🚀 This blog is from my series 0 to 0.1 for early-stage founders, wannapreneurs, and startup enthusiasts.
Preface
In the startup ecosystem, especially tech startups, many of us claim to be changing the world. But do we really? Let’s establish the fact that most of us want to change the balance in our bank accounts. Why else are you grinding if not for money? We live in a capitalistic society, and the end goal of every startup is to make money. If changing the world comes as a by-product, why not!
Don’t get me wrong, I do believe there are people who genuinely want to change the world, but there’s a misconception in the founders’ community where everyone feels the need to use the fancy phrase “changing the world”—maybe for their pitch deck or just to sound cool. The purpose of this article is not to change the world but to help you gain some clarity in your thought process and align yourself & your team to a common goal. But before that, let’s understand the core, the basics.
Clarity Brings Calm
It all starts with you. Do the ‘why’ exercise with yourself three times. Why do you want to do this startup? Write down your answer, then ask why based on the first answer, and again ask why based on the second answer. If you’re truly honest, most of the time, you’ll end up with one universal why—money. And there’s no harm in that. As a society, we’ve made money synonymous with success.
However, I want you to get clarity in your mind: the why of the why of the why. You could be one of those people who already have enough money, so it’s no longer your motivation. For you, it could be the thrill of startups—the adrenaline, the ups and downs, the sense of purpose to keep yourself busy. Just be honest with yourself.
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room.
Blaise Pascal
Your Why & Your Mission
Now that you’re honest with yourself and have a sense of your why—your reasoning—it can be as personal as you want it to be. You are under no obligation to share it with the world unless you choose to. This is your real motivation. But remember, you are not your company. Your company is your team, and they have their own motivations as well. Most of the time, it’s money again. I’m sorry, but not sorry, to bring it up. This is the reality we live in, and it’s better to accept the scars than to ignore the mirror.
The Problem
We’ve established that each individual in your company, including you, has their own personal motivation. Some are driven by material gains, others have personal responsibilities, and some are working towards financial independence. The problem lies in alignment. Humans are social animals—we are paradoxical creatures. We can work in groups, like a flock, but only if our end goals are aligned. Otherwise, we can become predators, and we don’t shy away from hunting each other—metaphorically, of course. But the company should not suffer because you and your team are not aligned. It needs clarity, it needs a collective effort to succeed.
Imagine a football team playing with no understanding of where the goal post is?
The Solution
The company needs a common goal, a shared motivation, so everyone is aligned. The tricky part is ensuring honesty and aligning the company’s goals with both your own and your team’s goals. Let me paint a picture:
Founder’s Honest Why (not necessarily public), Motivation
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Company’s Mission & Vision
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Team’s Collective Vision
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Team Members’ Individual Motivation
Some might argue, "How dare I put the founder's personal mission above the company's mission?" Before you start judging, keep the context in mind; this is about early-stage founders and startups. There is no company without him/her/they/them/hir.
A founder must stay motivated enough to drive the company toward its common mission, and team members must see how their individual goals can be fulfilled through the company's mission.
ESOPs don't feed the team's family.Mission, Vision & Your Startup
In a tech company, there are many forces working together—engineering, design, product management, marketing, user research, customer service, and more.
Everyone thinks differently, and each person operates within the context of the work they do. Engineers might advocate for code quality, technology choices, and architecture, while designers might focus on user experience, accessibility, and branding. You get the gist.
Mission is the purpose, the sole reason, the ultimate force behind any company’s existence. Don’t worry if you don’t have one right away. Not every idea starts with a mission. In fact, many groundbreaking discoveries began without a defined mission. However, it’s important to recognize that most of us aren’t discovering new technologies—we’re creating products, applications, or services. When you create something, it’s crucial to understand the why behind it. We have established the paradoxical nature of sapiens earlier.
If you’re creating something just for fun, then having fun is your purpose, and that’s perfectly fine. But assuming you’re building something to create a business, you must know your mission.
Even if the mission doesn’t directly help you reach where you want to go, it will definitely help you avoid ending up where you don’t want to be.
It’s also important not to confuse mission with goals. Ideally, your mission should be grand, ambitious, long-term, difficult to achieve, and not easily quantifiable. Goals, on the other hand, are milestones along the way. They should be short- to mid-term, achievable, and measurable.
