Susan Cohen, assistant professor of management at the Terry College of Business, studies startup companies and entrepreneurship, but she’s actually in the business of studying advice — whom to ask for advice, how to separate good advice from bad advice, and how to create meaningful advice.
On May 19, she presented at TEDxAtlanta’s 2023 program, WeRise, on what her research has to teach all people — not just entrepreneurs — about advice that makes a difference.
She drew on her research exploring if accelerators work, on what makes some accelerators more effective than others, and how entrepreneurs can make the most out of meetings with mentors to offer insights on how advice provides fuel to entrepreneurs.
Here’s what she had to say:
As a high school student, I dreamed of becoming an architect. I even got into a top school and visited the stunning campus where a student gave me advice that would change my life forever: Don’t do it, we call it archi-torture.
I took a different path. And, for the last 12 years, I’ve been studying how advice can change not only careers — but also early-stage startups.
My research takes place in accelerator programs. Accelerator programs are boot camps for tech startups, where founders collect a lot of advice over three to six months.
I think of them as advice factories.
My research with Ben Hallen and Chris Bingham finds that many are effective, increasing startups’ odds of survival and the amount of external investment raised.
But we found a lot of variation across programs.
I dug deeper across multiple studies to understand why and discovered that the way advice was exchanged played a critical role in a program’s effectiveness. The three key differentiators were: the mentors who proffered advice, the tempo of meetings and how advice was created during those meetings.
First, mentors matter.
But, contrary to conventional wisdom, someone with a lot of experience may not make the best mentor. Their success and authority may make their advice seem wise, but, since they have not been in your shoes for years, it may not actually fit your situation.
For example, Jade, a brilliant founder in our study started a media company for a Gen Z audience. She met with the CEO of a Fortune 500 media company who recommended building a mobile app. Jade took his advice, but the app flopped.
Unfortunately, her startup changed course repeatedly in response to bad advice offered by senior mentors. It eventually failed.
The insight? Experienced mentors don’t necessarily give good advice, especially in fast-moving industries where knowledge can quickly become outdated. Sometimes, people who are just a little ahead of you have more relevant experience.
Other times, people with very different types of experiences can offer a novel perspective and this too can be useful.
When the CEO of a faith-based startup found out that he was scheduled to meet with a vice president from Playboy, he pushed back, hard. He felt it was unlikely that a meeting with a Playboy executive would yield fruitful suggestions — and — he was concerned about his reputation.
He took the meeting, and, to his surprise, it was fantastic. This mentor was an avid churchgoer and a brilliant strategist. He was also actively involved with his church’s social media and had unique insights to share.
So, the first step to constructing great advice is to carefully pick your mentors. Veteran mentors can be insightful but also seek input from people who are only a little ahead of you and from people with very different backgrounds.
The second thing to consider is the tempo of meetings.
Some accelerators instructed entrepreneurs to spread meetings out over time. After each one, entrepreneurs decided whether to take proffered advice… or leave it.
This is a terrible idea. When entrepreneurs only met a few mentors, it was hard for them to know if the suggestions were good.
Other accelerator programs increased the velocity of meetings — asking entrepreneurs to speak with as many as 100 different mentors in a few short weeks.
This turned out to be brilliant. Increasing the velocity made it harder for entrepreneurs to ignore good advice while also making it easier to spot bad advice.
For example, Jeff’s company built a marketplace for travel excursions – activities like ziplining and food-tasting tours. He tested the product and learned that travelers loved it. But his mentors were not as enthusiastic. They exposed the potentially high cost of acquiring customers. Initially, Jeff ignored their warnings. After all, his research proved that customers loved the product.
But it was hard to ignore similar feedback received in quick succession. He eventually admitted that he would likely lose money with every sale.
He asked mentors to suggest cheaper ways to reach travelers. They recommended partnering with travel agencies who could sell his product as an add-on, and it worked.
When setting up meetings with mentors, increasing the velocity can help determine what advice to take. It’s hard to ignore similar advice that is repeated in quick succession.
On the other hand, it’s easy to be seduced by bad advice when it’s the only advice you receive.
I’ve talked about how to structure meetings with mentors but that leaves an important question. What do entrepreneurs actually do during meetings to get good advice?
I studied this question with Amisha Miller and Siobhan O’Mahony at Boston University. Our expectation was that some mentors would give better advice than others. However, after meticulously analyzing 165 interactions between entrepreneurs and their mentors, we found something different.
It was not that some mentors gave better advice; it was that some entrepreneurs worked with mentors to coproduce better advice.
Some entrepreneurs were quite polite. When mentors gave them suggestions like, “Have you thought about running your company as a franchise?” They acknowledged with replies like, “I haven’t thought about it, but I really like it.” Other entrepreneurs pushed back.
For example, the founders of a company that sold snacks made out of fruit and vegetable pulp left in juicers originally targeted moms shopping in juice shops, but mentors cautioned that their target market was too narrow. These mentors suggested adding other channels, like grocery stores. The founders didn’t see how selling in grocery stores could be viable. One of them pushed back, “We can’t tell people they’re eating waste!”
By challenging the mentor’s suggestion and pointing out a specific problem, the founders opened a dialogue with their mentors which led to a new way of talking about fruit waste: “It’s the “healthiest part of the fruit.”
The team thought it was a good solution, but still tested it. The good news: millennials and environmentalists did in fact buy and eat these healthy fruit snacks in grocery stores.
In our study, not one single founder who politely acknowledged advice during conversations, used it. Only those entrepreneurs who challenged mentors at the moment and gave them the chance to revise their initial advice later used that advice, but they didn’t use advice exactly as given. They re-engaged with advisors, asking for clarification and more details.
They took a seed from the mentor and adapted it to better fit their strategy. Founders always conducted tests to see how new strategies inspired by advice compared to their original ideas.
The key is we can’t expect mentors to magically suggest perfect advice. The onus is on all of us to work with mentors to coproduce usable advice.
My advice on advice?
So, when you are making a big decision, don’t follow one person’s advice, like I did.
If I were 18 again, and one student told me that architecture school was hard, I might push back and seek more advice.
And to the mentors in the audience, the next time somebody politely thanks you for your advice, odds are it’s not going to be used. But, if they push back, do not be insulted! You are actually getting closer to offering a spark of inspiration.