What is a Startup Vision

My startup had three visions. When we started, the vision was to kill the resume. When we realized our main use case was not recruiting, we shifted to data driven talent decisions. That one got zero traction, so we settled on aligning skills to work.

Maybe one lesson learned could be to not have three visions. However, when I look at these again many years later, I think the more important takeaway is about ambition. If you are going to have a vision statement, it has to be bold and shoot for the moon.

What we really wanted to do was tackle the enormous waste of talent in organizations. This problem leads to unhappy employees doing unfulfilling work, amounting to $1.9 trillion in lost productivity just in the US alone. Why does this happen? Because companies have no idea what skills they need and what skills they have in their organization. Now that is an ambitious problem to tackle!

Where we went wrong was that we got stuck focusing on use cases. While that seemed practical and people understood the value of our solution, it was not very inspiring. Investors immediately put us into a bucket with other similar sounding startups. Potential customers did the same and kicked us down to procurement to get stuck in enterprise sales purgatory.

Those customers that we did manage to sign up ironically understood better what we did. We had the words, but we simply could not articulate our vision clearly. It was as if we would throw up a bunch of words on a slide, and in an instant our customers could unscramble our word salad into the exact problem they were facing.

This is the magic of vision. When people get it, vision provokes a reaction. Some might write you off immediately because your vision is not for them. Others however will hear and gravitate towards your vision as it resonates with their own beliefs of the world. And in the beginning, all you need are a few true believers in your startup.

We eventually figured out what our vision should be listening to our customers. Many founders have shared with me similar stories of falling into their vision. The common theme is that few people ever start with a clear vision. Instead, they have a fuzzy notion of the idea and after lots of stumbles, false starts, and pivots, eventually have a solid grasp of the idea they are pursuing.

The idea is not the vision however. The idea is simply the execution of the vision. We are taking the problem and from that starting point we manifest a viable solution. For my startup, the problem was the misalignment of talent to their work in organizations. Our idea was to build a taxonomy of skills to quantitatively measure talent and roll this data into easy-to-read analytics.

What exactly is a vision statement then? Vision is the meaningful future change you are making in the world. This is slightly different than most definitions of vision which is merely about the future state of your company. But it is also more relatable than many of the empty and over the top startup promises of "changing the world". A good vision statement is focused on the part of the world that you will specifically change that will have a big impact through your startup. For example, a vision statement we could have used for my startup is “enabling employees to do their best work”. Not perfect, but that is a much bolder and more interesting vision than what we were using.

A worthwhile vision is also part aspirational and inspirational. It should be audacious and crazy. Why would you even consider doing a startup otherwise? A powerful and clear vision also gets others excited about your startup, from investors that are looking to make big bets, to customers looking to solve big challenges, to employees that are looking for more meaning in their work. Even more importantly though, your vision clarifies what your north star is as a founding team and what you want to achieve. It is the "why" you get up for and work towards every single day of your startup.

We never got our vision statement in place given all the changes and fire drills we went through. In hindsight though, had we taken the hour or two to settle on this, it would have made a lot of decisions easier. We had no north star, so we drifted whenever things got difficult. We took on customers that were less than ideal for us. From a VC standpoint, they could not grasp why we would be a good investment.

Having a vision statement you believe in matters! Do not wait to determine and write down your vision statement. As soon as you get started on your startup, figure out the big, audacious vision you will pursue. It might not be complete, but at least have something as a starting point until you get more clarity with your idea.

How do you write a vision statement? Some overall guidance is that it should be short, no longer than one sentence, and ideally just a few words. This also means it should be concise, so avoid fluffy language and filler words. Lastly, work backward from the idea you started with using the ideas framework I shared previously:

• Obvious ideas are not ones you "think up" but "notice".

• Live in the future and build what seems interesting.

• Focus more on the idea and less on the startup.

• Startups are rarely ever killed by competitors.

• Ideas are a starting point, not a blueprint.

A strong statement vision draws from each of these points. Your vision should be:

• Something interesting that you see changing or potentially changing.

• Guided not on the current state but on the future direction of the world.

• Focused on the change you see, not the company you want to build.

• Avoids negativity or attention on what exists, and remains hopeful.

• Can change as you learn (but not too much, otherwise that’s a full pivot).

One last consideration is to listen to what your customers are telling you. As founders, we can be incredibly stubborn and dismiss things that do not full align with our thinking. Because customers are living in the problem, not the solution, their feedback can be very insightful and even give you the language that eventually guides your vision statement.

What is your startup vision statement and how did you come up with it? I would love to hear your story and share the best ones in a future newsletter! 

Mark

Of course, saying how to put together a vision statement is a lot easier than writing one. Seeing what others have written can often help you nudge your mind enough to help put together your vision statement.

I found the following helpful list of examples from this blog post by Brex on startup vision statements. They break it out into two categories; concept-based vision statements based on thoughts of what the company hopes to be or achieve in the future, and quality-based vision statements based on internal goals or company culture.

Concept-based vision statements:

• BBC: “To be the most creative organization in the world”

• Disney: “To make people happy.”

• Google: “To provide access to the world’s information in one click”

• IKEA: “To create a better everyday life for the many people”

• Instagram: “Capture and share the world’s moments”

• LinkedIn: "Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce”

• Microsoft: “To help people throughout the world realize their full potential”

• Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world”

• Oxfam: “A just world without poverty”

• Shopify: “To make commerce better for everyone”

• Sony: "To be a company that inspires and fulfills your curiosity.”

• TED: “Spread ideas”

• Tesla: “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”

• Uber: “We ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion”

• Whole Foods: “To nourish people and the planet.

Quality-based vision statements:

• Amazon: “Our vision is to be earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”

• Avon: “To be the company that best understands and satisfies the product, service, and self-fulfillment needs of women—globally.”

• Ben & Jerry’s: “Making the best ice cream in the nicest possible way”

• Ford: “People working together as a lean, global enterprise to make people’s lives better through automotive and mobility leadership.” 

• IBM: “To be the world’s most successful and important information technology company. Successful in helping our customers apply technology to solve their problems. Successful in introducing this extraordinary technology to new customers. Important because we will continue to be the basic resource of much of what is invested in this industry.”

• McDonald’s: “To move with velocity to drive profitable growth and become an even better McDonald’s serving more customers delicious food each day around the world.”

• Nordstrom: “To serve our customers better, to always be relevant in their lives, and to form lifelong relationships”

• Starbucks: “To establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles while we grow.” 

• Warby Parker: “We believe that buying glasses should be easy and fun. It should leave you happy and good-looking, with money in your pocket. We also believe that everyone has the right to see.”

• Zappos: “To provide the best customer service possible. Deliver 'WOW' through service”

Still on holiday, but wanted to revisit a few events that I had an opportunity to attend before leaving for break. One of those was the Tech in Asia Kuala Lumpur Summit in July. It was every bit as impressive as the Summit hosted in Saigon a few months earlier, but over two days and even more attendees!

I will share more about Tech in Asia and my thoughts on Malaysia’s startup ecosystem in a future post. One interesting trend though that I wanted to share was the growing presence of startups from Cambodia on the startup scene.

Cambodia does not get much attention as it is one of the smaller of ASEAN nations with a population of 17 million. I accidentally discovered the Cambodia startup ecosystem back in 2021 when I stumbled upon a Clubhouse room with Cambodian entrepreneurs. Fast forward a few years later, it was encouraging to see at least a handful of Cambodian startups with booths setup at Tech in Asia.

If you happen to have some experience or connections with Cambodian startups or any government agencies supporting startups, please let me know as I would love to learn more about what is happening on the ground. Thanks!