Is your mission statement as good as Brian Wong’s?
Our ultimate mission is to own every single achievement moment on the planet. It doesn’t have to be on phone, it can be on the console. We see opportunity in moments from any connected devices, like thermostats.
The powerful thing about Brian's missions is that it sounds authentic (he believes it) and plausible (others believe it). This resonated with me, as I try to find the balance between painting a huge vision that is also genuine and grounded. Here’s a working draft for my startup’s mission statement:
FeatureKicker’s mission is to eliminate the world’s wasted time and money on software that no one wants.
I don’t find this statement as compelling… yet. Why? Comparing my statement to Brian’s, I note that “owning all moments” sounds grand and evokes imagery of millions of events per day on a global scale. I also notice that Brian delivered the vision in stages over the course of a 60 minute interview: first, we’ll own gaming moments on client apps, then we’ll own all types if moments in apps, and eventually we’ll own all moments on all platforms. This staged approach parallels Mark Peter Davis' advice on a similar point:
If your intuition tells you that the bigger picture is a little more far fetched and less believable given where your business is today – making you nervous about sharing the vision, just couch the bigger picture appropriately. For example, you might say, “in phase I we’re going to build this business which we think can become a $100M company. At that point we might be able to take the next step of X which could present a billion dollar opportunity.” This approach allows you to sound reasonable, while still sharing the bigger picture.
But is it too early to think about a mission statement? My cofounder made a good point: “We have a product with a particular feature set, and the vision will reveal itself to us as we find product-market fit.”