People often believe that their company's mission needs to be unique and stand apart from all other companies. In my opinion, that’s simply not true. Just like a problem can have many solutions, a mission (or problem) can have many companies (or solutions).
It’s perfectly fine to discover your mission after you have a product idea or solution. At the early stage of your startup, your mission is to validate your hypothesis and find product-market fit (PMF).
The important part is to have a singular mission that aligns your team. And if you’re a one-person army, I strongly recommend having a mission for yourself too—so you don’t drift off course easily.Mission: The why, the grand ambition, the purpose, the reason for existence.
We might think that once we have a common mission, everyone will automatically be on the same page. Interestingly, that’s not always true. The mission is the grand ambition. For example:
Mission: Increase longevity.
While this mission is a common goal, it’s also broad enough that many companies could share the same mission—and why not? I firmly believe that many companies should have the same mission, but each will have a tailored vision to guide them along that mission’s journey.
Vision
It can get a little confusing—at least to me. Most of the information about vision sounds similar to what’s said about mission. Both seem to describe the purpose of the company. Let’s simplify it. As we’ve understood, mission is the ultimate purpose—a generic statement that many companies could share.
In my opinion, a mission can be as brief as a few words, a few lines, or even a few paragraphs. The key is clarity. Once you read a company’s mission, it should leave no room for confusion. It must not be ambiguous.
A few examples:
Mission: Increase longevity.
Mission: To accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass-market electric cars to market as soon as possible.
Mission: To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.
As you can see in the examples above, the first one is very generic, while the second and third are more specific, likely written with solutions in mind. Maybe they were written after the idea or solution was conceptualized, as we discussed earlier.
In my opinion, and this is strongly opinionated, the mission statement should be generic enough that, in theory, many companies could share or adopt it. It’s the reason for existence, and there’s no reason other companies can’t have the same mission. This means that a mission statement should be crafted without thinking about the solution or product you want to create—or have already created. It should not mention the solution or product, although there is no strict rule here.
However, the vision is derived from the mission statement. Ideally, it’s a statement that summarizes the mission but also considers the product or solution. It’s more concise than the mission.
Vision: Provides direction, helping align the team and keeping everyone motivated.
However, by just reading the mission or vision, it’s possible you won’t immediately understand the exact solution or product the company offers. And that’s okay.
For instance, the first mission— *increase longevity* —is so generic that it could be attached to any number of solutions. Is it a pharma company? A fitness product? A tech gadget? It could be anything plausible.
On the other hand, the second and third mission statements in the examples above provide some clarity about the nature of the solution.
If your mission is crafted with the solution in mind (like examples 2 and 3), I believe there may not be a need for a separate vision statement. But again, there’s no hard rule.
That said, vision is generally derived from the mission statement and acts as a bridge between the mission and the solution. While the vision can be generic, like the mission, it tends to be more directly related to the solution you have in mind. Your vision may or may not make the solution explicit, and again, there is no strict rule for this.
Social example
Mission: We are on a mission of connecting people online.
Vision: Our vision is to connect 5 Billion people by 2035.
Now this example is generic enough and it suits Twitter/X, Reddit, Facebook, all kind of social mediums.
Twitter/X says their mission is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers.
If you have used twitter/X, you can imagine this mission statement of twitter is directly talking about the solution they offer. I will put it as Vision not mission UNLESS I want to merge them and use one wording.
IMHO, don’t create both just for the sake of having them. If you’re confused, merge them into a single statement—call it your company’s mission or vision, whatever suits you and your team—as long as everyone is working toward the same outcome.🚀 If you want to create both, a mission and vision statement:
Mission: Create it without thinking about the solution, and make it generic enough that it could apply to any company solving the same problem. The mission is a broad, overarching purpose.
Vision: This should align with your mission but is created with your solution or product in mind. It should fit the solution you are offering. It’s also possible that your vision may suit another company’s solution if they share the same mindset, though this is less likely.
In theory: Mission can be shared among hundreds of companies. It’s broad and very generic. Vision can be shared among tens of companies. It’s more specific to the solution but still crafted with the solution in mind.
It’s important to note that some companies blur the lines between mission and vision, or even combine them into a single statement, depending on their philosophy or industry. There’s no rule. The only rule is to make your startup succeed.
