I Spent 24 Hours With Roblox Millionaires

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I Spent 24 Hours With Roblox Millionaires

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Apr 23, 2025

I flew to Austin, TX, to spend 24 hours with Cole, Ian, and Jake and dive deep into their Roblox $1M businesses.

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Follow Cole's Journey: https://x.com/1Coal
Follow Ian's Journey: https://x.com/Vamonoz4
Follow Jake's Journey: https://x.com/cheekyvisuals

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Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
1:30 - Meeting the guys
4:05 - What is Roblox and how does it work?
5:11 - How big is Roblox?
7:08 - Build your own apps
9:15 - Cole's business breakdown
12:32 - What it takes to get to the top with Roblox
13:28 - Ian's business breakdown
14:35 - Jake's business breakdown
18:10 - Day in the life

Chapters

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Transcript

Chapters

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No tools listed for this business.

This is Cole these are his two best friends they all live in the same apartment and they

claim to make millions off Roblox

Yes this game

But before we get into all that we gotta go back

It all started with a tweet

Is there anybody actually making money with video games

Hundreds of people slid into my DMs but one of them really stood out

His name was Cole and when he told me how much money he was making I just couldn't

believe it and I had a lot of questions

Is this actually real

Is this something that's actually gonna last

And how much are you really profiting from this

The only way to find out

Well I decided to fly out to Austin Texas knock on his door and have him show me proof

Come join me as I spend 24 hours with Roblox millionaires

I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story

So after landing in Austin Texas we grabbed a couple crappy airport sandwiches and got

ourselves a taxi to Cole's place

At this point I was still pretty skeptical on if this was actually gonna be real and

I had a lot of questions to ask these kids which is why the ride felt like an eternity

Finally we arrived

Okay I think that's his apartment right there

What if this is all fake like he's not even there right now

Or what if this is some sort of rented apartment or something like that and this is all big

sham

Alright let's check it out

Let's see what's gonna happen

Hey

Nice to meet you

What's up man

What's up

Come on let's do this

Let's check this out

Nice house

Thank you thank you

Nice to meet you man

Nice to meet you too

Thanks for having me in your house

Of course of course

course Dude tell me about what you do

I make Roblox games

I'm one of the top 50 biggest Roblox developers in the world

in the world

in the world I have 1 million daily active users across all my games

It's mainly kids mainly in the U S mainly in Canada

And when did you start playing Roblox

I started playing Roblox in 2013 so I think I was about 8 or 9 years old

But I guess I didn't start bringing the money outside of Roblox until I was 16

And I just skipped college

So as soon as I turned 18 I moved to Austin and I just started going full in on my journey

Nice

Cool

And I understand that you have a brother who also develops Roblox games

Yeah Is

Is he your younger brother or older brother

Twin brother

He lives with me

He lives here

He lives right here

He's here right now

Probably in his room

Yo what's up

So you also make Roblox games

I do

Yes

I made a game during winter break when I was in college and it blew up and then I

had enough money to drop out of college

Okay

Wow

Yeah

And tell me a little bit about your game

It used to be called Bake the Baby and it was a game where you would bake babies

And it went very viral because of that reason

Yeah

So we got a lot of publicity

Like iShowSpeed played it

All the big Roblox YouTubers played it

Oh wow

I'd probably say around like 100 million views total during the release of the game

Yeah

Cool

And where are you guys from

Ohio

And what brought you to Austin Texas

A few years ago I met my friend Jake in person

Eventually we ended up talking a lot online like once a week and then eventually he's

like oh no I want to move to Austin

And so we ended up moving down

He lives two doors down from us

Is he making money on Roblox too

Yeah

He's making money off of Roblox

Okay

Yeah

Let's get him in here too

All right

Yo what's up

Yo Jake

I'm doing this like podcast thing

You want to come over

Oh hell yeah

Hold up

What's up

What's up Jake

Good to see you guys

Good to see you bro

Good to see you

Good to see you man

Nice to meet you

You too

Tell me about your Roblox business

Yeah

So I run a marketing agency for brands that come to Roblox

We worked with Nicki Minaj and SpongeBob when they came to Roblox and we built basically

all the video content around that like these trailers for it social media campaigns

and all that

You know we've made 450 videos probably now and done like well over 100 million views

Okay

We're going to talk all about your guys businesses but first I want you guys to break down the

