Andy Kurtzig: Company Missions Matter

So I talked about our mission. This is one of the things that I didn't believe. I thought all this stuff was touchy feely. Mission values. Both my first two companies, frankly, we had a mission statement. We had values. We didn't believe them. We just sort of wrote them up and put them in a drawer and never thought about them again. And I now realize I was completely wrong. Our mission, you've already heard the summary of it, but to be really clear, our mission is to help people by providing the number one online platform for people to access quality experts online 24 7, quickly, conveniently, and affordably. And by doing so, we can improve the world. That's our mission statement. I believe wholeheartedly that you need a mission statement. And the reason you need one is to attract people to come to your company for more than just the money. And you also need values so you can figure out what kind of people you want to be attracting and what kind of people you want at your company. And so our values took an interesting turn. When I first started the company eight years ago. We were looking for two things. People that were smart and people that were fun to work with. And that's all we looked for. Smart and fun. Smart and fun. Smart and fun. And then we hired a guy who was super smart and super fun to work with and didn't get anything done. So we evolved the smart and fun to smart, fun and get things done. This is about five years ago. And so those are the summary of our core values, or smart, fun, and get things done. We actually got a pyramid of 15 specific things that sort of fall under those three basic buckets today. But it's really important to have value so you know what kind of people you want to have at your company.