Roblox
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As Roblox began to trade today, the company’s shares shot above its reference price of $45 per share. Currently, Roblox is trading at $71.10 per share, up just over 60% from the reference price that it announced last night. That effort finally set a directional value of sorts on Roblox’s shares before it floated on the public markets.
Roblox, a gaming company aimed at children and powered by an internal economy and third-party development activity, has had a tumultuous if exciting path to the public markets. The company initially intended to list in a traditional IPO, but after enthusiastic market conditions sent the value of some public-offering shares higher after they began to trade, Roblox hit pause.
The former startup then raised a Series H round of capital, a $520 million investment that boosted the value of Roblox from around $4 billion to $29.5 billion. TechCrunch jokes that, far from IPOs mispricing IPOs, that $4 billion price set in early 2020 was the real theft, given where the company was valued just a year later. Sure, the pandemic was good for Roblox, but seeing a 5x repricing in four quarters was hilarious.
Regardless. At $45 per share, Roblox’s direct listing reference price, the company was worth $29.1 billion, per Renaissance Capital, an IPO-focused group. Barron’s placed the number at $29.3 billion. No matter which is closer to the truth, they were both right next to the company’s final private price.
So, the Series H investors nailed the value of Roblox, or the company merely tied its reference price to that price. Either way, we had a pretty clear Series H → direct listing reference price handoff.
The company’s performance today makes that effort appear somewhat meaningless as both prices were wildly under what traders were willing to cough up during its first day of trading; naturally, we’ll keep tabs on its price as time continues, and one day is not a trend, but seeing Roblox trade so very far above its direct listing reference price and final private valuation appears to undercut the argument that this sort of debut can sort out pricing issues inherent in more traditional IPOs.
To understand the company’s early trading activity, however, we need to understand just how well Roblox performed in Q4 2020. When we last noodled on the company’s valuation, we only had data through the third quarter of last year. Now we have data through December 31, 2020. Let’s check how much Roblox grew in that final period, and if it helps explain how the company managed that epic Series H markup.
Gaming is popular, who knew
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How Roblox’s creator accelerator helps the gaming giant build new platform opportunities
As Roblox eyes what could be a historic debut on public markets in the coming months, investors who have valued the company at $29.5 billion are certainly eyeing the gaming company’s dedicated and youthful user base — but it’s the 7 million active creators and developers on the Roblox platform that they are likely most impressed by.
Since 2015, Roblox has been running an accelerator program focused on enabling the next generation of game developers to be successful on its platform. Over the years, the program has expanded from one annual class to now three, each with around 40 developers participating. That means more than 100 developers per year are working directly with Roblox to gain mentorship, education and funding opportunities to get their games off the ground.
As the company’s efforts on this front have grown more formalized, Roblox in 2018 hired former Accelerator alumni Christian Hunter, a Roblox gamer since age 10 and game developer since 13, to run the program full time. Having been through the experience himself, Hunter brought to the program an understanding of how the Accelerator could improve, based on a developer’s own perspective.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic threw into disarray the company’s plans to run the program. Instead of being able to invite developers to spend three months participating in classes hosted at Roblox’s San Mateo office, the company had to revamp the program for remote participation.
As it turned out, developers who were used to playing and building games taking place in virtual worlds quickly adjusted to the new online experience.
“Before COVID, everyone was together. It was easier to talk to people. [Developers] could just walk up to someone that was on our product or engineering team if they were running into issues,” explains Roblox Senior Product Manager Rebecca Crose. “But obviously, with COVID-19, we had to switch and think differently.”
The remote program, though differently structured, offered several benefits. Developers could join the program’s Discord server to talk to both current participants and previous classes, and reach out and ask questions. They could also participate in the Roblox company Slack to ask the team questions, and there were more playtests being scheduled to gain reactions and feedback from Roblox employees.
Meanwhile, to get to know one another when they couldn’t meet in person, developers would have game nights where they’d play each other’s games or others that were popular on Roblox, and bond within the virtual environment instead of in face-to-face meetings and classes.
The actual Accelerator content, however, remained fairly consistent during the remote experience. Participants had weekly standups, talks on topics like game design and production, and weekly feedback sessions where they asked Roblox engineers questions.
But by its nature, a remote Accelerator broadened who could attend. Instead of limiting the program to only those who could travel to San Mateo and stay for three months, the program was opened up to a more global and diverse audience. This drove increased demand, too.
The 2020 program saw Roblox receiving the largest number of applications ever — five times the usual number.
As a result, the class included participants from five countries: The Philippines, South Korea, Sweden, Canada and the U.S.
The developers at IndieBox Studios saw the program as a chance to double down on their game development side hustles. The young friends spread across the U.K. and Kentucky spent their time during the accelerator scaling up their photorealistic title called Tank Warfare.
