probably sounds like an off-brand Lego company or a board game about a smoked salmon heist. (It’s not.)

Roblox is a ~$35B juggernaut game-creation platform that just yesterday filed its first quarterly earnings report.

And if one thing’s for sure, it’s that time is on Roblox’s side.

By ‘time,’ we literally mean time since birth

Roblox-ers are young: 67% of Roblox’s daily users are under 17. Roblox knows this. “Safety” comes up 88 times in the company’s IPO filing. (In Facebook’s it came up 11.)

During the 9 months that ended September 2020, users spent 22.2B hours on the platform. That’s 2.6 hours per user, per day.

Earnings showed monetizing the youth is working

Revenue in Q1 was up 140% YoY to $387m, and Bookings — deferred revenue Roblox gets from sales of its virtual currency — increased 161% to $652.3m.

Roblox knows its users are human, and therefore age. So 2 of its stated growth strategies are built to retain its younger population in the coming years:

• Demographic expansion: Appeal to older folks (think: 20-year-olds) through new platform expansion (e.g., social, edtech, VR) and higher fidelity content
• Monetization: Expand subscription offerings and brand partnerships as users get jobs

For now, with ⅔ of all US kids 9-12 on Roblox, don’t expect the company to fall into “fad” territory anytime soon.