Step 1 - Select an MTP (Massive Transformative Purpose)

We have already covered this extensively in Chapter 4, but it is worth revisiting, as this is the most fundamental and foundational aspect of a startup.

Following up on Simon Sinek’s “Why?” question: it is critical that you are excited and utterly passionate about the problem space you plan to attack. So, begin by asking this question: What is the biggest problem you would like to see solved? Only after you identify that problem space can you come up with an MTP to solve it. Even as a child, Elon Musk, perhaps the world’s most celebrated entrepreneur today, had a burning desire to address energy, transportation, and space travel at a global level. His companies (SolarCity, Tesla, SpaceX) are each addressing those spaces. Each has a Massive Transformative Purpose.

The act of finding an MTP can be seen as the consequence of asking yourself the following series of questions:

• What do I deeply care about? What problem do I want to solve? What amazing thing do I want to create?

• What am I meant to do? At the end of my life, what will I be most proud to have achieved?

• What would I do if I could never fail?

• What would I do if I received a billion dollars today and had to spend it on making the world a better place?

Keep in mind that MTP is not only about you as an entrepreneur and your goals. It is also about your employees. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel poses the following question to test if a startup has an MTP that will attract not only friends but also employees who share your motivation: “Why would the 20th employee join your startup without the perks, [such as] a co-founder title or stock [options]?” At some point in the company’s future, most of your employees will not be high-ranking nor own much company stock. What will keep them engaged in their jobs and loyal to the company? It must be the MTP; they must buy the dream.

Accordingly, you should gauge your MTP against each of the acronym’s letters: Is it truly Massive? Would others characterize it as Transformative? Is it intrinsically Purposeful?

A profit motive alone is insufficient to build an ExO—or, frankly, any startup. Rather, it’s the burning passion to solve an obsessive, complex problem that keeps an entrepreneur pushing forward through the ebullience and despair that is the story of every startup. Chip Conley, an expert at building purpose-driven companies such as Airbnb, frequently references Kahlil Gibran: “Work is love made visible. The goal is not to live forever; the goal is to create something that will.”

An MTP doesn’t necessarily have to be, to continue the metaphor, a Mars-shot. It also can be transformational for a vertical industry or for a region. An example is Grab’s MTP: “Empowering Southeast Asia with technology.” With this guiding MTP, Grab has become the biggest Unicorn in that part of the world.

Another example is Infarm. Its MTP is “Feeding the Cities of Tomorrow.” Infarm is the world’s fastest-growing urban farming company, offering an Agriculture-as-a-Service business model. The company provides modular units that grow food on supermarket aisles and inside restaurants. Infarm uses 95% less water, 90% less transportation, and zero chemical pesticide compared to soil-based agriculture. Moreover, the electricity used throughout the Infarm network comes from renewable energy. To date, the Infarm network has saved more than 40,000,000 liters of water and 50,000 square meters of land.