Roblox’s CEO David Baszucki flexing presenting (Source: Ian Tuttle / Getty Images)
Crypto exchange Coinbase (listing date TBD) and gaming platform Roblox (listing on March 10) have highly anticipated upcoming public market debuts via direct listings.
Roblox was valued at $29.5B in a January funding round, while Coinbase has traded above $100B in private secondary market transactions.
Compared to recent hot tech names, both of these startups have spent much less on sales and marketing expenses (as a % of revenue) per CNBC:
- Coinbase = 4%
- Roblox = 6%
- Airbnb = 22%
- Unity = 25%
- DoorDash = 32%
- Palantir = 42%
- Wish = 64%
- Snowflake = 79%
Such low spend — particularly in lead-up to a public listing — suggests that both startups are growing organically.
And if you need a good historical analog: Google only spent 6% of revenue on sales and marketing before its 2004 IPO.
NOTE: We’ll be writing more on Coinbase later this week; you can find our previous piece on Roblox here.