“We’ve actually never once met in real life, like, we’ve been friends for going on, what, nine years now,” Michael Southern tells TechCrunch. “We met on Roblox.”
IndieBox is representative of many of Roblox’s early developer teams — younger gamers that have spent more than a decade learning the ins and outs of the evolving Roblox gaming platform.
“We all joined Roblox way back in 2008,” IndieBox’s Frank Garrison says. “But we only started developing on the platform in 2019. And for us, the decision to choose Roblox was more down to like, well it’s what we know, why not give it a bash?”
The demographics of the accelerator have been shifting in other ways as the developer base grows more diverse.
“I would say, in the beginning, it was mostly young males. But as we’ve watched the program evolve, we’ve been getting so many new interesting teams,” notes Program Manager Christian Hunter.
The 2020 program had more women participants than ever, for example, with 12 in a class of 50. And one team was all women.
The age of participants, who are typically in the 18 to 22-year-old range, also evolved.
“We’ve seen a lot more older folks,” Hunter says. “With [the COVID-19 pandemic], we actually saw our first 50-year-old in the program. We’ve never had anyone older than, I’d say, 24. And in 2020, we had 12 individuals over the age of 30,” he notes.
Two of the teams were also a combination of a kid and a parent.
Shannon Clemens learned about the Roblox platform from her son Nathan, learning to code and bringing her husband Jeff in to form a studio called Simple Games. Nathan’s two sisters help the studio part time, as well as his friend Adrian Holgate.
“Seeing [my son’s] experience on Roblox getting involved with the platform, I thought it would be neat to learn how to make our own games,” Shannon Clemens told TechCrunch.
Their title Gods of Glory has received more than 13.5 million visits from Roblox players since launching in September.
“Our whole family is kind of creatively bent towards having fun with games and coming up with things like that,” Jeff Clemens tells us. “Why would we not try this? So, that’s when we applied to the program and said, ‘well, we’ll try and see if we get accepted,’ and we did and it’s been awesome.”
In addition to the changes facilitated by a remote environment, Roblox notes there were other perks enabled by remote learning. For one thing, the developers didn’t have to wake up so early to benefit from the experience.
“With it being remote, the developers were working their hours,” says Crose. “As a developer, we tend to work later and stay up at night. Having them come in at 9 AM sharp was very difficult. It was hard for them because they’re just like…a zombie. So we definitely saw that by letting them work their own hours, [there is] less burnout and they increase their productivity,” she says.
Though the COVID-19 crisis may eventually end as the world gets vaccinated, the learnings from the Accelerator and the remote advantages it offers will continue. Developers from the program hope that the growth seen on gaming platforms like Roblox continues as well.
“The pandemic has been great for most game studios,” developer Gustav Linde tells TechCrunch. “Obviously, it’s a very weird time, but the timing was good for us.”
The Gang Stockholm, a Swedish game development studio co-founded by Linde, has been building experiences — largely branded ones for clients, exclusively on the Roblox platform. The team of 12 has used the accelerator to slow down development deadlines and dig into some unique areas of the platform as well as focus wholly on their upcoming title, Bloxymon, which they plan to release this year.
“If you look at Steam and the App Store and Google Play, those markets are extremely crowded, and Roblox is a very exciting platform for developers right now,” said Linde. “Roblox is also getting a lot of attention and a lot of big brands are interested in entering the platform.”
Roblox says that going forward, future Accelerator programs will feature a remote element inspired by the COVID experience. The company plans to continue to make its program globally available, with the limitation for now, of English-speaking participants. But it’s looking to expand to reach non-English speakers with future programs.
The fall 2020 Accelerator class graduated in December 2020, and the next spring class will start in February 2021. Roblox says they are already in the process of recruiting for their summer 2021 class, which will again have some 40 participants. Roblox will again aim to continue diversifying the group of creators.
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Extra Crunch roundup: 2 VC surveys, Tesla’s melt up, The Roblox Gambit, more
This has been quite a week.
Instead of walking backward through the last few days of chaos and uncertainty, here are three good things that happened:
- Google employee Sara Robinson combined her interest in machine learning and baking to create AI-generated hybrid treats.
- A breakthrough could make water desalination 30%-40% more effective.
- Bianca Smith will become the first Black woman to coach a professional baseball team.
Despite many distractions in our first full week of the new year, we published a full slate of stories exploring different aspects of entrepreneurship, fundraising and investing.
We’ve already gotten feedback on this overview of subscription pricing models, and a look back at 2020 funding rounds and exits among Israel’s security startups was aimed at our new members who live and work there, along with international investors who are seeking new opportunities.
Plus, don’t miss our first investor surveys of 2021: one by Lucas Matney on social gaming, and another by Mike Butcher that gathered responses from Portugal-based investors on a wide variety of topics.
Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week. I hope we can all look forward to a nice, boring weekend with no breaking news alerts.
Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist
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Use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription
The Roblox Gambit
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
In February 2020, gaming platform Roblox was valued at $4 billion, but after announcing a $520 million Series H this week, it’s now worth $29.5 billion.
“Sure, you could argue that Roblox enjoyed an epic 2020, thanks in part to COVID-19,” writes Alex Wilhelm this morning. “That helped its valuation. But there’s a lot of space between $4 billion and $29.5 billion.”
Alex suggests that Roblox’s decision to delay its IPO and raise an enormous Series H was a grandmaster move that could influence how other unicorns will take themselves to market. “A big thanks to the gaming company for running this experiment for us.”
I asked him what inspired the headline; like most good ideas, it came to him while he was trying to get to sleep.
“I think that I had ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ somewhere in my head, so that formed the root of a little joke with myself. Roblox is making a strategic wager on method of going public. So, ‘gambit’ seems to fit!”
8 investors discuss social gaming’s biggest opportunities
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For our first investor survey of the year, Lucas Matney interviewed eight VCs who invest in massively multiplayer online games to discuss 2021 trends and opportunities:
- Hope Cochran, Madrona Venture Group
- Daniel Li, Madrona Venture Group
- Niko Bonatsos, General Catalyst
- Ethan Kurzweil, Bessemer Venture Partners
- Sakib Dadi, Bessemer Venture Partners
- Jacob Mullins, Shasta Ventures
- Alice Lloyd George, Rogue
- Gigi Levy-Weiss, NFX
Having moved far beyond shooters and sims, platforms like Twitch, Discord and Fortnite are “where culture is created,” said Daniel Li of Madrona.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez uses Twitch to explain policy positions, major musicians regularly perform in-game concerts on Fortnite and in-game purchases generated tens of billions last year.
“Gaming is a unique combination of science and art, left and right brain,” said Gigi Levy-Weiss of NFX. “It’s never just science (i.e., software and data), which is why many investors find it hard.”
How to convert customers with subscription pricing
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Startups that lack insight into their sales funnel have high churn, low conversion rates and an inability to adapt or leverage changes in customer behavior.
If you’re hoping to convert and retain customers, “reinforcing your value proposition should play a big part in every level of your customer funnel,” says Joe Procopio, founder of Teaching Startup.
What is up with Tesla’s value?
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Alex Wilhelm followed up his regular Friday column with another story that tries to find a well-grounded rationale for Tesla’s sky-high valuation of approximately $822 billion.
Meanwhile, GM just unveiled a new logo and tagline.
As ever, I learned something new while editing: A “melt up” occurs when investors start clamoring for a particular company because of acute FOMO (the fear of missing out).
Delivering 500,000 cars in 2020 was “impressive,” says Alex, who also acknowledged the company’s ability to turn GAAP profits, but “pride cometh before the fall, as does a melt up, I think.”
Note: This story has Alex’s original headline, but I told him I would replace the featured image with a photo of someone who had very “richest man in the world” face.
How Segment redesigned its core systems to solve an existential scaling crisis
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On Tuesday, enterprise reporter Ron Miller covered a major engineering project at customer data platform Segment called “Centrifuge.”
“Its purpose was to move data through Segment’s data pipes to wherever customers needed it quickly and efficiently at the lowest operating cost,” but as Ron reports, it was also meant to solve “an existential crisis for the young business,” which needed a more resilient platform.
Dear Sophie: Banging my head against the wall understanding the US immigration system
Image Credits: Sophie Alcorn
Dear Sophie:
Now that the U.S. has a new president coming in whose policies are more welcoming to immigrants, I am considering coming to the U.S. to expand my company after COVID-19. However, I’m struggling with the morass of information online that has bits and pieces of visa types and processes.
Can you please share an overview of the U.S. immigration system and how it works so I can get the big picture and understand what I’m navigating?
— Resilient in Romania
The first “Dear Sophie” column of each month is available on TechCrunch without a paywall.
Revenue-based financing: The next step for private equity and early-stage investment
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For founders who aren’t interested in angel investment or seeking validation from a VC, revenue-based investing is growing in popularity.
To gain a deeper understanding of the U.S. RBI landscape, we published an industry report on Wednesday that studied data from 134 companies, 57 funds and 32 investment firms before breaking out “specific verticals and business models … and the typical profile of companies that access this form of capital.”
Lisbon’s startup scene rises as Portugal gears up to be a European tech tiger
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Mike Butcher continues his series of European investor surveys with his latest dispatch from Lisbon, where a nascent startup ecosystem may get a Brexit boost.
Here are the Portugal-based VCs he interviewed:
- Cristina Fonseca, partner, Indico Capital Partners
- Pedro Ribeiro Santos, partner, Armilar Venture Partners
- Tocha, partner, Olisipo Way
- Adão Oliveira, investment manager, Portugal Ventures
- Alexandre Barbosa, partner, Faber
- António Miguel, partner, Mustard Seed MAZE
- Jaime Parodi Bardón, partner, impACT NOW Capital
- Stephan Morais, partner, Indico Capital Partners
- Gavin Goldblatt, managing partner, Portugal Gateway
How late-stage edtech companies are thinking about tutoring marketplaces
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How do you scale online tutoring, particularly when demand exceeds the supply of human instructors?
