Two days ago, I sat down with my fourteen year old cousin and asked her what brand she absolutely loved. I got what I wanted: a name of a creator first — the name of their company second. But when I went to ask her why, she couldn’t put it exactly into words, other than, “they’re cool.” I get a lot of questions from anyone old enough to be a parent on if there are “good role models” and if kids, especially women, have “large enough goals.” The assumption going into the mid-2020s is that the kick-up of startup action is going to revive that old aspirational startup spirit. I wrote about The Land of Make Believe from the inside as a startup person — mostly on the energy internally of the Interact fellowship.

My cousin’s not-being-able-to-describe-why — is not great. Specifically for the marketing team of whoever manages that creator and whoever runs marketing for their company. Famous people come and go everyday. Why would I invest time, attention or money working with them? Is not a stupid point. Immediate distribution can only do so much. If not used correctly, you’re just running ads to the consumer’s face; 40s radio style. The attention is silo’d for that brief moment of time.

Being fourteen or fifteen-years-old in the 2010s felt like a fever dream. I knew every element of every brand that I loved. This could be because I was a startup nerd. Maybe because I was a brand nerd. Regardless, I knew almost every in and out of what I loved, why I loved it and exactly what to do when I loved it.

In 2024, it feels different. Even for myself, there’s not much to do when you really love something because the brand isn’t telling you there’s anything else to do but buy a product… maybe follow them on social media. And that is a big miss for an aspiring generational consumer company - especially a startup.

Why you need it.

Mission statements, when done right, can transform consumers into something far more valuable: community members. Most companies miss this, reducing mission statements to bland slogans that are about as inspiring as a corporate handbook - if they include them at all. But a genuine mission statement—one that people care about—is one of the most powerful tools a startup can have.

Startups iterate fast. They get some things wrong; they get a lot of things wrong, actually. And get a few really, really right. When I started Revisiting Community Investing, feeling it has been or would be relevant to Creator Investing, it felt out of touch and I couldn’t exactly figure out why.

Consumers are less forgiving. You only have them for 2-4 seconds, maybe less. I’d say this constantly to the non-creator driven consumer startups I’d work with when I was at Night. It was true, but it never sat right. The truth is: if you’re a startup…the 2-4 seconds you have — you need to sell yourself.

It’s not what you have; it’s what you’re going to do. That’s the story of why they’re going to stick with you for the long haul, rather than go to the typical big-brand rip off that’s going to copy what you got right after a few months for a cheaper price. There are plenty of examples of selling the “product first,” but the truth is your product isn’t done. Almost always for the first 2-3 years of being around. There are bugs, snags, misses, and flops. Your consumers have to be either 1) more forgiving or 2) have low expectations of you and your product. The second one would be bad.

As corny as it might sound: a real mission, one that speaks to people’s values, has a unique effect. It turns customers into allies. It gives them a sense of belonging to something bigger than a mere rinky-dinky brand (some colors and a website.) And when people feel a part of something, they’ll stick around. If your mission resonates with them, they’ll want to help you make it a reality.

When you share a mission with your users, they aren’t just passive consumers anymore; they become collaborators. They start caring about whether the company succeeds. They see themselves not just as customers but as members of a community with a shared purpose. And this sense of purpose is what drives engagement. People will give feedback because they want the mission to succeed, because they feel that helping you is helping themselves. They want to be involved in the product’s evolution, not just its consumption.

This is the wrap around to The Active Consumer. You need to give them something to hold onto. They want to be a part of the mix and with you.

At the earliest stages, a supportive, engaged community is invaluable. But why would anyone put up with your rough drafts? They will, if they believe in the mission. They'll tolerate the imperfections because they feel that you’re both on the same side, working toward a shared goal.

This community aspect is especially powerful in the early stages of a company. Early products are rarely perfect, and in most cases, they're deeply flawed. You’re iterating, sometimes wildly, to find product-market fit. At this stage, a supportive, engaged community is invaluable. But why would anyone put up with your rough drafts? They will, if they believe in the mission. They'll tolerate the imperfections because they feel that you’re both on the same side, working toward a shared goal.

A mission gives them the patience to see things through. They’ll wait for you to “get it right” because they see that, by supporting you, they’re supporting the mission that they, too, want to see succeed. In a way, a mission-driven company turns its early adopters into a type of founding team. The mission binds you together and makes them feel like they’re helping build something new, something important. They’re less likely to jump ship when things go wrong, because they’ve bought into the vision, not just the product.

Once you have this kind of community, they do something even more valuable: they bring in new users. They tell their friends. They post about you. They essentially become an unpaid marketing team, bringing people who are likely to care about the mission as much as they do. And each new person who joins is another potential collaborator.

A mission statement, then, isn’t just a line in a pitch deck or an “About Us” page. It’s a tool for building loyal base to give you the feedback you need, and patiently ride out the rough stages. Done right, it’s a self-perpetuating machine of loyalty, feedback, and growth. And it all starts with simply telling people why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Statements with No Mission
Why you need it.