The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future

by Chris Guillebeau

The 140-Character Mission Statement Let’s break down the planning process into a very simple exercise: defining the mission statement for your business (or your business idea) in 140 characters or less. That is the maximum amount of text for an update on Twitter and a good natural limit for narrowing down a concept. It may help to think of the first two characteristics of any business: a product or service and the group of people who pay for it. Put the two together and you’ve got a mission statement: We provide [product or service] for [customers]. As described in Chapter 2, it’s usually better to highlight a core benefit of your business instead of a descriptive feature. Accordingly, you can revise the statement a bit to read like this: We help [customers] do/achieve/other verb [primary benefit]. Focusing like this helps you avoid “corporate speak” and drill down to the real purpose of the business as it relates to your customers. Here are a few examples: If you have a dog-walking service, the feature is “I walk dogs.” The benefit is “I help busy owners feel at ease about their dogs when they’re not able to be with them.” If you sell knitted hat patterns, the benefit is something like “I help people be creative by making a hat for themselves or someone close to them.” If you make custom wedding stationery, you might say, “I help couples feel special about their big day by providing them with amazing invitations.” How about you? What is the 140-character (or less) mission...