/company-research

name: company-research
argument-hint: "[company name] [purpose]"
description: Create a company research brief with executive quotes, product strategy, and org context. Use when preparing for interviews, competitive analysis, partnerships, or market-entry work.
intent: >-
  Create a comprehensive company profile that extracts executive insights, product strategy, transformation initiatives, and organizational dynamics from publicly available sources. Use this to understand competitive landscape, evaluate partnership opportunities, benchmark best practices, prepare for interviews, or inform market entry decisions by understanding how successful companies think about product management and strategy.
type: component
theme: market-intelligence
best_for:
  - "Preparing for a PM interview with real company context"
  - "Building a competitor or partner brief before a first meeting"
  - "Understanding a company's product strategy from public signals"
scenarios:
  - "I have a PM interview next week and need real context on their product strategy"
  - "We're meeting a potential partner and I need a brief on how they actually make money"
estimated_time: "20-40 min"

Purpose

Create a comprehensive company profile that extracts executive insights, product strategy, transformation initiatives, and organizational dynamics from publicly available sources. Use this to understand competitive landscape, evaluate partnership opportunities, benchmark best practices, prepare for interviews, or inform market entry decisions by understanding how successful companies think about product management and strategy.

This is not surface-level research—it's strategic intelligence gathering focused on product management perspectives and executive vision.

Input

**Works best with:** The company to profile. **Also useful:** Why you're researching it (interview prep, competitive analysis, partnership, market entry) — this changes what the brief emphasizes.

Anything supplied with the invocation itself — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended `ARGUMENTS:` line — counts as answers already given. Use it and skip whatever it covers; don't re-ask.

**Arriving empty-handed? That works too.** The skill asks for the company and the purpose before drafting the brief.

**Example invocation:** `Build a company research brief on Datadog — I interview with their platform PM team Friday.`

Key Concepts

The Executive Insights Framework

This framework synthesizes company intelligence across multiple dimensions:

**Core Components:** 1. **Company Overview:** Basic info, history, industry context 2. **Executive Quotes:** Strategic vision from CEO, COO, VP Product, Group PM 3. **Product Insights:** Strategy, recent launches, innovation focus 4. **Transformation Strategies:** Digital, AI, Agile transformations 5. **Organizational Impact:** How PM influences strategy, cross-functional collaboration 6. **Future Roadmap:** Upcoming initiatives and anticipated challenges 7. **Product-Led Growth (PLG):** PLG strategies, data-driven decisions

Why This Works

• **Executive perspective:** Captures leadership thinking, not just marketing copy
• **Product-centric:** Focuses on PM-relevant insights (strategy, process, culture)
• **Multi-source:** Synthesizes interviews, earnings calls, blog posts, case studies
• **Strategic intelligence:** Informs competitive positioning, partnership evaluation, or interview prep

Anti-Patterns (What This Is NOT)

• **Not financial analysis:** Focus is product strategy, not valuation or stock performance
• **Not SWOT analysis:** This documents their perspective, not strengths/weaknesses assessment
• **Not surface scraping:** Go deeper than "About Us" pages—find executive interviews, product blogs, earnings transcripts

When to Use This

• Competitive analysis (understanding how competitors approach PM)
• Partnership evaluation (assessing cultural fit and strategic direction)
• Interview preparation (understanding company culture, product philosophy)
• Benchmarking best practices (learning from successful companies)
• Market entry decisions (understanding how incumbents operate)

When NOT to Use This

• For internal analysis (this is external research)
• When primary sources are unavailable (executives haven't spoken publicly)
• As a substitute for customer research (this is company perspective, not customer perspective)

---

Application

Use `template.md` for the full fill-in structure.

Step 1: Define Research Scope

Clarify what you're researching and why:

## Research Objective
- **Company Name:** [e.g., "Stripe"]
- **Research Purpose:** [e.g., "Understand payment platform product strategy for competitive positioning"]
- **Key Questions:**
  - [Question 1: e.g., "How does Stripe think about platform extensibility?"]
  - [Question 2: e.g., "What's their approach to developer experience?"]
  - [Question 3: e.g., "How do they prioritize roadmap vs. custom enterprise requests?"]

---

Step 2: Gather Company Overview

Document basic company information:

### Company Overview

**Basic Information:**
- **Name:** [Official company name]
- **Headquarters:** [Location]
- **Industry:** [Primary industries, e.g., "Fintech, Payment Processing, Developer Tools"]
- **Founded:** [Year]
- **Size:** [Employees, revenue if public, funding if private]

**Brief History:**
- [Key milestones that shaped current market position]
- [Example: "2010: Founded by Patrick and John Collison. 2011: Launched 7-line integration. 2018: Launched Stripe Atlas. 2021: $95B valuation."]

**Sources to check:**

• Company website (About, Press, Blog)
• LinkedIn company page
• Crunchbase / PitchBook (for funding/valuation)
• Wikipedia (for history)

---

Step 3: Extract Executive Quotes on Strategic Vision

Find recent quotes from key executives:

### Executive Quotes on Strategic Vision

**Quote from the CEO:**
- "[Recent quote discussin