About – Keith V Lucas

02. EXPERIENCE

WHERE I'M COMING FROM.

EMPLOYEE #7 → CPO & CTO

I joined Roblox in 2008 as employee #7, excited to work with Dave and Erik again. I left a decade later, after we’d grown the team to hundreds and built a platform used by tens of millions of people. By the end — as CPO and CTO — I was running product, engineering, and operations. I built the product and operations teams from scratch, and I helped scale the engineering team.

THE LESSON

What I learned there is the foundation of everything I do now: great teams don’t happen by accident. They’re built — through who you hire, who you promote, who you tolerate, and who you coach out. The behaviors you cultivate and the people you keep are your culture, full stop. Roblox didn’t repeatedly convert crisis into opportunity by luck — its people and culture did. And that combination wasn’t an accident.

THE THROUGH LINE

Before Roblox, I trained as an engineer — a Bachelor’s in mechanical engineering at Columbia, then a Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford. I also picked up a Master’s in Public Policy at Berkeley, because I was curious about how big systems get built and how they get changed. The pattern, in retrospect, is consistent: I’ve always wanted to know how things work — products, teams, institutions — and how to make them work better.

WHAT I’M DOING NOW.

After Roblox, I served as COO at Instrumental, which improves hardware manufacturing yields through AI; as COO, I helped build out the financial modeling and sharpen the go-to-market. Today I advise startup leaders across AI, gaming, creator platforms, entertainment, social, and enterprise — and I work pro bono with non-profits and schools, where the same principles translate. I wrote a book called IMPACT on what I’ve learned, and I speak at conferences, universities, portfolio summits, and podcasts.

HI, I’M KEITH.

I HELP MISSION-DRIVEN LEADERS CROSS THE SCALING CHASM – FROM SCRAPPY TO SCALE.

WHERE I'M COMING FROM.

EMPLOYEE #7 → CPO & CTO

THE LESSON

THE THROUGH LINE

WHAT I’M DOING NOW.

“GREAT TEAMS DON’T HAPPEN BY ACCIDENT.”

IF YOU'RE AT THE CHASM—MESSAGE ME.