Why I Stopped Giving Advice

After years of mentoring founders, I've reached an uncomfortable conclusion: most of my advice was useless. Not because it was wrong, but because context is everything, and I rarely had enough of it.

Updated January 2026: Added Advice Quality Gate checklist for mentors.

This isn't false modesty. Research backs it up. Unsolicited advice fails 99% of the time. Advice-giving triggers psychological reactance in recipients. The gap between giver's context and receiver's reality is where well-meaning guidance dies.

The Context Problem

Every piece of advice carries hidden assumptions. When I say "focus on one thing," I'm assuming your resources match mine, your market dynamics are comparable, your team has similar strengths. Those assumptions are almost always wrong.

What worked for me won't work for you. Not because you're different (though you are), but because your situation differs in ways neither of us fully understands. The founder who succeeded by focus had context rewarding focus. The founder who succeeded by diversifying had context demanding flexibility. Both would give opposite advice.

Research from Bo Feng and Eran Magen, as documented in Psychology Today, found giving advice can harm both recipient and relationship. The advice-giver assumes their experience transfers. The recipient feels misunderstood when it doesn't.

Why Advice Feels Like Power

A psychology paper from the University of Pennsylvania found something uncomfortable: giving advice makes the giver feel powerful. There's an ego hit from being the person with answers.

Psychological reactance. When people receive unsolicited advice, they often entrench deeper. The advice triggers a defensive response: "Who are you to tell me what to do?" This happens even when advice is objectively good. The Max Planck Institute found unasked-for support was regarded as unpleasant, primarily because it implied incompetence.

I've felt this myself: the subtle satisfaction of being consulted. It took years to recognize that feeling was a warning sign, not a reward. The pleasure of giving advice often correlates inversely with its usefulness. This parallels what I've observed about how ego kills startups.

The Quality Problem

Even with good intentions and relevant experience, mentor quality varies enormously. Research published in Small Enterprise Research shows successful mentors helped younger startups outperform by 3x. But benefits from lower-quality mentors were far, far lower.

Most mentorship is lower-quality. Not because mentors are bad people, but because real expertise is rare. Building one successful company doesn't mean you understand why it succeeded. Survivorship bias runs rampant. You remember advice from winners; identical advice from losers got forgotten.

According to mentoring statistics research, 93% of small businesses attribute success to mentorship. But attribution isn't causation. People who seek mentors may differ in ways that predict success regardless. Mentorship becomes a story they tell, not necessarily the cause.

What Actually Helps

After recognizing how much of my advice missed the mark, I changed my approach:

Questions over answers. Instead of "You should do X," I ask "What happens if you do X? What if you don't?" This forces me to understand context before offering input. People feel more committed to ideas they generate themselves.

Options over recommendations. "Here are three approaches I've seen work in similar situations. Here's what each optimizes for." This acknowledges I don't have full context while still offering value from experience.

Patterns over prescriptions. "A pattern I've observed is..." carries different weight than "You should..." It invites evaluation rather than defense.

Wait to be asked. The research is clear: solicited advice is far more effective than unsolicited. People pay more attention when they've asked for help. The same insight unrequested triggers defense; on request, it triggers consideration.

The Emotional Processing Gap

Research from UCLA found emotional processing must often occur before problem-solving can begin. Founders frequently need to vent before thinking clearly. Advice delivered before that processing completes bounces off.

Sometimes they don't want advice at all. They want to be heard. They want validation that their struggle is legitimate. Jumping to solutions skips the step that makes solutions receivable. This connects to founder burnout: sometimes they need acknowledgment, not strategy.

I've learned to ask: "Do you want me to listen, or are you looking for input?" The answer is revealing. Respecting it builds trust that makes future advice useful.

When Advice Can Work

I'm not saying advice is always worthless. It has its place:

Domain-specific, verifiable facts. "This API has a rate limit of 100 requests per second" is useful information, not contextual advice. Technical facts transfer well.

When explicitly requested. Someone asking "Should I take this deal?" has invited input. They've signaled readiness for external perspectives. This differs fundamentally from offering opinions on deals they haven't asked about.

From genuine peers. Relational closeness affects reception. Advice from someone who's been where you are, recently and specifically, carries different weight than advice from decades-ago success.

With epistemic humility. "I might be completely wrong, but..." creates space to evaluate rather than defend. It signals you're offering a data point, not a directive.

The Mentor Who Asks Questions

The best mentors I've encountered don't give much advice. They ask questions that force clarity:

"What would have to be true for this to work?"

"What's the worst case if you're wrong?"

"What are you optimizing for?"

"What would you tell a friend in this situation?"

These questions do what advice pretends to do: help people make better decisions. But they leverage the person's own context rather than importing the mentor's. Founders know things about their situation no mentor could learn in a conversation. Good questions unlock that knowledge.

A UC Riverside study found teens appreciated unsolicited advice only when parents supported their autonomy. The same applies to mentorship. Advice respecting autonomy lands differently than advice implying "I know better than you."

The Exception: When to Speak Up Anyway

Despite everything I've said, there are moments when staying silent is wrong. Not every situation calls for patient questioning.

Imminent danger. If someone is about to sign a contract with obvious legal traps, about to ship code with a security vulnerability, or about to make a decision with irreversible consequences—speak up. The calculus changes when the cost of silence exceeds the cost of unwelcome input.

When you have unique information. If you've seen this exact failure mode before, if you know something they couldn't reasonably know, if your experience is directly applicable rather than analogically relevant—that's different. "I watched this exact thing bankrupt a company" carries different weight than "here's what I think."

When asked indirectly. Sometimes people don't ask explicitly but signal they want input. They share a problem without offering solutions. They pause after describing a situation. They ask "what would you do?" about a hypothetical that's clearly not hypothetical. Reading these signals takes practice, but responding to them isn't the same as unsolicited advice.

The key distinction: am I speaking because this will help them, or because I want to feel helpful? The former justifies intervention. The latter doesn't.

Unlearning the Expert Role

For years, I defined part of my value as having answers. I'd built things, learned things, accumulated experience worth sharing. It took time to realize hoarding insights and waiting to dispense them wasn't most helpful.

The shift was from expert to collaborator. From "Let me tell you what I know" to "Let me help you figure out what you know." Less satisfying to the ego. But more effective, because insights emerge from the person who has to act on them.

This is especially true for founders who work better alone. They don't need someone else's playbook. They need help stress-testing their own thinking.

The Advice Quality Gate

Before offering advice, run through this checklist. If you can't answer "yes" to at least four, consider staying silent.

The Emergency Override: If they're about to make an irreversible mistake with severe consequences, speak up regardless of score. But be honest: most situations aren't emergencies. They just feel like them.

"Unsolicited advice is almost always wrong. Not factually wrong, but contextually wrong. In decisions that depend on context, that's the only kind of wrong that matters."