The Insane 0 → 1 Story of Bloxbiz

In 2020, these guys built the world's first virtual Adtech platform.

In 2021, they sold it for $17.5M

They went from idea to selling the company in only 10 months during the lockdown.

The most insane 0 → 1 story 🧵 pic.twitter.com/COzqZTpnIE

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

Meet Ben Khakshoor and Sam Drozdov, the founders of Bloxbiz, an advertising platform for the $28B online gaming platform Roblox.

Bloxbiz's ad product hits 75M monthly active players on Roblox.

Bloxbiz dominates the Roblox ad market - because there's no competition.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

Video game advertising is a potential $17B industry.

Ben and Sam saw that and made a fortune.

But how did they stumble upon this niche idea 👇 pic.twitter.com/KaIwJkuT38

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

— The Background

Ben and Sam met in college.

Ben brought an edtech startup he’d created to the University of Maryland's incubator, called Startup Shell.

At the time, Sam was the director of Startup Shell.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

Ben joined the incubator and later became Startup Shell's director after Sam graduated.

Ben and Sam stayed in touch even after college.

Ben worked as a product security engineer in NYC, while Sam became a product designer for Facebook in San Francisco.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

For 3 years, Sam and Ben brainstormed projects based in virtual worlds.

The metaverse reminded them of the early days of the web.

And they were trying to figure out how to monetize these spaces.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

Games like Fortnite and Minecraft attracted huge mainstream followings.

But Sam and Ben were increasingly drawn to Roblox.

• Designed for kids between 8 and 12
• Allowed players to create mini-games within the game
• Had 202M+ active monthly users pic.twitter.com/dc388jSJQf

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

— The Idea And MVP

The most important reason they decided to pursue building on Roblox -

Despite a huge player base, Roblox had a monetization problem.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

Roblox's 1.7M game creators only made $30M in revenue in 2017, which only slightly increased by 2021.

This was a huge opportunity.

With in-game ads, developers could make more money.

So Sam and Ben zeroed in on this specific problem. pic.twitter.com/rkRl6hs5F1

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

Before they started building the product, Sam and Ben started talking to game creators.

Roblox developers are easy to find on Twitter as they are highly active and public about their profession.

So Sam and Ben used Twitter for their outreach and sent ~100 DMs/day.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

They spent months talking to developers and building their knowledge of the Roblox platform and its coding language, Lua.

When COVID hit in 2021, both quit their jobs in New York to focus more on their project.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

The MVP was ready in 7 days - they went on a hiking trip and hacked it together there.

However, Sam and Ben lacked experience selling ad space and navigating the Roblox community.

So they reached out to a prominent Roblox developer for advice and feedback.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

This developer -

• Helped them compare Roblox with other platforms
• Helped them get their landing page correct
• Shared their idea to his network

It was a big help!

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

Bloxbiz's initial product was a 3D advertising billboard for Roblox games.

They developed a proprietary system to track a billboard's screen space and duration to factor in player views - crucial aspect for advertisers. pic.twitter.com/UbmYyjeynQ

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

It was easy getting Roblox developers to use Bloxbiz.

• If Bloxbiz worked, they made more money
• For the first time, someone from outside of Roblox had come in to build tools for them.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

The difficult part was convincing companies to advertise on Roblox.

The way Roblox works, programmatic integrations with other ad platforms like Google were not possible.

So they needed to do sales from scratch.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

— Sales

Sam and Ben started a cold outreach campaign to get advertisers on LinkedIn.

But they failed to realize how gruesome B2B sales cycles are.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

Even ChatGPT knows it :) pic.twitter.com/AmL9D8LnRB

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

Sam and Ben outsourced their sales to third parties using a commission-based reseller model.

And it worked.

They grew to 20+ salespeople in 3 months.

They finally started making money.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

Even though Bloxbiz struggled to find product-market fit, they knew they were on the right track.

How?

They received acquisition offers even when they only had an MVP.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

In 2021, Roblox went public and people went bonkers over metaverse.

The craze reached a high when Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook to Meta. pic.twitter.com/mwJnLy9XTH

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

With all this craze, Sam and Ben realized they needed to grow fast or get left behind.

They thought about fundraising.

The challenge: VCs weren't interested in Adtech then.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

While VCs didn't quite grasp the product, their sales partner, Matt Edelman at Super League, did.

Super League, a gaming launchpad for creators and brands, was already working in gaming and was aligned with Bloxbiz's vision.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

Edelman convinced Super League to make an offer.

And Super League acquired Bloxbiz for $17.5M in 2021 - roughly 10 months after Bloxbiz launched their first product. pic.twitter.com/1XwVQBfXqe

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

Now Sam and Ben work as executives at Superleague.

Sam is the Vice President of Metaverse Products, and Ben is the Vice President of Engineering for Metaverse Products.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023

3 lessons you, as a founder, can learn from this:

• Focus ruthlessly on the things that drive the lever.
• Validate your product long before launch.
• Be adaptable to change.

— Joe Speiser ⚡️ (@jspeiser) April 17, 2023