StartupAvenues

During my MBA days, mission vision statement was considered to be the biggest crap you can dish out in Strategy class and on the very mention of the word “Vision statement”, the mind used to go for a toss and eyelids used to feel heavy and we used to wonder why consulting companies are paid in millions to draft these no brainers.

However after considerable time spend in startups and VC space, I realized that though mission and vision may sound some big jargon, it is a very essential piece of business plan and help a budding entrepreneur a lot in terms of strategizing, focus and identifying their core strength as well as key deliverables. And hence, majority of VCs insist on giving a simple single statement about your company purpose or say mission or vision if you like to say that way. But you must define your company purpose in a single statement as this holds tremendous value and become your guiding principal in future times and also helps potential investors to understand about your core focus area.

However majority of us being fed on jargons and in order to in order to impress upon VC / Investors tend to create a company purpose, which is verbose, very generic and don’t give any idea what you as an entrepreneur wish to do. People also talk of a very large market so as to fire their imagination and tend to think in a manner which just exposes their lack of focus as well as inability to plan the execution.

Read this company mission statement from a very bright young team of entrepreneurs:

QUOTE

“[Company name] goal is to provide products, services and consultancy reflecting the best ideas of people around the globe, encompassing a vast spectrum of technologies. We envisage moving the technological capabilities of our nation from what they are, to what they can be. We believe in creating enduring partnerships and stop at nothing short of fully complying with terms agreed upon, with our partners.”

UNQUOTE

Is it a company vision or a political manifesto (read it “Technological capabilities of our Nation”). They are raising funds or contesting election!!! And then no clear market, no clear skill area, as they say as global as it can be. And to add the knowledge that this is done by couple of young students and then you wonder what they are trying to archive???

Or read this, now from a team of seasoned professionals, but when coming to creating your company purpose, this is what you get:

Quote “
[Company name] is a Telecom Solutions and Consulting outfit, which provides end-to-end telecom solutions to those associated with the ICE (IT, Communication, Entertainment) sector including the Telecom operators/Service providers, Content providers and the consumers.”

Unquote

Is there any left to do??? By a team of five core people !! Give us a break!

Think of VC as a human only. He is not a god who will be able to see through all the clutter, read your mind, map the world and write you a 2 million USD cheque (hope you are not thinking about pre / post money valuation right now). Imagine a scenario where somebody after having a long lunch is trying to read this business plan where the challenge is to remain awake as well as make sense out of it and if there is something like that, I am very sure he will fail on both the challenges!

By using jargons or using open ended big statements, you are not helping yourself but just confusing yourself and potential investors as while you might be bloating with a vision of USD 50 billion market potential, the potential investor might be thinking as what this guy wish to achieve and hence the investor may remain a potential only??

Company purpose should be able to define your target market, your key deliverables and your overall goal and should be focused enough for example if your are now planning to enter in say online travel market, then you can’t have a mission statement like “ To give cheapest, effective and prompt service to all people who are looking for travel services”

In the above mission, no clear market as been defined and the author is trying to capture all segment of audience, all travel related services while at the same time trying to offer best of both words that is “Price” as well as “efficiency”. Will the entrepreneur be able to fulfill the tall claims?? Chances are he wont and there lies the seed for his first failure!!

The mission statement / company purpose shall capture the basis essence that is what your core market is and how do you wish to dominate it. Probably you might just wish to address “Air ticket for Domestic airlines” or you wish to “dominate local travel requirement for China or looking to capture “Student travel market for Australia, USA and Canada”. In all these there is a definite market, definite service and clear visible goals and competitors.

Hence write something which is simple, free of jargon and put in clear terms what do you wish to achieve say in 5 years. As when things will go wrong and you might be desperate for revenue, majority of us will loose focus and will start running here and there in search of that top line and in turn loosing focus and energy, this simple statement of purpose will help you aligned to reality and will probably be the factor in your “to be” or “not to be”.