Biography | David Baszucki — The Opening Bell at 11 Wall Street When Roblox Listed Itself

On 10 March 2021 David Baszucki stood on the balcony at the New York Stock Exchange and rang the opening bell.

Roblox was not selling new shares that morning. It was a direct listing. The NYSE had set a 45-dollar reference price the evening before.

Class A stock opened at 64.50 dollars and closed at 69.50.

Reuters put the fully diluted valuation at about 45.2 billion dollars at the close, with a market capitalization near 38 billion.

Baszucki was physically in the building at 11 Wall Street. The rest of the company gathered inside a virtual copy of the exchange that Roblox users could walk through.

The Washington Post reported the split scene the same day: one founder on the real balcony, colleagues on the simulated floor.

The listing was the public end of a line that started with Interactive Physics in San Mateo and with a small Menlo Park office Baszucki rented with Erik Cassel in 2003 and 2004.

Cassel died in 2013. The shareholder letter issued before the listing named him as co-founder and kept that first office in the story.

Roblox's present headquarters are in San Mateo. This pin is the exchange, a public landmark, on the morning the stock began to trade under the ticker RBLX.

Photo: New York Stock Exchange entrance, Balon Greyjoy, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Steve Jennings for TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0, 2018.