Coinbase and Roblox take a page from Google, keeping marketing costs way down ahead of public debuts

Coinbase and Roblox take a page from Google, keeping marketing costs way down ahead of public debuts

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and gaming app Roblox are both getting set to go public through a direct listing of their shares.

They have something else in common that's likely to prove very attractive to investors: Brand awareness. Both companies spend less than 10% of their net revenue on sales and marketing. Those are savings that allow the companies to focus more on product development and even profit generation.

With limited marketing, Coinbase emerged as the most popular crypto exchange for consumers. As prices for bitcoin and ethereum has soared, so has trading on the site. Kids hear about Roblox primarily from their friends and neighbors and then spend hours at a time navigating some the app's millions of games, dressing up their avatar and buying advanced features along the way.

Their skimpy marketing spend is a rarity. Most venture-backed tech companies spend heavily on sales and marketing to get customers, bleeding cash so they can gain mass adoption and win market share. Consumer companies often lean on advertising, buying Facebook, Google and TV ads and offering promotions, while enterprise software businesses tend to have big sales teams traveling to conferences for new business.

Looking at last year's most high-profile IPOs, Airbnb was spending 22%