I understood what was meant. Companies don't just start marketing once they have multi billion dollar profitability.
If you're consumer focused, you spend on marketing, if you're business focused, you spend on sales. There are few examples to the contrary (Google, Atlassia, for example).
AirBnB early on was sniping Craigslist vacation listings[1], and now they have the resources, and scale to market directly. If AirBnB isn't doing it right, what constitutes the 'right' time to spend on marketing?
I'm curious as to how some folks would respond to this, and why.
However, I think H8crila meant that they did not spend that much on advertisement around the time they ipoed.