{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,22]],"date-time":"2026-03-22T13:38:20Z","timestamp":1774186700592,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":81,"publisher":"Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)","issue":"12","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Management Science"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,12]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>This paper examines the role of advice in early firm development and growth, drawing on detailed data from a global program where angel investors and venture capitalists (VCs) mentored founders over several months. Leveraging variation in mentors\u2019 availability to support start-ups because of personal scheduling conflicts, I find that advice significantly improves start-ups\u2019 future market performance. To explore how advice shapes early firm development, I develop a novel typology of start-up activities, finding that a defining element of mentors\u2019 advice is to do less and learn more. Although angels and VCs are consistent in this message, they differ significantly in when they choose to advise start-ups in achieving their business objectives. Angels are more likely than VCs to help founders design and execute product market experiments, whereas VCs provide more mentoring support on business analysis and planning tasks. I find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that experimentation is a skill developed via learning-by-doing, and angels have a skill advantage in that domain because of having more operational experience.<\/jats:p>\n                  <jats:p>This paper was accepted by Alfonso Gambardella, business strategy.<\/jats:p>\n                  <jats:p>Funding: The author acknowledges support from the Government of Canada\u2019s Strategic Innovation Fund [Grant 811949] and RBC Borealis Graduate Fellowship [Grant 2018-0439].<\/jats:p>\n                  <jats:p>Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1287\/mnsc.2024.05115 .<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.2024.05115","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,15]],"date-time":"2025-04-15T10:45:19Z","timestamp":1744713919000},"page":"10022-10046","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["The Economics of Advice: Evidence from Start-up Mentoring"],"prefix":"10.1287","volume":"71","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2644-0349","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Amir","family":"Sariri","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Strategic Management, Daniels School of Business, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907"}]}],"member":"109","reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.2307\/2297825"},{"key":"B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.2020.3920"},{"key":"B3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1002\/sej.1478"},{"key":"B4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.respol.2024.104958"},{"key":"B6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.2016.2482"},{"key":"B7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jbusvent.2014.09.001"},{"key":"B8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1002\/smj.3077"},{"issue":"4","key":"B9","first-page":"719","volume":"36","author":"Bergemann D","year":"2005","journal-title":"RAND J. 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