The Mission Trap
Why Every Startup Needs a Clear Purpose
A startup's mission is its reason for existing. It’s a motivator for the founders, a guide for making decisions, and a magnet for potential customers, employees, and investors. Whether they know it or not, all startups have a mission. Often this mission is not written down, leading startups to unconsciously default to a mission like:
To make a lot of money
To find product-market fit
To raise their next round from investors
We believe it’s critically important for founders to write down their mission - we didn’t and we made some bad decisions as a result. You can read about that in the story of our startup. In this post, we’re going to introduce why we think it’s important that startups explicitly set a company mission statement early on, rather than defaulting to one like the ones above. We’re then going to suggest how to craft a mission statement.
The importance of a mission
There are many benefits to having a clearly articulated mission. Having a mission you believe in will:
Motivate you to do difficult but necessary work
Help you make better decisions
Make selling and pitching much easier
This list is not exhaustive, but these three alone are enough to make carefully crafting a company mission a worthwhile exercise. Let’s look at each of these benefits in more detail.
Motivate you to do difficult but necessary work
There’s plenty of difficult work needed to get a startup off the ground. Without a compelling mission, it’s easy to come up with logical explanations as to why you should avoid this difficult work. When you believe in your mission, the difficult work becomes more enjoyable. It can help founders and their teams feel energised as they gradually make progress on realising their mission.
For startups getting off the ground, the most important task for founders is often cold outreach to potential customers so they can test demand for their solution. This usually means facing lots of rejection. Founders who don’t have a compelling mission may spend weeks debating CRM software, feeling scared of rejection, and they rationalise this procrastination as a need to “properly measure results”. Mission-aligned founders immediately reach out to potential customers, feeling compelled to try to help them, and they rationalise immediate action knowing that measuring cold outreach at the scale of a small startup requires (at most) a spreadsheet.
Help you make better decisions
Founders need to make a lot of decisions. The huge set of possibilities is exciting, but can also be overwhelming. With a mission, decision-making becomes more straightforward.
Let’s use an example from our own startup to illustrate. We’d built an AI personal trainer for the gym, but were struggling to acquire customers. We often received two types of advice:
Advisor 1: I see that people aren’t getting enough out of your AI personal trainer to pay for it. Have you asked the people trying it what other problems they have in the gym? Perhaps you could build something else to help them.
Advisor 2: You’ve built some impressive technology. Have you thought about repurposing it for teaching people to play golf? It’s a huge market.
These are both well-meaning suggestions, and both seem plausible paths forward in absence of a mission statement. Both could be great ideas and it’s tough to choose between which one to explore. However, what if we had written the following mission statement?
“To help people reach their physique goals with a simple approach to strength training”
With a mission, it’s clear that the suggestion from Advisor 1 is aligned with the mission, whereas the suggestion from Advisor 2 is not. Only a defined mission can tell which of these suggestions is good for you.
Make selling and pitching easier
When someone tries to sell us something that they don’t truly believe in, it makes us feel uncomfortable. We may not quite be able to put our finger on why we feel uncomfortable and describe them as “pushy”, “insincere”, or even “manipulative”. These words are our way of rationalising the emotional response we have to the salesperson. The reason behind this feeling is that the salesperson does not believe in what they’re selling, and we can tell.
In contrast, it’s a joy to listen to someone speak about something they deeply believe in. This experience is emotional, rather than logical. We find it easier to trust someone when they're working for something greater than their own self-interest and it’s easier to form a connection. You can’t fake this belief - it has to come from within. From your mission.
Finding your mission
Once convinced of the importance of a company mission, the next step is articulating one. You should do this as early as possible, ideally before starting the company.
Mission prompts
When contemplating a mission, it's crucial to introspect and align with what genuinely drives you. Here are some prompts to guide this process. You can ask these questions of yourself or to people close to you. You’ll often need to dig a layer deeper to find something useful for setting your mission. Ideally, your answers to these questions have been reasonably consistent through time.
What are topics that when I start talking about them, I won’t shut up?
Example: You love talking about Formula 1.
Dig deeper: This doesn’t immediately mean you should start a racing car company (although you could!). Perhaps you love to see what’s possible when engineering is pushed to its limit.
Mission: Can you come up with a mission statement that includes being at the forefront of engineering?
What things do I do for fun that other people consider work?
Example: You love baking.
Dig deeper: Again, this doesn’t necessarily mean you should open a bakery. Perhaps you enjoy the feeling of making things that can be enjoyed by other people.
Mission: How about a statement including making things for others to enjoy?
When have I felt awe? What prompted that feeling?
Example: You felt awe when you were at the top of the Empire State building looking down at Manhattan.
Dig deeper: Upon reflection, you think the source of this awe was the connectedness of all the city inhabitants at scale.
Mission: Can you come up with a statement that includes connecting people?
Mission verification
Once you’ve set your mission, here are some prompts to make sure it’s set up well.
Do I want to talk about my mission? This checks your personal connection and excitement.
If I wasn’t the person to fulfil this mission, would I be happy if someone else did? This gauges the broader importance of the mission.
Would I feel good selling something to people close to me that fulfils this mission? This assesses whether you authentically believe it will help people. If so, the first people you should want to help are your friends and family!
Take away lessons
Even if you ignore this advice and do not set a company mission, you will still have one. In the absence of an explicitly stated mission, founders default to “find product-market fit” or another similar mission. This is a bad company mission.
It’s obvious to others when you have a mission that you believe in. We find it easier to trust someone when they're working for something greater than their own self-interest.
It is powerful to work in service of a mission you feel emotionally connected to. It provides direction, filters noise, and creates an environment that attracts others. A well-aligned mission feels like a tailwind pushing you to do tough-but-necessary work.
Mission statements are highly individual. A mission that makes some people feel highly energised will not resonate with everyone. Ensure all founders are aligned on the company mission.
Further reading
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