Roblox economy and really the opportunity here for anyone that's watching

So let's go to the whiteboard and let's do some math

Let's do it

I'd love you to explain to me what is Roblox like how does the whole thing work

Yeah

So Roblox is basically just YouTube for video games

Anyone can make a video game on this platform the same way that anyone can put out a YouTube

video

So when you go on Roblox you basically just have this page with a ton of different games

that you scroll through and play

When someone plays a Roblox game they basically have this currency called Robux and this

can be used to just buy anything in the game like power ups or skins that a developer can

create and add to their game

As the developer of the game then I receive those Robux and then you turn your Robux

into real money

The newer way that games are also making a ton of money is brands sponsoring them

So instead of just going out and putting a YouTube sponsor before this video for example

they can build something that's interactive in Roblox and that's the new way to make

people into kind of lifelong fans

Yeah

So before we get into guys businesses I just want to let anyone watching know how

big Roblox is because I think it's almost kind of unfathomable how big these numbers

are

So if you could walk me through that

I think it's pretty crazy

Yeah

So one in two kids under 16 years old in the US are playing Roblox every day

That equates to there being 400 million monthly active users so 400 million unique people

playing this game every month

And the kids that are playing Roblox are spending two times more time on Roblox than TikTok

Half the time these kids are on TikTok they're literally using it to find their next Roblox

game to play

All right

So it sounds like a lot of kids are playing Roblox but what does that mean for the future

Yeah

It means that as big as Roblox is this is literally the tip of the iceberg

not anywhere near the peak because we have all of these kids in the US that are

growing up on Roblox that as they grow up continue to be able to play and then this

just keeps growing

And every time the base gets larger and larger there's more kids come to the platform

Then there's also this concept of unlocking demographics

So for a while on Roblox girls didn't really play especially older girls until this game

called Dress to Impress comes out

It's this massive fashion game to the point of over a million people have played it at

one time

It's been played well over a billion times

So now we have this huge demographic being unlocked by a new game

And what we'll see is this will happen with the older male demographic eventually

This will continue to happen with different groups

And eventually Roblox will cover all bases and be the largest platform

You even mentioned that MrBeast is now coming onto Roblox

Oh yeah

This is like a big thing

He's making a massive entrance

He had a meeting with the CEO

He made his own game

And so he's realizing this opportunity as oh crap this is the next YouTube

I'm going to be the first person here

Yeah for someone like him to come to the platform is huge because he's really up to

date on where things are going

And to know that he endorses Roblox as a whole I think is a huge sign of what's to come for

Hey guys it's Pat here

I'm just putting the final touches on this video right now

But first I got to show you something

So these Roblox guys are just killing it with their games right

But I wanted to find out if there are other games in the Starter Story database that are

making money

Real quick I found these three examples

guy's making 200 000 a year with an online solitaire game

This dude is making 20 000 a month with his Mexican train game

How funny is that

And my buddy Peter Levels is making 50 000 with his plane game simulator

And it got me thinking what if anyone could build this

What if anyone can turn an idea into a real working app on the Internet

Well what if I told you you could

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All right back to the video

OK personally now I'm convinced that Roblox is the real deal

The only thing that's not clear yet is how to actually build a successful business around

it So I decided to have each of the boys dive deep into their respective Roblox business

explain how it works and how much money it actually makes

Let's start off with Cole

I'd love if you could actually pull up your game pull up some of the money that you're making

making so that people can see

I'd love to just see what you do specifically

Yeah I mean I can definitely do it

Yeah My game is a game called How to Die

I think it's like the top 100 game on Roblox

So the users is about a million

Oh my God

So you can see everything So you have show me up in there

It says you have 13 000 people playing right

Yeah So you have people playing right now

But you can see these are like real kids playing and around starting in 10 10 seconds

