A Clear Mission is your Product's Decision Compass
Every great company has a mission statement. Some are so well known they show up in MBA decks:
Google: Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Nike: Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.
(*If you have a body, you’re an athlete. Their asterisk, not mine.)
REI: To inspire, educate and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship.
Even if you didn’t know these mission statements verbatim, you could have guessed them pretty close, because these companies do a fantastic job of embodying their respective missions.
But here’s the real question: Can you name a great mission statement for a product?
Big Tech Does This. Most Other Companies Don’t.
At places like Google, Amazon, and Meta, product mission statements aren’t just encouraged—they’re expected. They show up on the first slide of every product review. Not for decoration, but to remind the team what we’re actually trying to build and why.
Outside of Big Tech, I’ve rarely seen this. And that’s a problem. Because without a clear mission, product decisions turn into popularity contests. The loudest voice wins, not the best idea.
You don’t need a 20-page strategy deck. You need one sharp sentence that aligns the team and filters decisions.
I used to teach internal courses at Google on how to write effective product mission statements. Not because it was trendy. Because when it’s missing, everything else falls apart.
Mission Statements Are a Decision Compass
A strong product mission makes a few things clear:
Who the product is for
What problem it solves
Why it needs to exist
With that in place, every decision gets easier. You’ve got a compass. So when tradeoffs show up, and they always do, the mission tells you which direction to lean.
Without it, teams drift. Roadmaps get cluttered. Features pile up that don’t connect to anything meaningful. And engineers spend time building things that feel productive but don’t actually deliver value.
One Sentence or Bust.
If you can’t say your product’s mission in one clear sentence, you’re not ready to build.
If your team can’t agree on that sentence, you’re not ready to ship.
Next time, I’ll break down what makes a product mission statement actually useful—and how to write one that does more than just sound good.