Entrepreneurs without good mission statements often find it difficult to explain what they are trying to do, making it more challenging for them to do business.  This is either because they have not developed a coherent vision of their over-arching objective or because they have not worked through the process of simply describing the objective.  Strong mission statements enable startups to effectively communicate their vision to employees, partners and investors. 

A clear mission statement sets the corporate polestar, making it easy for members of the staff to know what ultimate objective they are working towards.  While mission statements are often too high level to serve a useful guide for day-to-day activities, they ensure a consistent long term trajectory and demonstrate the management is working toward a common goal.

Well constructed mission statements are often very intriguing, as they implicitly identify a large opportunity associated with a significant pain point.  As a result, when used properly these one-liners serve as the perfect first response to any potential partner or investor's question about what you do, making for an ideal start to an elevator pitch.  They are the easy to understand hook that leaves the other person wanting to learn more. 

Entrepreneurs without mission statements typically start their elevator pitches with the 'how'.  For example, without a mission statement the Google founders might have started their pitch by saying "we're building an algorithm that calculates a ranking of pages based upon the interlinking between pages."  However, by starting with the objective their pitch might have been more catchy.  Here's what they might have said with a mission statement in place, "we're trying to organize the information on the Internet in a manner that makes it uniquely accessible to consumers." 

While to many mission statements seem to be a trite technique, I believe that they serve as a useful communication tool that can inspire employees and catch the attention of investors.