May 3, 2022
David Baszucki made a fortune cofounding social gaming platform Roblox in 2004. By early 2021, he was a billionaire, thanks to a funding round that valued Roblox at $29.5 billion. He took the business public on the New York Stock Exchange two months later in a $38 billion IPO. Today, Forbes estimates Baszucki’s net worth to be $2.1 billion. Now he’s starting to give it away, to causes that hit particularly close to home.
Baszucki explained why during an appearance at the annual Milken Institute Global Conference, during a panel discussion about philanthropy with the institute’s Dr. Cara Altimus and fellow billionaire and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
“A confluence of three things happened within a span of five years,” Baszucki recalled. His son son was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had a “very serious bipolar episode” for more than five years. “We learned firsthand about mental health,” Baszucki said. So his wife Jan ended up scouring the medical research in search of a cure. “We tried everything,” he said, “and ultimately arrived at a metabolic health solution involving a keto diet that has essentially cured him and brought him back to reality.”