YC Annual Letter 2017
> 4) Does this company have a clear and important mission?> 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.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.Uber's "mission" was to get privileged people with smart phones and disposable income a sexy/cool ride home from the bar.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?Snapchat...the clear and important mission to allow for safely sending risqué pictures?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.