---
name: company-brief
description: "Build a candidate's research brief on a company before an application or interview. Use when asked to research a company for a job, prep a company brief before an interview, or understand a prospective employer fast. Produces a one-page brief — what they do & how they make money, recent news & trajectory, product & competitors, likely challenges, culture signals, and smart questions to ask."
---

# Company Brief Skill

Walking into an interview without understanding the business is the fastest way to look like you're just
collecting offers. This skill assembles a candidate's research brief — what the company does, how it
makes money, where it's heading, and the challenges *you'd* be hired to help with — so you can speak to
their reality and ask questions that signal you've done the work.

## Required Inputs

Ask for these only if they aren't already provided:

- **Company name** (and website/ticker if helpful).
- **The role** you're interviewing for — so the brief focuses on what's relevant to *that* job.
- **What you already know / found** — paste any research, news, or notes you have (this skill structures and reasons over it).

> Note: ground this in real, provided information. Where current facts aren't supplied, say so and mark inferences as assumptions — don't fabricate funding rounds, metrics, or news.

## Output Format

### Company Brief: [company] — prepping for [role]

**1. What they do & how they make money** — the business in plain terms: product, customers, and the revenue model. If you can't tell how they make money, that's itself worth noting.

**2. Trajectory & recent news** — stage, growth signals, funding/earnings, launches, leadership changes (from the info provided). Where it's clearly heading.

**3. Product & competitors** — the core product, who they compete with, and their differentiation (or lack of it).

**4. Likely challenges** — the 2–3 problems this company is probably grappling with that *this role* would touch. This is the gold: it's what you'll speak to in the interview.

**5. Culture signals** — what their site, JD, reviews, and public voice suggest about how they work (and whether you'd want to).

**6. Smart questions to ask** — 4–6 questions that show you understand their business and surface what *you* need to know (avoid generic "what's the culture like?").

**7. Your angle** — how to connect your background to their specific situation, in one or two lines.

## Quality Checks

- [ ] Explains how the company actually makes money (or flags that it's unclear)
- [ ] Likely challenges are tied to the specific role, not generic
- [ ] Questions-to-ask are specific to this company, not reusable boilerplate
- [ ] Inferences are marked as assumptions; nothing is fabricated as fact
- [ ] Ends with a concrete "your angle" connecting the candidate to their situation

## Anti-Patterns

- [ ] Do not fabricate funding, metrics, or news — work from provided info and label inferences
- [ ] Do not produce a generic company overview — focus on what matters for this role and interview
- [ ] Do not list culture platitudes — read real signals (JD tone, reviews, how they describe the work)
- [ ] Do not suggest generic questions ("what's a typical day?") — make them business-specific
- [ ] Do not skip "likely challenges" — it's the section that makes you sound like a hire, not a tourist

## Based On

Interview research / company due-diligence practice for candidates (business model · trajectory · role-relevant challenges).