> I like Stripe's long-stated mission ("To increase the GDP of the Internet").
Also corporate speak. Their mission is take their cut of the Internet's GDP. Nothing against them, they provide real value for that cut. But that's what the actual mission is.
That feels unfair to read it that way. The mission as stated is that they will not only take a cut of the pie but grow the pie. If the total value they add is greater than the value they capture, everyone wins.
You might not believe them, but that’s what the words are supposed to mean.
> You might not believe them, but that’s what the words are supposed to mean.
It's corporate bullshit not because I don't believe they can grow the pie, but because that's not their motivation.
In fact, a nice formula for coming up with your corporate mission statement would be:
1. Ignore your company's ground-truth financial incentives
2. Find a positive 2nd order effect E (or a plausible one) that you don't really care about, but maybe you genuinely think is nice
3. Claim your "passion for E" is what drove you to start your company, and keeps you working, because, of course, all great companies must have a "deeper purpose"
It's not mutually exclusive. I remember the Bad Old Days of trying to make the PayPal button work; if Stripe makes it easier for people to take payment online then it increases the GDP of the Internet.
This version is dumb/empty, and reads like brown-nosing Stripe.