Extra Crunch Tuesday: How Roblox completely transformed its tech stack

Welcome to Extra Crunch Tuesday

Launched in 2005, gaming platform Roblox announced yesterday that it had confidentially filed to go public. Today, the company is valued at $4 billion after launching a 2017 initiative that scaled its infrastructure from a single data center that ran bare metal servers.

Before news broke that Roblox was headed for an IPO, enterprise reporter Ron Miller interviewed VP of Corporate and Production Engineering Dan Williams to learn more about how rebuilding its tech stack led to a period of sustained growth.

“I believe in these cycles where reliability is greater than performance is greater than cost,” said Williams.

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch; I hope you have a great week.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

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Join Yext’s Howard Lerman for a live Q&A today at 2 pm ET/11 am PT

Yext CEO Howard Lerman will chat with Alex Wilhelm today at 11 a.m. PT/2 p.m. ET/7 p.m. GMT, and Extra Crunch members are invited to join the conversation.

Yext debuted at TechCrunch50 in 2009 and raised a $25 million round based on the demo Lerman shared at our event.

Today, he’ll discuss the company’s path to its 2017 IPO and his advice for other companies considering a similar move.

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The Extra Crunch fall sale is now live!

Sponsored by TechCrunch

If you're in the U.S., pay just $89 (10% off) for a one-year Extra Crunch membership.

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2020 IPO report card: are tech's newest public companies meeting expectations?

As we enter Q4 and the public markets cool somewhat, Alex Wilhelm looked back at how well this year’s IPO class performed.

In a detailed rundown, he examined major — and marginal — debuts for companies like Unity, Vroom, Snowflake and several others.

“Mostly IPOs have gone really well this year,” he concluded. “Let’s see if we can get another few in before 2020 closes.”

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Is the Twilio-Segment deal expensive?

In today’s edition of The Exchange, Alex unpacks Twilio’s planned purchase of customer data platform Segment for $3.2 billion.

Because its stock value has tripled since the start of 2020, “Twilio is buying Segment with house money,” says Alex, “but a smart company can still overpay while executing a generally intelligent strategy.”

So: is Twilio’s bet “cheap, reasonable or expensive?”

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4-year founder vesting is dead

If successful, most startups will take 7-10 years to reach an exit, but 4-year vesting windows are still the industry standard.

This made sense forty years ago, but in 2020, a rotating slate of co-founders and multiple seed rounds can leave your cap table looking like Swiss cheese.

“Dead equity is demoralizing,” which means more startups should consider shifting to an eight-year vesting schedule, says Jake Jolis, a partner at Matrix Partners.

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How startups should budget in uncertain times 

Perhaps a few organizations had the foresight to factor a global pandemic into their planning, but feel free to doubt anyone who says they were *prepared* for COVID-19.

To find a sustainable path, early-stage founders should revisit every assumption, “then reset on a regular and irregular cadence,” advises entrepreneur Isaac Roth.

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Dear Sophie: How can employers hire & comply with all this new H-1B craziness?

Dear Sophie:

I’ve been reading about the new H-1B rules for wage levels and defining what types of jobs qualify that came out this week.

What do we as employers need to do to comply? Are any other visa types affected?

— Racking my brain in Richmond! 🤯

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