The Ledger
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Index limits lead partners to one vote on exit decisions
“I mean, in our winners, it's a question of, first of all, just being disciplined about when to exit, and making sure that we are not sort of falling into the trap of thinking that because they've been successful, they will naturally be more successful over tim…”
Fralic: I did not share Baszucki's conviction on Roblox's eventual scale
“And to be honest, I didn't share that conviction all the time. I didn't think it could be as big as it is now, but I think he always did.”
Chris Fralic: First Round took secondary liquidity in Uber and Roblox early
“If you look at our investments in our two most notable returns with Uber and with Roblox, we had taken some capital off the table along the way at various points, Which made sense and drove great returns relative to that investment, and yet what was left was s…”
Xbox forced Roblox to prioritize game quality over quantity at launch
“In order to do that, they couldn't just open up all the millions of games that they have on Roblox that can look like YouTube in terms of almost too much choice, and Microsoft and Xbox forced them to have a very limited small number of games that were on that …”
First Round retained over 5% ownership in Roblox at direct listing
“Our initial investment was 500 K Roblox or so, and that was probably on the high end of an average investment. And we were starting to think about our best companies and opportunities. Where could we put more capital to work? How could we deploy more into the …”
First Round passed on Roblox in 2008 at a $10M valuation
“We decided not to invest in January of 2008. A lot of it was based on the price. Your listeners might laugh, but a ten million dollar valuation seemed outrageous, was way out of our normal range back then, and the game really looked raw.”
David Baszucki predicted early on that Roblox would surpass Minecraft
“I remember him saying, we're going to be bigger than Minecraft someday, and at that time, that was like the most laughable statement in the world, but Dave was convinced, and I just remember I'd check in with him, and he'd chip away at it, and eventually it be…”
First Round Capital's Second Fund Included Uber, Square, and Roblox
“It turns out that fund had Uber and Square and Roblox in it.”
Fralic: Altos Ventures owned ~24% of Roblox at its public debut
“When Roblox went public, Altos owned about 24% of the company”
Fralic: First Round invested $3M in Roblox at a $40M valuation
“We invested at about an eleven million dollar valuation when we first came in, and then we led around And put in about three million dollars at what was around a forty million dollar valuation, which was very high, but we could see the traction in the revenue,…”
Sze: Investors underestimate how platforms age up with young users
“One of the reasons that I was overcome some of the downside potential on, say, roadblocks around age, and I still believe this, is we underestimate that those kids that are nine, 10, 1112, and 13 today are the kids that are 1415, 1617, 18 of tomorrow.”
Sze: Roblox would have failed if Baszucki followed outside advice
“If he'd done all the things, if he'd taken the thousands of pieces of advice and gotten all mixed up and twisted around, there's no way Roblox would have succeeded”
a16z made up to four follow-on investments in Stripe and TripActions
“We've invested multiple times in many of our companies. So Coinbase, we invested three times. Roblox, twice. Databricks, three times. Stripe, four times. TripActions, four times.”