Draft:Erik Cassel

Erik Cassel (Los Angeles, December 16, 1967 – San Francisco, February 11, 2013) was an American businessman and programmer, known for being the co-founder of Roblox Corporation (who developed the gaming platform known as Roblox) and Knowledge Revolution'' along with David Baszucki.

Biography
Cassel has been around computers since he was young and learned to program on a Radio Shack TRS-80 in high school. He commented that during recess he would program games: "I would program a game and only have a few minutes to play it before the bell rang. The computer didn't have a hard drive, so I would lose the program and have to write a new one the next day. This really motivated me to become a good programmer. The faster and better I could code, the more time I would have to play."

David Baszucki met Cassel as a recent graduate in 1989. Cassel read in MacUser magazine about a software company that Bascuzcki was building and flew in for a job interview, according to Baszucki. A look at software Cassel wrote for his school's physics department convinced Baszucki to hire Cassel on the spot. The two spent nearly a decade building educational software for teaching physics and eventually sold the company for $20 million. They separated a few years after the acquisition, but kept in touch.

In 2004, they created the idea for Roblox. Baszucki commented: "When Erik built something, he always did it right. There was never a question of a hack, a band-aid or bolt-on with Erik when it came to software engineering". In 2010, Erik commented: "It's fun to be a part of something as it grows and you can look back on all the things that happened and how far we've come. On the other hand, Roblox continues to change and grow. In a year, I'll look back and think of it as part of the 'beginning' too."

Death
Erik died on February 11, 2013, after a three-year battle with cancer. According to Business Insider, "In many ways, Cassel's memory lives on in the world of Roblox — real and virtual — ever since Baszucki's moving memorial blog, where he declares that his co-founder is the 'nicest guy I've ever met', even an in-game memorial made by his children to celebrate his memory."