How do entrepreneurs learn from peer advising and enhance business idea development? Prior research views peer relationships as symmetric and discusses advice-receivers' benefits assuming they will return the same favors to advice-givers. In this study, we question the assumption of symmetry and investigate whether peer advising itself can enhance the advice-givers' business ideas in accelerators. We conducted a randomized controlled trial with 167 startups, in which founders in a treatment group were asked to review peers' pitch decks and give advice. After four rounds of peer advising, we found that entrepreneurs who advised peers significantly improved their business idea usefulness but not idea novelty in their pitch decks. Furthermore, experienced entrepreneurs experience a higher improvement in idea novelty and usefulness when treated, while teams with sales records are associated with a higher improvement in idea usefulness when treated. Our findings suggest a novel mechanism of peer learning from an advice-giver's perspective and emphasize the necessity of distinguishing idea domains in studying entrepreneurs' business ideas as an important element of firm success.
