Building a target company list around stage, role fit and growth

The Product Interviews work group on company stage, role-fit scores, company health, the PM work you would own and the columns worth adding to a tracker.

Updated October 13, 2026

Pick one or two company stages, list specific roles rather than company names, and rank each by your fit, the company's health and what the job would teach you, checked in conversations with the team.

Start with the company's stage. Nikhyl Singhal would choose one or two stages first, because pre-product fit, post-product fit, growth and scale each ask something different of you every day. For each company he would note its stage, where demand and hiring are growing, the team you would join and the skill it adds, and keep the list short enough to explain every entry in a sentence.
Score the roles and keep a second list. Ben Erez suggests starting from curated lists such as the Lenny 100, and generally focuses applications on roles where he would score his fit at least 8 out of 10. He would keep a second category for companies worth a conversation before a role is clear. After his first startup shut down, that kind of conversation led to an introduction at Life360 and, through that job, to product management.
Check the business and what PMs get rewarded for. Before a high-fit role moves to the top, Nikhyl would ask what has happened to customer demand and, if equity matters, how the company's prospects compare with its valuation. Ben would ask the hiring manager about the last thing the team shipped and a PM who was recently rewarded, since a job description can sound empowering while the team is rewarded for delivering a set list of features.
Add columns for the work and the growth. Sachin Rekhi has steered his own career moves by passion, skill and opportunity, and would tag each target as builder, tuner, innovator or enabler work. Nancy Chu would add a contact and a reason to reach out beside each company. Ravi Mehta would add a skill-gap column and ask each hiring manager how the team helps PMs build those skills.

Group chat with Nikhyl, Sachin, Ravi, Nancy, Ben — the Product Interviews work group

Question:

How do you build a target company list for a job search?

Nikhyl SinghalFounder of Skip. Former VP of Product at Meta and Chief Product Officer at Credit Karma

I start with the stage of company, because it tells you what the job will ask of you every day. Choose one or two stages for this search: pre-product fit, post-product fit, growth, or scale. At pre-product fit, you need to enjoy rapid experiments and uncertainty. At post-product fit, the work is often building enough structure to protect something that works. Growth demands comfort with expansion and constant change; scale demands patience with larger teams and internal decisions.

Substack

Then build a list within those stages. For each company, write down the product's stage, where demand and hiring are growing, the specific team you would join, and what skill the role would add to your next career transition. Talk to people close to the team to check the assumptions, especially the manager and the actual work. I saw very different product problems at Credit Karma during growth and at Meta at scale, so a company name alone tells me little about fit.

Keep the companies where your strengths match the current problem and the job will stretch you. A useful list is short enough that you can explain, in a sentence for each company, why you belong there now.

Ben ErezCo-founder of Insider Loops. Former PM at Facebook and Lead PM at Attentive

I’d build the list around roles you can make a strong case for, then work backward to companies.

Pick your constraints: PM level, company stage, product area, location, compensation, and the kind of team you want to join. Start with a curated company list such as the Lenny 100, then add companies you hear about through former teammates and hiring managers.Substack
Find specific roles and score your fit out of 10. Look at level, experience at similar companies, and relevant technical background. I generally focus applications on roles where I’d score at least an 8. Put the role and team beside the company in your tracker, because the company name alone tells you little about the actual job.Substack
For each high-fit role, identify a person who can tell you how the team works and how they hire. Some roles circulate through networks before they reach a careers page, so these conversations also help you find openings early.Substack

When I was looking for my first startup job, conversations with founders and operators eventually led me to Life360 through an introduction. The role I took was different from the one I initially imagined, which is a good reason to keep the list open to adjacent teams.

Medium

Nikhyl SinghalFounder of Skip. Former VP of Product at Meta and Chief Product Officer at Credit Karma

Ben's role-fit score is a good way to prioritize outreach. I would add a company-health check before a high-fit role moves to the top of the list. A company can still be hiring after its growth has slowed, and the job may involve sustaining an older business rather than building the one that attracted you.

For a growth-stage candidate, ask what has happened to customer demand, which products are still expanding, and whether the team's hiring follows that demand. If equity matters, ask how the company's current prospects compare with the valuation used to price it. I've warned that at ex-hypergrowth companies, a high valuation can leave employees with weaker financial outcomes and a much harder work environment than they expected.