This month, Chegg is replacing its seven-year-old marketplace that paired students with tutors with a live chatbot.
A spokesperson said the move will “dramatically differentiate our offerings from our competitors and better service students,” but Natasha Mascarenhas identified two challenges to edtech automation.
“A chatbot won’t work for a student with special needs or someone who needs to be handheld a bit more,” she says. “Second, speed tutoring can only work for a specific set of subjects.”
Decrypted: How bad was the US Capitol breach for cybersecurity?
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While I watched insurrectionists invade and vandalize the U.S. Capitol on live TV, I noticed that staffers evacuated so quickly, some hadn’t had time to shut down their computers.
Looters even made off with a laptop from Senator Jeff Merkley’s office, but according to security reporter Zack Whittaker, the damages to infosec wasn’t as bad as it looked.
Even so, “the breach will likely present a major task for Congress’ IT departments, which will have to figure out what’s been stolen and what security risks could still pose a threat to the Capitol’s network.”
Extra Crunch’s top 10 stories of 2020
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On New Year’s Eve, I made a list of the 10 “best” Extra Crunch stories from the previous 12 months.
My methodology was personal: From hundreds of posts, these were the 10 I found most useful, which is my key metric for business journalism.
Some readers are skeptical about paywalls, but without being boastful, Extra Crunch is a premium product, just like Netflix or Disney+. I know, we’re not as entertaining as a historical drama about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II or a space western about a bounty hunter. But, speaking as someone who’s worked at several startups, Extra Crunch stories contain actionable information you can use to build a company and/or look smart in meetings — and that’s worth something.
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Roblox raises at $29.5 billion valuation, readies for direct listing
Roblox is now one of the world’s most valuable private companies in the world after a monster Series H raise brings the social gaming platform a stratospheric $29.5 billion valuation. The company won’t be private for long, though.
The $520 million raise led by Altimeter Capital and Dragoneer Investment Group is a significant cash influx for Roblox, which had previously raised just over $335 million from investors according to Crunchbase. The Investment Group of Santa Barbara, Warner Music Group, and a number of current investors, also participated in this round.
In February of 2020, the company closed a $150 million Series G led by Andreessen Horowitz which valued the company at $4 billion.
The gaming startup had initially planned an IPO in 2020, but after the major first-day pops of DoorDash and Airbnb, the company leadership reconsidered their timeline, according to a report in Axios. Those major day-one share price pops left significant money on the table for the companies selling those shares, an outcome Roblox is likely looking to avoid. Today, the company also announced that it plans to enter the public markets via a direct listing.
Roblox’s 7x valuation multiple signals just how feverish public and private markets are for tech stocks. The valuation also highlights how investors foresee the company benefiting from pandemic trends which pushed more users online and toward social gaming platforms. In a 2019 prospectus, the company shared that it had 17.6 million users, now Roblox claims to have 31 million daily active users on its platform.
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5 questions about 2021’s startup market
Welcome to 2021, a year that could extend 2020’s startup market disruptions and excesses — or change patterns that previously performed well for early-stage tech companies and their investors.
The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.
As we turn the page, I have a number of questions worth raising as we muck into 2021.
Each relates to a 2020 change that is expected to persist, by either the general market or those bullish on startups. I want to know what would need to change to shake up what became the new normal last year. After all, it’s precisely when it feels like nothing could shake up a downturn (or a boom) that things often do.
Today, let’s discuss seed deals, venture investing cadence, the resulting valuation pressures from rapid-fire bets, current IPO expectations and what happens to software sales when remote work begins to fade.
1. How long can seed deal-making stay hot?
As 2020 came to a close, Natasha Mascarenhas and I reported on seed investing’s strong year and its especially strong second half. How long can that pace keep up?
Nearly all our questions today deal with the endurance of certain conditions, namely: how long the market can keep parts of startup land red-hot.
When it comes to seed deal-making, Q1 and Q2 2020 saw similar levels of investment in the United States. But Q3 proved explosive, with money invested into domestic seed deals rising from around $1.5 to $1.6 billion during the first two quarters to $2.2 billion in the July-September period.
Q4 numbers are yet to fully come in, but it’s clear that private investors were incredibly bullish on early-stage startups in the second half of 2020. How long can that keep up? I think the answer is for a while yet, as investors have shown scant enthusiasm for slowing down their dealmaking cadence.
While cadence remains hot generally, seed deals should stay heated as the number of investors who are willing to invest early has increased.
