/company-research

name: company-research
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

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.

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)

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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)

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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 discussing long-term vision and market approach]"
- **Source:** [Link to interview, earnings call, blog post, conference talk]
- **Date:** [When the quote was made]
- **Context:** [Brief explanation of what prompted this quote]

**Quote from the COO:**
- "[Recent quote focusing on operational strategies and challenges]"
- **Source:** [Link]
- **Date:** [When]

**Quote from the VP of Product Management:**
- "[Recent quote detailing product strategy and innovation focus]"
- **Source:** [Link]
- **Date:** [When]

**Quote from the Group Product Manager:**
- "[Recent quote discussing specific product initiatives and customer engagement]"
- **Source:** [Link]
- **Date:** [When]

**Sources to check:**

• Earnings call transcripts (if public)
• Podcast interviews (e.g., Lenny's Podcast, Masters of Scale, How I Built This)
• Conference talks (YouTube, company blog)
• Blog posts by executives
• LinkedIn posts
• Industry publications (TechCrunch, The Verge, etc.)

**Quality checks:**

• **Recent:** Prioritize quotes from the last 12-24 months
• **Substantive:** Look for strategy/philosophy, not generic PR statements
• **Attributed:** Always cite source