Emailed on November 20th, 2020 in The Friday Forward

Here's an IPO to watch if you have kids between the age of 10 and 14.

Roblox, a San Mateo, Calif.-based social gaming platform for tweens and teens, filed for a $1 billion initial public offering.

• This is another of the lucky few companies for whom the pandemic has been a business blessing, as lockdowns and school closures caused parents to let their screen time limits slide. Roblox reports 31.1 million average daily active users for the nine-month period ending in September, up 82% from the year-earlier period.

• Details: Roblox reports $206 million of losses on $589 million in revenue for the first nine months of 2020, compared to $46 million in losses on $350 million for the same period in 2019. It plans to list on the NYSE (RBLX) and raised $335 million in VC funding from firms like Altos Ventures, First Round Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures.

• Bottom line: "The average lifetime of a paying Roblox user is about 23 months. Among the risk factors Roblox faces is ensuring a civil environment for children online, which isn’t easy given all the different ways online systems are attacked." — Dean Takahashi, GamesBeat