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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).

Example Trigger Phrases

• "Research a company for a job."
• "Prep a company brief before an interview."
• "Understand a prospective employer fast."