Oh my God The kids are voting for what map they want

Show me how you actually coded

This is are you writing in a code editor

Is it like if you could pull up that

Yeah I'd love to see that

Yeah There's like Roblox studio

So I can press edit in studio where I can edit anything in the game

These are all models

There's a bunch of different folders and scripts in here where it maps out code

Nice Actually I'm not a programmer

I do everything but program

So I do all the UI and all the building and all that stuff

I like a business partner who does like all the programming for all the games

So you know man it's endless code

It's probably thousands of scripts in there

Yeah If you could break down how much money you generally make per month

what channels those come from

And then you did say you had like some split and profits or anything like that

Yeah So it's kind of confusing because it's going to be in Roblox

Yeah But I have like six million Roblox right now

For every one million Roblox it's three and a half grand

We're looking at like 15 grand right now

So far this month we've got in the group

How to Die is a fairly new success

About like six months ago we launched it

And right now it's sitting at about like 45k a month

Just how to die that one game before

I actually spent like half a million dollars on two projects that both failed

One of them was a Roblox game

that I spent a bunch of money and time on that just didn't end up blowing up

And it destroyed me

And then I had this other company where you could hire like YouTubers

and content creators to make videos in your game

I spent three years on these projects

So all my money in these projects I was like super burnt out

And I was like man I just want to I just want to make a game quick

And that's what we made How to Die

Yeah And then we started to like how about other developers with their game

We're taking like splits of that to this month alone

We're on track to make like 70 grand this month Wow

And then I split it with my programmer slash business partner

He has half of it OK cool

And then I have an accountant and lawyer and a bunch of miscellaneous things too

We don't do any ads

So it's kind of like YouTube or something

You don't really need to advertise YouTube video

It just kind of gets shown people

But I do have like modelers and people who make graphics for us

So I blow through like five months just paying people for contract work

Yeah sure Cool

You mentioned that you had a few games that flopped

and then you created this one with less expectations and then it went crazy

Yeah Tell me a little bit more about that

Yeah So I mean I spent basically all my high school years

and like 300 grand on this game

I basically was trying to remake all these best games

and combine it into this grand thing

And within that time frame I saw Ian over a winter break make the baby

And the game blew up

And so I think I kind of looked at Ian and I'm like

Ian had so much fun with his game and he did so quickly

And now he's super you know he's making a lot of money

I spent three years and all this money on my game and my game failed

I ended up calling my programmer

I'm like let's make a game in two weeks

And I think it taught me a valuable lesson about test first and then build

Don't build and test

Yeah You can waste years building a startup or a game

and then it ends up being worth nothing

But if you build it and it somewhat works to begin with

you know you have something

Yeah Now that you had this game that has 13000 active users right now

is there any sort of like framework of what it takes to get to the top

With the Roblox game

Yeah So I always focus on clickability

It is the game clickable because if it's not no one's going to play it

Bake the baby for example was like that was a crazy title

And that's why it worked

And hide or die hide or die That's pretty dramatic

So I think being dramatic or unique in some way always works out

Then another important thing is it's like social

So Roblox is all about playing with friends making a game

that's playable with friends or against friends or whatever

It's like super important

The final thing is it needs to be replayable

And so when I play your game if I play it for 10 minutes and

and know everything that the game has to offer I'm going to leave

Yeah But if I play the game and I'm level 10 and I got to be level 100

to do the next thing then I'm like well maybe I'll play again

to see what was behind that door

So you got to build a curiosity in the user

Same way for YouTube video

So yeah it needs to be clickable social and replayable

That's the formula I can give you

But it's probably going to take you a few attempts anyway to get a hit game

if you want to make a hit game

Cool Ian do you want to show off your game

Sure sure My game is called Bathe the Baby

It was formerly called Bake the Baby

Basically it's a game where players will step in this pad

and we make all our money from this like daily shop

So we sell like a pigeon skin cow skin

and we make money from selling coins as well

So you can use these coins right here to buy skins

And then you can also buy abilities as well

So like shoot a meteor at somebody or turn into a ghost and be invisible

But as you can see our average revenue per paying user is pretty crazy

That's high That's very high

That's it And how much is the dollar amount on that

It's about one dollar fifty cents

Yeah And we have around 150 000 daily active users

Wow Which is close to a top 200 game on that box

All right So how much does your Roblox game make

And also go over some of the costs involved with it

OK Mine makes around 25 grand a month

And I also have a business partner and we split it 50 50

Basically the exact same process is cool

We also have brand deals as well that come in

But my brand deals are probably closer to like five grand

We also have a few modelers a few people who make graphics for us

at the thumbnails and icons

But it's still a pretty small team

Like only four or five people are really contributing to the game

Yeah Cool All right Jake tell me about the business

you built around Roblox and how it's a little bit different

Yeah So I built a company called Vector 3

So any time like a brand comes to Roblox there's a pretty good chance

that we're creating the media around it

So you know a bunch of TikTok videos on the game have it go viral

and that would bring in players like a new form of marketing

Cool I want to take a step back

So how did you even get into Roblox

