YC Annual Letter 2017
> 4) Does this company have a clear and important mission?<p>> Without this, I usually get bored.  More importantly, companies that don’t have this usually have a hard time recruiting enough great people to work with them, and thus struggle to become very large.<p>I find this one interesting. When Google started, there were many incumbent search engines. Their mission was to provide better results than what existed, i.e. improve on an existing product.<p>Uber's "mission" was to get privileged people with smart phones and disposable income a sexy/cool ride home from the bar.<p>Facebook was a social networking site targeted at college students...what was it's mission? To allow people to see what that cute person in their Psych class was up to this weekend?<p>Snapchat...the clear and important mission to allow for safely sending risqué pictures?<p>While I believe Sam's belief that they WANT to work with companies with clear important missions, that doesn't seem to be a/the deciding factor in becoming "very large", or attracting great people. If anything, it seems like the "spaghetti at the wall" approach is what happens - some startups gain momentum, and then it's the high growth trajectory that attracts a ton of talent.