Game On

Equating online gaming with achieving peace on Earth might be difficult, but Matt Kaufman ’94 has a big hand in a company that’s aiming for something on that order.

Kaufman is vice president of product and product operations at Roblox, a San Mateo-based company that says it has “the largest user-generated online gaming platform, with over 15 million games created by users.”

“If you look at Roblox’s mission — which is to connect the world through play — it’s a pretty audacious mission of building this metaverse platform that allows anybody from anywhere in the world to connect through kind of any device within a few seconds and play with anybody else,” Kaufman said.

Kaufman has helped lead the growth of Roblox from about 200 employees, when he started with the company in 2017, to 550.

“One of the things I really focused on is how [to] build an organization where you can have lots of teams operating pretty autonomously and still all pushing in a coordinated effort,” he said.

Kaufman said his UC Davis experience as an engineering major was key in his success.

“They really taught me how to break problems down into their components and solved piece by piece, without becoming overwhelmed in trying to solve everything all at once and then not knowing really where to start,” he said.