Free Business Mission Statement Generator + Examples
A mission statement is a single sentence that outlines what your company does, how it does it, and why it does what it does. Wouldn't life be easier if you and your business had a mission statement generator? It’s more than just marketing copy — a great mission statement can be what catches the attention of a major investor, convinces a high-quality executive to join the company, or turns a group of individuals into a team.
Since startups face so many challenges in their early stages, founders should seize every opportunity to stabilize and strengthen their venture. A strong mission statement is one of the many ways founders can strengthen their team to fend off future challenges. (Another, of course, is investing in startup insurance.)
We designed the mission statement generator below to help you build a mission statement that conveys the most important information about your business in one concise and powerful statement. Once you have used the mission statement generator, you can use it as a jumping-off point to tweak, adjust, expand, and edit it until it feels perfect for you.
Business Mission Statement Generator
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Your Mission Statement
What Is a Mission Statement?
A business mission statement is a brief declaration outlining a company’s purpose. This should cover what a company does with regards to their values and open-ended goals.
The mission statement is both customer- and employee-facing: Its purpose is to explain the company to prospective clients and provide organizing principles behind which the business’s employees can unite to achieve a common goal. It is a key element to success in any number of procedures that are crucial to a new or growing business, from attracting high-quality executives and keeping employees motivated to securing necessary funding or planning an IPO.
Moving forward with a weak mission statement (or no mission statement at all) can place your company’s future success at risk. So, although it may be a challenge, it’s worth the time and effort to write, edit, and revise your mission statement until it’s perfect (We recommend starting off with the mission statement generator).
Parts of a Mission Statement
Though different companies’ mission statements will contain different information, all business mission statements should include three key pieces of information:
- What the company does
- How the company does it, and
- Who the company does it for
Sounds simple, right? It is, sort of — the challenge lies in fitting this information into a single sentence without it turning into a run-on. Use two sentences if you feel it’s really necessary, but any more than that and you’ll include information that would be better suited to your company’s vision, values, or motto.
What Your Company Does
The main purpose of a mission statement is to communicate what a business does. Feel free to get creative with the verbs you use to state what you do. For example, a law firm could “provide arbitration services,” or it could “arbitrate,” “mediate,” “litigate,” or even “advise,” “counsel,” “defend,” or “prosecute” — just to name a few.
Consider using unique verbs like:
- abolish
- advise
- build
- cultivate
- deliver
- educate
- grow
- investigate
- regulate
- report
- train
The more specific your vocabulary, the fewer words you need to use to make your point. This will leave more space for the next two sections of your mission statement.
How Your Company Does It
Next, your mission statement should express how your company does what it does. Focus on the most notable or important elements of your company’s process — if you’re an eco-startup, then it’s more important to state that you work sustainably than it is to mention you work creatively or skillfully.
You can also opt for a longer description of how your company works by using a descriptive phrase instead of individual words. For example, a law firm could say they “provide legal services affordably,” or they could say they “provide affordable legal services by employing a sliding fee scale.”
Why Your Company Does It
Lastly, your mission statement should include why your company does what it does. Why is your work important? What changes does your work make?
Though this section should be uplifting and even a little aspirational, be careful to stay in the present with your description. You want to communicate why your company’s work is important now, not what your company hopes to accomplish at some point in the future.
Mission vs. Vision vs. Values vs. Motto
Many companies — even Fortune 500s and household brands — confuse the concept of a mission statement with the company’s vision, values, or motto. While all four of these statements will include overlapping themes and information, they each serve distinct purposes.
Mission
The mission statement is longer than a motto but shorter than a vision statement, and should communicate the most important information about the company in as concise a fashion as possible. This sentence should catch a potential buyer or investor’s attention quickly even if they only give it a glance.
Vision
A vision statement outlines your long-term, grander goals for the company’s future. It’s more important for a vision statement to be inspiring than it is to be realistic, but at the same time, you want to avoid setting a vision that’s clearly hyperbolic or impossible.
Values
Many companies create lists of company values that are fundamental to the business’s personality and character. These values should pertain both to how the employees of your company work, and the values you want your company to stand for in the eyes of clients, partners, and investors.
Motto
Finally, a motto is a short phrase or sentence that conveys the spirit of the company and its product in a way that’s both catchy and memorable. Typically, mottos are most helpful to brands that sell to consumers and want to make their product impossible to forget.
Mission Statement Examples
Now that we’ve broken down the elements of a mission statement, let’s take a look at some real-world examples and see what works, what doesn’t, and what you can use to inspire your own mission statement.
Strong Business Mission Statement Examples
Amazon
Our mission is to continually raise the bar of the customer experience by using the internet and technology to help consumers find, discover and buy anything, and empower businesses and content creators to maximize their success.
Amazon’s mission statement is specific enough to be meaningful, but still broad enough that every branch of Amazon’s business — e-commerce, grocery delivery, audiobooks, film and television, and more — still fits under the umbrella of this description.
Citigroup
Citi's mission is to serve as a trusted partner to our clients by responsibly providing financial services that enable growth and economic progress.
Citi cleverly cuts down on sentence length by incorporating its “why” — enabling growth and economic progress — into its “how” instead of articulating them separately. It’s short, sweet, and to the point.
Intel
Our mission is to utilize the power of Moore's Law to bring smart, connected devices to every person on earth while serving as a role model for how companies should operate.
Intel’s mission statement references a “Moore’s Law,” which is a term that the average person probably wouldn’t recognize. But since Intel primarily sells to — and employs — scientists, the company’s mission statement only needs to appeal to scientists.
Evernote
Evernote's mission is to help individuals and groups to remember everything, turn ideas into action, and work effortlessly together.
Instead of outlining how Evernote works as a note-taking app, this mission statement makes subtle reference to the app’s defining features like its unique web clipper function and its ability to facilitate collaboration on projects via the cloud.
Mission Statement Mistakes
JetBlue
To inspire humanity – both in the air and on the ground.
While this is a great motto, it’s too vague to work as a strong mission statement for JetBlue. A good test to determine whether a statement is too vague is to replace the company name with another brand and see if it still makes sense. This statement could be describing any other airline, an in-flight magazine publisher, or a fireworks display company.
Venmo
Venmo's mission is to change people's relationships with money and each other.
This is another example of a mission statement that’s too vague. Almost any consumer financial institution, financial education product, or credit repair service could use Venmo’s mission statement as their own. It’s not necessary to articulate exactly how the app works, but Venmo’s mission statement should have information that’s unique to its product.
Salesforce
Salesforce, the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way.
This mission statement starts strong, but the “how” doesn’t tell us anything about the company’s purpose or impact. Avoid vague phrases in your mission statement like “in a whole new way,” and opt instead for phrases that actually explain your company and mission.
Smartsheet
At Smartsheet, our mission is to empower anyone to drive meaningful change - for themselves, their businesses and even for the world.
Smartsheet has a strong “why” — so strong, in fact, that it takes up the entire mission statement. While it’s clear what Smartsheet hopes to achieve, this mission statement skips what Smartsheet does. This mission statement only works for people who are already familiar with the product.
Though writing a mission statement is hard work, it’s work that more than pays off in the end. Especially in the early stages of a company’s founding, failing to unite and inspire team members and outside investors can cause a startup to crash before it gets off the ground. Using this free mission statement generator mission statement generator can increase your chances of success. A strong central purpose gives employees something to rally around and convinces investors to take the risk to bet on your ultimate success. It helps a company start strong and — just like an insurance policy — gives it a better chance at long-term success.