In the following select query, it take almost 1 min to return the result, seems the table has over 2 millions record and growing. There are no index i can use from the table. How do I optimize this query?

SELECT MAX(StartDate) AS Expr1 
FROM [MYSERVER].MYDB.dbo.ProductActivity AS ProductActivity_1

I already tried with the following, which also takes 1 min to get the result

SELECT TOP(1) *
FROM [MYSERVER].MYDB.dbo.ProductActivity AS ProductActivity_1
ORDER BY StartDate DESC

Is there another way to optimize the query?