“'We need teams of missionaries, not teams of mercenaries.' Mercenaries build whatever they're told to build. Missionaries are true believers in the vision and are committed to solving problems for their customers.”
Missionaries vs. Mercenaries
From Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (2nd ed., Wiley, 2017), Chapter 9, “Principles of Strong Product Teams.” The first sentence is Cagan quoting John Doerr, whose missionary-vs-mercenary framing for venture-backed founders was laid out in an April 2000 Knowledge@Wharton writeup of a Wharton conference talk; the next two sentences are Cagan’s, adapting the frame from founders to product teams. Cagan had already opened a 2015 SVPG post, “Missionaries vs. Mercenaries,” with Doerr’s line, and the idea gets a book-length treatment in Empowered (Cagan and Jones, Wiley, 2020).