And then this kind of business idea that's adjacent to it

Yeah So I started playing Roblox in 2011

So 14 years ago for me I always just like moved around

between different interests

You know one week I was a graphic designer and then I would move

and spend a week working at a Roblox cafe as like a barista

and just like literally make virtual coffees

Other weeks I was like programming for people

And then when middle school hit I would make these montage edits

and I spent years doing that

And that's where I learned that I really really liked video production

that whole aspect

And with that mentality I went into kind of video production

for brands on Roblox and start building out these trailers and social campaigns

All of the editors that I knew from middle school

that we make these Phantom Forces montages with actually work at my company now

Yeah You're running your company remotely is that right

Yeah Walk me through that a little bit

How does how do you do business

Yeah So we run Discord in just a group chat

where we stuff that we're working on

And then our bread and butter is our content management system

I nerd over this like all the time in terms of like how things get done

Let's say we are hired by Nike to make a trailer

Our head of content Ryan will go into this template and project plan

where there's a 45 step system of how to do the trailer

So every little step in each one of these steps has an SOP

That then has a video that I record on how to do it

The way we get about 95 percent of our clients is LinkedIn

So I guess we built a LinkedIn account where I was putting out

you know a lot of educational content as well as our work over time

when people were like hey I need to either figure out a strategy

strategy for coming to Roblox or I need someone to make video content

We were the people that they thought of

I don't do cold outreach I don't do cold calls

I also use consulting as a really big way of getting clients

So you do a paid consulting call

At the end they also need someone to execute

That's where we also come in

So it's like I'm not paying

I'm getting paid for the lead Yeah Yeah Yeah Cool

Damn If you could pull up some of your numbers here that'd be really cool

Yeah So this month we have you know thirty six thousand one hundred

fifty dollars coming in so far

Twenty to twenty five thousand

That just comes from our retainers

But on top of that we'll have like our per project payments

Yeah Basically it cost me about ten to fifteen thousand dollars a month to run it

I have two full time guys getting a total of like ten thousand dollars a month

month And then there's probably an additional five thousand that's going out

for like animation contractors and we're doing motion graphics

actors that are participating like volunteering Yeah Cool

If you have a framework or something on how to build a company at your age

without having to go to college and take that path

Yeah My framework was take everything that interests you

and just put your head down for a little bit

see if you can get a little bit better than average

If you enjoy that keep doing that work as a freelancer

just do the thing for a while until you build up expertise

Don't even think about it from the approach of like wanting to build this business

If you can do that you put yourself on a path for success no matter what

Yeah Right And it might not be the thing you started out doing

I bounced around between a hundred different skills

The difference was that because I did them all I know what I like

Yeah How to be good at it and scale it

Yeah Yeah That's great advice

All right boys

Tell me what a day in the life looks like for you guys

building million dollar businesses while you're not even going to college

Just tell me about what's life like

Probably way less exciting than anyone would expect

Yeah I think you'd imagine like the craziest things ever

And I think it's funny because like we have the crazy moments

but most of our life is just super boring or like just super normal

I'll wake up at like 10 59 usually for my meeting at 11 with my team

I'll take it in my bed on my phone and then I'll have a really slow morning

And then it's you just sit at your desk you put on your headphones

put your phone in your other room sit like that for usually four or five hours

We're really big about like you're either working or you're like resting

There's not like that in between

So we'll just kind of work

And then usually around like five o clock or when sun's starting to set

set we just sit out there and no phones kind of hang out

Yeah I think I want to I want to add to that

I think it's like you hear about stories about startups or businesses

It's like you got to work 24 hours every single day

No sleep sacrifice everything

Well that's true

Maybe to learn a skill or become really good at something

It's not necessarily true

Like after that creating the space for you to have thoughts

will make you like a 10x better entrepreneur because you all like

you all just have more actionable steps want to do next

Yeah I think it's cool that you guys found your people

I think a lot of people may be watching this feeling like

I'm kind of passionate about this thing but I don't have like friends

Like you guys are all friends

You say you can bounce ideas off each other

Maybe you can retell the story of how you all got together

and then also advice for people who are looking to find other people

across the Internet to live and work with

It takes awkwardness

I think that's one of the best ways to put it

The start of our friendship was a Google calendar

just to talk literally like scheduling a conversation with each other

But if you can embrace that and do that at scale and keep trying

it'll lead to finding your circle

And it's it's so so worth it

Yeah

And it's also important when you own a business and you do anything

to to build a real relationship

You have to make sure it's not transactional

And you have to set the clear boundary of like these are my friends

These are not people I'm selling to

There's not people I'm doing like a quid pro quo for

Like these are like my people my friends that I would do anything

for and vice versa

Yeah Yeah Yeah

Damn All right guys

Well you got a good head on your shoulders

I mean what you guys built is amazing

It was great to meet you guys

So thank you

All through pound here Yeah

Follow this advice and you'll be Roblox millionaires

Good luck guys

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