Which brings us to our second question:
2. How long can investors keep writing such quick checks?
A theme that cropped up in the second half of 2020 was the pace at which investors were conducting venture capital deals. This was for a few reasons. To start, venture capitalists have raised larger funds in recent years, meaning that they need larger returns to make the math work out. This led to many investors putting money to work in younger and younger companies, hoping to get in early on a big win. That setup led to more deal competition and faster deal-making.
How? Two things. Investors who were already on a startup’s cap table — already part-owners, in other words — led preemptive rounds, in part to get ahead of other investors who might want to poach the succeeding deal. Other investors, knowing this, seemed to do the same math and move even faster, and earlier, to get around the defense.
So how long can the trend keep up? Given that many big VC firms raised in 2020, many startups picked up some tailwinds from the COVID-19 economy and exits have been strong, forever? Until something stops things? Think of it as Newton’s First Law of startup investing.
What could be the sudden impact to shake up the current set of conditions boosting the pace at which seed and later deals occur? An asteroid strike is probably too extreme, but inertia is one hell of a drug and markets love to stay happy.
Moving along, all the competition to get money to work in hot startups now has had another effect than the mere speed of deal-making; it has also pushed prices higher.
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Bumble reportedly filed confidentially for an IPO
Today Bumble, a popular dating-focused startup, was reported by Bloomberg to have filed IPO documents, albeit privately.
The news that Bumble is pursuing an IPO is not a surprise. TechCrunch covered the story in September, noting the huge revenues that its rival Tinder has managed to accrete, possibly indicative of a sufficiently large market to support two public dating players.
That Bumble has privately filed puts it, along with the crypto-focused Coinbase, as far along the IPO path before we can see their numbers. When they make their S-1 filings public the two companies will provide the market a look into their financial results.
Bumble and Coinbase are preceded in making such disclosures by Roblox, Affirm and Poshmark. The five companies will join others in seeking IPOs over the next few months.
According to a recent interview with GGV’s Hans Tung — an investor in Affirm and Airbnb and other unicorns — TechCrunch understands that quarters one, three and four in 2021 could prove to be active IPO periods. Bumble joining the fray in the final weeks of 2020 underscores how active the start of the year could be for highly priced private companies seeking liquidity while public markets trade near all-time highs.
TechCrunch reached out to Bumble for comment on the IPO report. The company declined to comment.
Bloomberg reports that Bumble could target a valuation of between $6 and $8 billion. This squares with prior reporting. How much revenue the market will require of Bumble to reach those prices, and at what pace of growth, is not clear.
But with the company reaching 100 million users earlier this year, perhaps all the math will pencil out.
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The promise and challenge of Roblox’s future in China
In a much-anticipated move, California-based gaming firm Roblox filed to go public last week. One aspect driving the future growth of the children- and community-focused gaming platform is its China entry, which it fleshes out in detail for the first time in its IPO prospectus.
Like all gaming companies entering China, Roblox must work with a local publishing and operations partner. And like Riot Games, Supercell, Epic Games, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Nintendo and many more, Roblox chose Tencent, the world’s largest gaming firm by revenue, according to Newzoo.
The partnership, which began in 2019, revolves around a joint venture in which Roblox holds a 51% controlling stake and a Tencent affiliate called Songhua owns a 49% interest. The prospectus notes that Tencent currently intends to publish and operate a localized version of the Roblox Platform (罗布乐思). Internationally, the platform allows people to create games and play those programmed by others.
User-generated content is in part what makes Roblox popular amongst young gamers, but that social aspect almost certainly makes its China entry trickier. It’s widely understood that the Chinese government is asserting more control over what gets published on the internet, and in recent times its scrutiny over gaming content has heightened. Industry veteran Wenfeng Yang went as far as speculating that games with user-generated content will “never made [their] path to China,” citing the example of Animal Crossing.
Roblox says it believes it’s “uniquely positioned” to grow its penetration in China but its “performance will be dependent on” Tencent’s ability to clear regulatory hurdles. It’s unclear what measures Roblox will take to prevent its user-generated content from running afoul of the Chinese authorities, whose appetite for what is permitted can be volatile. Tencent itself has been in the crosshairs of regulators over allegedly “addictive” and “harmful” gaming content. It also remains to be seen how Roblox ensures its user experience won’t be compromised by whatever censorship system that gets implemented.
Roblox chose Tencent as its Chinese partner. / Image: Roblox
Compliance
At the most basic level, Roblox claims it works to ensure user safety through measures designed “to enforce real-world laws,” including text-filtering, content moderation, automated systems to identify behaviors in violation of platform policies, and a review team. The company expresses in its filing optimism about getting China’s regulatory greenlight:
“While Tencent is still working to obtain the required regulatory license to publish and operate Luobulesi [Roblox’s local name] in China, we believe the regulatory requirements specific to China will be met. In the meantime, Luobu is working towards creating a robust developer community in China.”
