Erik and I had already seen the power of user-generated content on Interactive Physics, a platform we’d launched and run with others to support physics learning through 2D modeling. Together they-not us-could design clothes, construct buildings, make discoveries, run businesses, spend time with family, play sports, and attend concerts. Our core idea to get there was a platform supported by a community of creators who built everything on it. We imagined an online space where people from anywhere in the world could share experiences with friends, just as they would in person. Our vision from the start was to build an entirely new category of human coexperience-nothing less than the realization of the next phase of human interaction. We also chatted constantly with those early users about what they wanted to see on the platform. Erik and I were the moderators, keeping our community safe and civil. “Peak times’’ meant maybe 30 or 40 people playing at once. When Erik Cassel and I launched the precursor of our online platform Roblox, our users were friends, family members, and about 100 tech enthusiasts we’d recruited via Google ads. Roblox achieved it with a culture that values long-term thinking, employees with a founder’s mindset, a laser focus on end users, and an organizational structure that helps them stay creative and engaged. The company’s decision to embrace UGC opened it up to a whole new world of innovation, well beyond what its employees could envision or manage. Thanks to their own creativity, Robloxers can now walk fashion show runways, experience an eagle’s flight, or figure out how to flee natural disasters with friends. Sixteen years later Roblox boasts nearly 50 million active daily users and millions of developers, who have created experiences such as Let’s Be Well, a game about recovering from depression, and Royale High, a virtual high school. Everyone agreed that user-generated content (UGC) would be the key to making the platform great. The idea was simple but ambitious: create an online space where people from anywhere in the world could do anything-construct buildings, run businesses, battle enemies, play sports, attend concerts-together. When Roblox launched, in 2004, its user base was made up of friends, family members, and about 100 tech enthusiasts recruited via Google ads to serve as impartial advisers.
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