How much time should a startup spend on marketing?

Almost all the time if you don't have a customer yet. Once you have a product market fit, then it can be split into 40% on marketing and 60% on product improvement, customer support etc.

With now agents which can build tech and write code - 80% should be being customer facing - be it talking to customers to validate, or marketing the offering to the customers

as people mentioned it varies, you can have a phenomenal product but if no ones knows about it, no one cares. But you can have a mediocre product but everyone knows about it which then allows you to use the revenue to keep improving it. Growth hacking methods should be completely used up in any way possible before trying to pump endless amount of money into the marketing

If you're working alone, I think you need to dedicate about 30% of your time to marketing, 30% to product, and 30% to sales exclusively. If you're in a team, it's best if one founder is responsible exclusively for dev and the other for sales and marketing.

It depends on how many people are working on the startup. But generally, according to statistics, over 80% of startups fail due to poor marketing. So, you have to spend a lot of time on it, whether you want to or not.

You should always be marketing! Check out coconutsai.com to help give you ideas everyday. Its free.

Depends of course. If you need money fast, there's no other way than to spend significant time for marketing as soon as you have a useful product. But otherwise, I'd first focus on building a really great product with very little time for marketing, I'm sure that will be better for long-term success!

Marketing=sales So the more the better

This needs to be done in stages. At the very least, before achieving PMF, the focus should be on core users.

I'd recommend spending at least 50% of your time on marketing and sales in the early stages, even if you have a dev co-founder. You need to validate there's demand for your product and start building an audience ASAP. Product dev is important but pointless if no one knows about it. Do things that don't scale at first like reaching out directly to potential customers. Once you have some traction, then you can focus more on the product. Just my 2 cents!

@irina_ivashchinenko Great question, Iren! I'd say for a startup, especially in the early stages, marketing isn't just a task—it’s a survival skill. Allocating 30% of your time sounds about right, but I'd focus on activities with the highest ROI, like building an audience, experimenting with organic channels, and gathering feedback from early users. In a small team, splitting roles as Nick suggested can streamline things, but everyone should still have a pulse on how marketing impacts the overall growth.

Such an important discussion for startups! I agree that marketing is critical, especially in the early stages, to validate demand and build traction. For me, it's about balancing marketing with listening to customers—understanding their pain points helps refine both the product and marketing message.