The company is rightfully optimistic. Tencent has a proven history of converting its social network users into gamers and publishing foreign games. Roblox’s marketing focus on encouraging “creativity” could sit well with Beijing’s call for tech companies to “do good,” an order Tencent has answered. Roblox’s Chinese website suggests it’s touting part of its business as a learning and STEM tool and shows it’s seeking collaborations with local schools and educators.
“Roblox is aimed at a younger audience and the majority of its content will not be an issue in China,” said games analyst from Niko Partners Daniel Ahmad to TechCrunch. “However, we do see some risk from its user-generated content features which can be used in ways that Chinese regulators may disapprove.”
There might be an easier path into China. Yang, who is the U.S. general manager for China-listed games maker Yoozoo, told TechCrunch that “Roblox China may only introduce the platform to Chinese developers, asking them to join and make content for the global market, not necessarily bringing the platform to China under such heavy regulations.”
Foreign games overall are having a more difficult time entering China, In 2019 there were 185 foreign games approved for release in the country, but that there have only been 56 foreign games approved year to date, Ahmad noted.
Geopolitics
The involvement of Tencent, while critical, is the elephant in the room in times of uncertain U.S.-China relations. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. or CFIUS, which is chaired by the Treasury Department, was inquiring about data practices by Tencent-backed gaming studios in the U.S. including Epic and Riot, Bloomberg reported in September.
Roblox isn’t exempt. It notes in the prospectus that CFIUS has “made inquiries to us with respect to Tencent’s equity investment in us and involvement in the China JV.” It further warns that it “cannot predict what effect any further inquiry by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. into our relationship with Tencent or changes in China-U.S. relations overall may have on our ability to effectively support the China JV or on the operations or success of the China JV.”
The other obstacle faced by all foreign companies entering China, the world’s biggest gaming market, is local clones. Reworld, backed by prominent Chinese venture firms such as Northern Light Venture Capital and Joy Capital, is one. The game is unabashed about its origin. In a Reddit post responding to the accusation of it being “a ripoff of Roblox,” Reworld pays its tribute to Roblox and admits its product is “built on the shoulders of Roblox,” while claiming “it did not take any code from Roblox Studio.”
The Beijing-based startup behind Reworld has so far raised more than $50 million and had about 100 developers working on Reworld’s editing tool and 50 other operational staff, its co-founder said in a June interview. In comparison, Roblox had 38 employees in China by September, 38 of whom were in product and engineering functions. It’s actively hiring in China.
Roblox cannot comment for the story as it’s in the IPO quiet period.
Added expert comments on November 23, 2020.
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All IPOs should be paid for in Robux
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is an all-time first for the show, it’s an Equity Leftovers. Which means that we’re not focusing on a single topic like we would in an Equity Shot. This is just, well, more Equity.
Danny and I and Chris got together to chat about a few things that we could not leave out:
- Our piece looking at which venture capital firms are expected to make the most bank from the recent IPO deluge.
- Roblox’s IPO filing, and our take on its impending debut.
- All things Wish IPO, including what’s up with its revenue costs, and the broader ecommerce market.
- DoorDash’s epic financials, and how COVID helped propel the food delivery giant into the business hall of fame.
- The exit of one of Robinhood’s co-CEOs from the role.
- The HuffPo-Buzzfeed tie-up. And what is up with media companies in general.
And with this, our fourth episode in six days, we shall pause until Monday. Hugs from the Equity crew.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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Daily Crunch: Roblox is going public
Roblox opens its books, Snap makes an acquisition and Pfizer and BioNTech seek regulatory approval for their vaccine. This your Daily Crunch for November 20, 2020.
The big story: Roblox is going public
The child-friendly gaming company filed confidentially to go public in October, but it only published its S-1 document with financial information late yesterday.
How do the numbers look? Well, Roblox is certainly growing quickly — total revenue increased 56% in 2019, and then another 68% in the first three quarters of 2020, when it saw $588.7 million in revenue. At the same time, losses are growing as well, nearly quadrupling to $203.2 million during those same three quarters.
The company also acknowledged that its success depends on its ability to “provide a safe online environment” for children. Otherwise, “business will suffer dramatically.”
The tech giants
Snap acquired Voisey, an app to create music tracks overlaying your own vocals — Voisey users can apply audio filters to their voices, and they can browse and view other people’s Voisey tracks.
Despite commitment to anti-racism, Uber’s Black employee base has decreased — Uber’s latest diversity report shows a decline in the overall representation of Black employees in the U.S.
Google, Facebook and Twitter threaten to leave Pakistan over censorship law — This comes after Pakistan’s government granted blanket powers to local regulators to censor digital content.
Startups, funding and venture capital
Loadsmart raises $90M to further consolidate its one-stop freight and logistics platform — Loadsmart offers booking for freight transportation across land, rail and through ports, all from a single online portal.