Substack

Sachin RekhiFounder and CEO of Notejoy. Former Head of Product for Sales Solutions at LinkedIn

For each company, ask three questions: Do I care about the product and its customers? Can I use and grow my skills there? Is there enough opportunity in the market and the role? That passion, skill, and opportunity fit has been my guide across career moves.

sachinrekhi

Put candidate companies in a simple sheet with those three columns, the PM work you’d likely own, and one uncertainty to check. Then speak with people doing the work before you rank the list. I once thought a banking technology internship at Goldman Sachs would combine my interests perfectly; three months inside showed me that the work felt peripheral to the organization. A later Microsoft internship introduced me to product management. Both experiences changed which roles I would pursue. Use conversations and short projects as smaller tests before committing to a job.

sachinrekhi

Nancy ChuLeadership coach and co-founder of ThinkAI Co. Former PM Manager at Facebook and Director of Product at Roku

Early in my PM career, I cared mainly about becoming a stronger PM. Later, I learned that a personal connection with the product mattered to me. For each company on the list, write down the product you would work on, the problem it solves, and whether you would want to spend years working on that problem.

Spotify

Then test whether each company is reachable. In a public talk on getting more PM interviews, I showed how to search LinkedIn posts from employees at target companies, filter for recent activity, and look for hiring managers posting about open roles. Add a contact and a specific reason to reach out beside each company name. That turns the list into a set of conversations you can actually start.

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Ben ErezCo-founder of Insider Loops. Former PM at Facebook and Lead PM at Attentive

A company-health check tells you whether the business is worth joining. I’d also check what the PM on that team actually gets rewarded for.

Ask the hiring manager: “What’s the last thing this team shipped that you’re proud of, why did you choose it, and what happened afterward?” Then ask for an example of a PM who was rewarded recently and what they did. I’ve suggested those questions because a job description can sound empowering while the team is rewarded for delivering a set list of features. The answers help you decide whether this specific opening belongs near the top of your list.

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Nikhyl SinghalFounder of Skip. Former VP of Product at Meta and Chief Product Officer at Credit Karma

Sachin's short tests are especially useful when two companies look equally attractive on paper. Ask each team what a successful PM would own in six months, then compare that scope with the work you can do today. What good looks like is a role that lets you take on bigger problems as the company grows, perhaps moving from a feature to a product or from a product to a product line. That is how I think about the relationship between your growth rate and the company's growth rate.

Substack

If one team can describe that path and the other can only describe a title, move the first company higher on your list.

Ben ErezCo-founder of Insider Loops. Former PM at Facebook and Lead PM at Attentive

I’d keep two categories in the sheet: roles you’re ready to apply for and companies worth a conversation. The 8-out-of-10 fit rule is for deciding where to spend serious application and interview-prep time. It shouldn’t prevent you from talking to a founder when the company interests you but the right role is still unclear.

Substack

After my first startup shut down, I contacted founders and operators without a precise job title in mind. An introduction at Life360 led to a project manager role under customer support, and that work helped me discover product management. I’d use conversations with the second category to learn what problems the team needs solved, then move a company into the first category when there’s a specific role you can credibly pursue.

Medium

Sachin RekhiFounder and CEO of Notejoy. Former Head of Product for Sales Solutions at LinkedIn

The company stage is useful, but I would also tag each target by the actual PM job. I describe four kinds of PM work: builders improve an existing product, tuners move a metric such as retention, innovators seek fit for a new product, and enablers build tools or infrastructure for other teams. A large company can have all four, while a smaller startup's needs depend more on its product stage.

sachinrekhi

Add a "PM work" column to the list and ask the hiring manager which work will take most of your time. If you're early in your PM career and drawn to a new-product team, my advice is to get experience building an existing product first. Learning the basic PM skills while also searching for product-market fit makes the innovator role harder to succeed in.

sachinrekhi

Ben ErezCo-founder of Insider Loops. Former PM at Facebook and Lead PM at Attentive

Once a company moves onto the apply-now list, add one more column: the interview process. The prep changes by company, and spending time on the wrong format is expensive when you’re pursuing several roles at once. Marc and I built company-specific guides after hearing candidates repeatedly ask what each company evaluates. I’d confirm the current loop with the recruiter, then schedule practice for the actual interviews before applying to another batch of companies.

