I stumbled into this flowchart by Valerie Coffman, an entrepreneur and data scientist who wrote a blog post “Should you Give Startup Advice” — Valerie says “Clearly, there is widespread confusion on who needs to STFU and who should share their pearls of startup wisdom. To correct this issue, I’ve created the following handy flowchart”.
It is interesting in the startup world who considers themselves an expert to be in a position to give advice. In the Entrepreneur Organization I’ve followed the gestalt process which is to share experiences instead of give advice. It allows the person that is receiving the information to listen and take what they want from the experience and then make it their own. Even if you feel like you did some things that were successful it doesn’t mean the person that you’re telling could execute exactly like you and therefore may end up with completely different results. My feeling is it’s best to not give advice and just stick to sharing experiences with people. That’s just part of the learning experience!