ORIX invests $60M in Israeli crowdfunding platform OurCrowd — OurCrowd also says that the two groups will collaborate to create financial products and investment opportunities for the Japanese and global market.
Kea raises $10M to build AI that helps restaurants answer the phone — CEO Adam Ahmad says the startup has created a “virtual cashier” who can do the initial intake with customers, process most routine orders and bring in a human employee when needed.
Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch
If you didn’t make $1B this week, you are not doing VC right — Don’t yell at me, Danny Crichton said it!
Why is GoCardless COO Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas pivoting to become a full-time VC — “I think this is the best moment in entrepreneurship in Europe.”
What is Roblox worth? — A deeper dive into Roblox’s numbers.
(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)
Everything else
Pfizer and BioNTech to submit request for emergency use approval of their COVID-19 vaccine today — These emergency approvals still require supporting information and safety data, but they are fast-tracked relative to the full, formal and more permanent approval process.
Mixtape podcast: Building a structural DEI response to a systemic issue with Y-Vonne Hutchinson — Hutchinson is the CEO of ReadySet, a consulting firm that works with companies to create more inclusive and equitable work environments.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.
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Extra Crunch roundup: A fistful of IPOs, Affirm’s Peloton problem, Zoom Apps and more
DoorDash, Affirm, Roblox, Airbnb, C3.ai and Wish all filed to go public in recent days, which means some venture capitalists are having the best week of their lives.
Tech companies that go public capture our imagination because they are literal happy endings. An Initial Public Offering is the promised land for startup pilgrims who may wander the desert for years seeking product-market fit. After all, the “I” in “ISO” stands for “incentive.”
A flurry of new S-1s in a single week forced me to rearrange our editorial calendar, but I didn’t mind; our 360-degree coverage let some of the air out of various hype balloons and uncovered several unique angles.
For example: I was familiar with Affirm, the service that lets consumers finance purchases, but I had no idea Peloton accounted for 30% of its total revenue in the last quarter.
“What happens if Peloton puts on the brakes?” I asked Alex Wilhelm as I edited his breakdown of Affirm’s S-1. We decided to use that as the subhead for his analysis.
The stories that follow are an overview of Extra Crunch from the last five days. Full articles are only available to members, but you can use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one or two-year subscription. Details here.
Thank you very much for reading Extra Crunch this week; I hope you have a relaxing weekend.
Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist
What is Roblox worth?
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
Gaming company Roblox filed to go public yesterday afternoon, so Alex Wilhelm brought out a scalpel and dissected its S-1. Using his patented mathmagic, he analyzed Roblox’s fundraising history and reported revenue to estimate where its valuation might land.
Noting that “the public markets appear to be even more risk-on than the private world in 2020,” Alex pegged the number at “just a hair under $10 billion.”
What China’s fintech can teach the world
HANGZHOU, CHINA – JULY 31: An employee uses face recognition system on a self-service check-out machine to pay for her meals in a canteen at the headquarters of Alibaba Group on July 31, 2018 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province of China. The self-service check-out machine can calculate the price of meals quickly to save employees’ queuing time. (Photo by Visual China Group via Getty Images)
For all the hype about new forms of payment, the way I transact hasn’t been radically transformed in recent years — even in tech-centric San Francisco.
Sure, I use NFC card readers to tap and pay and tipped a street musician using Venmo last weekend. But my landlord still demands paper checks and there’s a tattered “CASH ONLY” taped to the register at my closest coffee shop.
In China, it’s a different story: Alibaba’s employee cafeteria uses facial recognition and AI to determine which foods a worker has selected and who to charge. Many consumers there use the same app to pay for utility bills, movie tickets and hamburgers.
“Today, nobody except Chinese people outside of China uses Alipay or WeChat Pay to pay for anything,” says finance researcher Martin Chorzempa. “So that’s a big unexplored side that I think is going to come into a lot of geopolitical risks.”
Inside Affirm’s IPO filing: A look at its economics, profits and revenue concentration
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
Consumer lending service Affirm filed to go public on Wednesday evening, so Alex used Thursday’s column to unpack the company’s financials.
After reviewing Affirm’s profitability, revenue and the impact of COVID-19 on its bottom line, he asked (and answered) three questions:
- What does Affirm’s loss rate on consumer loans look like?
- Are its gross margins improving?
- What does the unicorn have to say about contribution profit from its loans business?
If you didn’t make $1B this week, you are not doing VC right
Image Credits: XiXinXing (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
“The only thing more rare than a unicorn is an exited unicorn,” observes Managing Editor Danny Crichton, who looked back at Exitpalooza 2020 to answer “a simple question — who made the money?”
Covering each exit from the perspective of founders and investors, Danny makes it clear who’ll take home the largest slice of each pie. TL;DR? “Some really colossal winners among founders, and several venture firms walking home with billions of dollars in capital.
