YC Annual Letter 2017

> Uber isn't about "getting privileged people with smart phones and disposable income a sexy/cool ride home from the bar;" its mission statement is, "make transportation as reliable as running water, everywhere, for everyone."

I don't think that was from the get go.

> It seems you are viewing these products in a very negative light, and in doing so you're missing the forest for the trees. I would guess that all of the companies above will be wildly successful, and will have a wide range of products, all dedicated to achieving their stated mission. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Yes and no. I most certainly don't view Google in a negative light. I'll admit I view Facebook as largely existing to promote rampant consumerism. Snapchat...don't even know where to begin.

Nonetheless - the point of my comment, and why I found sama's statement interesting - was the assertion that lacking a large, important mission statement (or big hairy audacious goal, if you will) is an impediment to growth (or ability to "become very large".) When you look at the winners - they usually do have a lofty, all encompassing mission statement - but it would seem not to have been that way at inception. If anything, I thought the preaching in the startup world has been about finding a niche, an angle someone hasn't seen, make something people want...and then expand from there.

A final thought - even Y Combinator itself seems an example of this (at least in my eyes.) What started out as a fund/startup incubator is now truly trying to tackle and invest in very audacious things (such as Universal Health Care.) It's able to do that now that it has become a successful, large brand in and of itself.

Anyway, Amazon is still the underdog going up against Walmart which twenty years on has really good technical chops and turns over a lot more goods and has phenomenally good logistics...think about who is going to benefit more from autonymous trucks. While it has the overhead of a vehicle fleet it is not at the mercy of UPS and Fedex and for a lot of goods, ordering online and picking up at the local Walmart is about as good as door to door shipping.

Anyway, in some ways Netflix is more likely to be crushed by Walmart than Amazon...and Disney is even more likely than either of them. As internet purchases and bandwidth increasingly become commodities, companies with long horizons become more formidable particularly in markets that matter...the players in the mobile market are Deutsch Telecom and ATT not plucky entrepreneurs. The big car makers are moving on self-driving cars and they already have down the really hard part of making cars...software can be copied.

Google's is "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful", and yet - if you leak anything about them as an employee, you are insta-fired. If you try to figure out any sense of organization about their product portfolio, good luck. If you try to scrape any of their results or content, you will be banned quite quickly.

Facebook's is "make the world a more open & transparent place", and yet they have done more than any company since AOL to turn the web into a series of walled gardens. Plus Mark Zuckerburg bought the 4 houses adjacent to his so that neighbors couldn't look onto his property, and walks around with a 24/7 security team.

Uber's is "make transportation as reliable as running water", but their goal is for people to give up their own cars - which they can use any time, any where, for zero marginal cost - to be at the mercy of Uber's service.

Palantir's is "Palantir Technologies is a mission-driven company, and a core component of that mission is protecting our fundamental rights to privacy and civil liberties", and they sell to the CIA so they can spy on you.

At the same time, these companies also do many things that actually are in accord with their mission statements.

I think that you can reconcile this by realizing that the fundamental imperative for every company is continued existence. Those who fail at this are replaced by those who succeed. The mission statement is a tool to ensure continued existence, because it serves to align & recruit employees with similar values, without which there would be no organization. But when there are other imperatives that are necessary for the company's continued existence, even when they contradict the mission statement, the company's existence takes priority. Hence Google is very strict about their proprietary information, even though their mission is to make all information universally accessible; Facebook wants all content on Facebook, even though they claim to be about making everything open & transparent; Uber wants to make transportation reliable & easy, as long as it's on Uber; and Palantir wants to protect civil liberties only so long as it involves buying Palantir software.