Substack

Ravi MehtaProduct advisor. Former Chief Product Officer at Tinder and VP Consumer Product at TripAdvisor

I’d add a skill-gap column to the tracker. Pick one or two PM skills you want your next role to develop, then ask each hiring manager for a specific example of how their team gives PMs feedback and helps them improve those skills. I’ve argued that product leaders should define the skills they hire for, identify gaps on the team, and set focused development plans. A role with a clear path for that growth deserves a higher rank than one where you’re left to figure it out alone.

For each shortlisted role, write down the skill you can bring immediately and the skill you expect to build. Use the manager conversation to check both assumptions before investing heavily in the interview process.

Nikhyl SinghalFounder of Skip. Former VP of Product at Meta and Chief Product Officer at Credit Karma

Ben's two categories make sense. For the conversation category, I would ask one more personal question: how quickly could I do strong work in this environment? A role with a smaller initial scope can be the better move if you can find your footing in six months, earn trust, and then take on more. That is one of the tests in my career framework, alongside company growth, the experience the role adds to your resume, and the pace of work you want in this chapter.

Substack

Put those questions beside the company name before you pursue an opening. Two attractive companies may demand very different hours and give you very different chances to succeed early.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do you prepare for metrics questions in a PM interview?
Define what success means for the user before naming a metric, pick a goal metric with guardrails for where it could mislead, and practice defending the choice aloud in timed cases.
How do you prepare for a PM interview loop at a big tech company?
Ask the recruiter what each round evaluates, run timed mocks with a peer who scores your decisions, and give the spare sessions to the skill your own examples show least.
How do you get better at product sense interviews?
Say why you chose each user, need and solution as you go, step back to solo practice when more mocks stop helping, and build answers from a struggle you saw a real user have.
How do you evaluate a company before accepting a job?
Narrow by stage and growth, then check the team and manager with evidence: why the role is open, where past reports went, and how peers describe recent tradeoffs.
How do you choose between two job offers?
Compare which job sets up your next one, the work you would do each week and the stage you would learn, then check both offers against a pay floor you set first.
What makes a PM resume stand out?
Bullets that name the problem, the decision you personally made and what happened, tailored to the work the team needs. Without a clean metric, describe the evidence you have.
What should a PM's LinkedIn profile say?
A headline that names your PM specialty and domain, and an About section and experience entries that show the problem, your decision and the result.
How do you reach a hiring manager directly?
Try a warm intro through a second-degree connection first. If you write cold, write to someone active and attach one small thing that shows how you think about their problem.
How do you ask for a job referral?
Ask someone who has seen your work and send the posting, a short summary to forward and room to decline. If the contact barely knows you, apply and write to the hiring manager.
How should you frame stories in behavioral interviews?
Open with how you approach that kind of problem, prepare two or three stories in depth, change the opening to fit the question and be exact about what you owned.
How do you restart a job search after a layoff?
Work out your runway, target roles your past work clearly fits, and start outreach and mock interviews together so the early results show what to fix.
How do you get a PM job at an AI company?
Find out which problem the team is hiring for, bring a tested prototype you can explain as a series of decisions, and practice live product cases for the company's actual loop.
Why do strong candidates keep failing final-round interviews?
Check that each decision in an answer fits the rest, choose stories that prove the level being hired, and ask early what the role must solve, since a panel can grade different jobs.
How do you answer "tell me about yourself" in a PM interview?
In a minute or two, name the product problems you work on, one decision you owned and its result, and why this role fits, then let the interviewer choose what to dig into.
How do you approach a take-home case study?
Build it around one recommendation, the user evidence behind it and the assumption that could reverse it, keep to the time the company expects, and practice defending the choice live.
How do you negotiate a job offer?
Raise the level before the panel decides, learn how the band works before you counter, compare offers year by year and get the level, scope and package in writing.
What do growth PM interviews test?
Whether you can find where the user journey breaks, pick a metric tied to user value with a guardrail, design a test that could change your decision and, depending on stage and role, say where a limited budget should go.
What do executives probe for in VP of Product interviews?
Whether you can choose a strategy that fits the business, make company-level calls through peers who do not report to you, and run the reviews and coaching that let teams deliver.

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