5 questions from Airbnb’s IPO filing
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
The S-1 Airbnb released at the start of the week provided insight into the home-rental platform’s core financials, but it also raised several questions about the company’s health and long-term viability, according to Alex Wilhelm:
- How far did Airbnb’s bookings fall during Q1 and Q2?
- How far have Airbnb’s bookings come back since?
- Did local, long-term stays save Airbnb?
- Has Airbnb ever really made money?
- Is the company wealthy despite the pandemic?
Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost explains the strategy behind acquiring Spacemaker
Andrew Anagnost, president and CEO, Autodesk.
Earlier this week, Autodesk announced its purchase of Spacemaker, a Norwegian firm that develops AI-supported software for urban development.
TechCrunch reporter Steve O’Hear interviewed Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost to learn more about the acquisition and asked why Autodesk paid $240 million for Spacemaker’s 115-person team and IP — especially when there were other startups closer to its Bay Area HQ.
“They’ve built a real, practical, usable application that helps a segment of our population use machine learning to really create better outcomes in a critical area, which is urban redevelopment and development,” said Anagnost.
“So it’s totally aligned with what we’re trying to do.”
Unpacking the C3.ai IPO filing
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
On Monday, Alex dove into the IPO filing for enterprise artificial intelligence company C3.ai.
After poring over its ownership structure, service offerings and its last two years of revenue, he asks and answers the question: “is the business itself any damn good?”
Is the internet advertising economy about to implode?
Image Credits: jayk7 / Getty Images
In his new book, “Subprime Attention Crisis,” writer/researcher Tim Hwang attempts to answer a question I’ve wondered about for years: does advertising actually work?
Managing Editor Danny Crichton interviewed Hwang to learn more about his thesis that there are parallels between today’s ad industry and the subprime mortgage crisis that helped spur the Great Recession.
So, are online ads effective?
“I think the companies are very reticent to give up the data that would allow you to find a really definitive answer to that question,” says Hwang.
Will Zoom Apps be the next hot startup platform?
Image Credits: Zoom
Even after much of the population has been vaccinated against COVID-19, we will still be using Zoom’s video-conferencing platform in great numbers.
That’s because Zoom isn’t just an app: it’s also a platform play for startups that add functionality using APIs, an SDK or chatbots that behave like smart assistants.
Enterprise reporter Ron Miller spoke to entrepreneurs and investors who are leveraging Zoom’s platform to build new applications with an eye on the future.
“By offering a platform to build applications that take advantage of the meeting software, it’s possible it could be a valuable new ecosystem for startups,” says Ron.
Will edtech empower or erase the need for higher education?
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin
Without an on-campus experience, many students (and their parents) are wondering how much value there is in attending classes via a laptop in a dormitory.
Even worse: Declining enrollment is leading many institutions to eliminate majors and find other ways to cut costs, like furloughing staff and cutting athletic programs.
Edtech solutions could fill the gap, but there’s no real consensus in higher education over which tools work best. Many colleges and universities are using a number of “third-party solutions to keep operations afloat,” reports Natasha Mascarenhas.
“It’s a stress test that could lead to a reckoning among edtech startups.”
3 growth tactics that helped us surpass Noom and Weight Watchers
3D rendering of TNT dynamite sticks in carton box on blue background. Explosive supplies. Dangerous cargo. Plotting terrorist attack. Image Credits: Gearstd / Getty Images.
I look for guest-written Extra Crunch stories that will help other entrepreneurs be more successful, which is why I routinely turn down submissions that seem overly promotional.
However, Henrik Torstensson (CEO and co-founder of Lifesum) submitted a post about the techniques he’s used to scale his nutrition app over the last three years. “It’s a strategy any startup can use, regardless of size or budget,” he writes.
According to Sensor Tower, Lifesum is growing almost twice as fast as Noon and Weight Watchers, so putting his company at the center of the story made sense.
Send in reviews of your favorite books for TechCrunch!
Image via Getty Images / Alexander Spatari
Every year, we ask TechCrunch reporters, VCs and our Extra Crunch readers to recommend their favorite books.
Have you read a book this year that you want to recommend? Send an email with the title and a brief explanation of why you enjoyed it to bookclub@techcrunch.com.
We’ll compile the suggestions and publish the list as we get closer to the holidays. These books don’t have to be published this calendar year — any book you read this year qualifies.
Please share your submissions by November 30.
Dear Sophie: Can an H-1B co-founder own a Delaware C Corp?
Image Credits: Sophie Alcorn
Dear Sophie:
My VC partner and I are working with 50/50 co-founders on their startup — let’s call it “NewCo.” We’re exploring pre-seed terms.
One founder is on a green card and already works there. The other founder is from India and is working on an H-1B at a large tech company.
Can the H-1B co-founder lead this company? What’s the timing to get everything squared away? If we make the investment we want them to hit the ground running.
— Diligent in Daly City
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