David Baszucki Height, Age, Wife, Children, Family, Biography

Some Lesser Known Facts About David Baszucki

• Both of David Baszucki’s parents were descended from Ukrainian immigrants who had settled in Saskatchewan, Canada.

• Soon after David’s birth in Canada, he and his parents moved to the United States and David was brought up in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

• During his childhood, David was always interested in dirt bikes, go-karts, and reading science fiction.

• While studying at the Eden Prairie High School in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, David used to be the captain of his high school TV quiz team.

• While studying at school, he also hosted his own talk radio show for KSCO Radio Santa Cruz.

• When he was studying at Stanford University, he did a summer internship at the American multinational automotive manufacturing company named General Motors Company where he worked in a lab focused on controlling car engines with software.

• At the end of his bachelor’s degree, David received a General Motors Scholarship in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

• David Baszucki was always interested in starting his own business and just after four years after his graduation, along with his brother Greg Baszucki, he founded ‘Knowledge Revolution’ in 1989. Knowledge Revolution was a company that used to produce educational applications for Macintosh users.

• The first product of the Knowledge Revolution that was built by David was ‘Interactive Physics’ which was an application that helped users learn Physics. David created a platform with a 2D environment where the users could carry out Physics experiments. It was the first fully animated physics lab on the computer.

• After building various educational applications, in December 1998, David’s company ‘Knowledge Revolution’ was acquired by MSC Software which was a simulation software company based in Newport Beach, California for $20 million.

• Baszucki started working as the vice president and general manager of MSC Software from 2000 to 2002 but he later left the company to establish Baszucki & Associates.

• In 2003, David Baszucki founded an angel investment firm named ‘Baszucki & Associates.’ While an investor, he provided seed funding to Friendster which is a social networking service company based in California. David worked with Baszucki & Associated till 2004.

• In 2003, David along with one of his previous employees named Erik Cassel started working on the first prototype of ‘Roblox’ under the working title ‘DynaBlocks.’ It was later named as ‘Roblox’ which is a combined short form of the words ‘robots’ and ‘blocks.’

• Roblox is an online game platform and game creation system which allows users to program and play games created by themselves or other users.

• David launched the website in 2004 but Roblox was officially released on 1 September 2006.

• In 2014, David became part of the ‘Roblox: The Movie’ which is a film based on the Roblox video game. David played the character of ‘Big’ in the film.
  

  The poster of the film based on the Roblox video game titled ‘Roblox- The Movie’ (2014)

• In 2017, David Baszucki started a self-titled YouTube channel and began uploading videos related to business and entrepreneurship. His YouTube channel holds more than fifty two thousand subscribers, as of 2024.

• In 2021, David Baszucki was the seventh-highest-paid CEO, making $232.8 million.

• In the same year, David along with his wife Jan Ellison started a company named ‘Baszucki Group’ which is a philanthropic organisation.

• In 2021, the University of California, San Francisco launched the ‘Baszucki Lymphoma Therapeutics Initiative’ with $6 million in donations from Baszucki over five years.

• The initiative was started to increase the effectiveness and availability of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy for lymphoma patients.

• In 2022, David became one of the members of the board of trustees for ‘The Paley Center for Media’ which is the entertainment industry’s leading nonprofit company.

• In the same year, David Baszucki along with the Google cofounder Sergey Brin and Keystone Capital chairman Kent Dauten donated a combined $150 million toward the research and treatment of bipolar disorder.

• When asked about his inspiration behind starting the company ‘Roblox,’ David Baszucki was quoted saying that
  

  Roblox was inspired by the success of  Interactive Physics and Working Model software applications especially among young students.”

• While setting up his company ‘Roblox,’ David raised $11 million from investors.

• David owns a roughly 13% stake in the Roblox Corporation which is the company that owns Roblox. His stake is estimated to be worth around $470 million, as of 2020.

• David met his wife Jan Ellison at Stanford University.

• David Baszucki has been behind producing and directing many Roblox video games.