How to choose the right company for you

A common question I get from students or folks early in their career (or sometimes, even mid-career) is some variant of: “How should I choose a company to work for?”

Over the years, I’ve given this question some thought. Hindsight being 20/20, I’ve also looked back at why I decided to join Google, Facebook and Square. All three companies have been successful by almost any metric.

So what did I uncover? My assertion is that you need to evaluate a company through the dual lenses of Purpose and Leader/Purpose Fit.

1. Purpose: Every company has a purpose, a raison d’etre, a reason why it was created, why they exist in the first place. The right company for you is a company whose purpose inspires and motivates you. Remember, when you join a company, it’s something that you have to wake up every single day and go in to work to. The right company for you is a company whose purpose makes you want to you to jump out of bed every single day, full of excitement for what lies ahead. The right company for you is a company whose purpose makes you feel like you are part of something bigger than yourself. For me, personally, I’ve realized that I get excited about working at companies that seek to transform the daily lives of people in a fundamental way.

• Google’s purpose is to make information accessible to everyone. Google unlocked the possibilities of the Internet for hundreds of millions of people. To this day, I find it inspiring and incredible.
• Facebook’s purpose is to connect everyone. What could be more personal and visceral than that? The stories of people finding long lost family members or friends on Facebook are legendary and powerful.
• Square’s purpose is economic empowerment for everyone. With the economic divide more pronounced than ever, what purpose could be more compelling? Square literally helps business owners put food on their table and send their kids to college by helping them never miss a sale.

Each of these companies made me feel that I was working on something that helped the world at large and made it a better place. Not just helping build an economic entity (a business) that served shareholders, but truly doing well by doing good.

Every person has beliefs that they feel compelled by and that drive them. Think deeply about how the purpose of the company maps to these beliefs and values. The ones that excite you likely won’t be the same as the ones that get me going. It will be something uniquely personal to you. But when you find that match, you’ve found a potential good fit.

2. Leader/Purpose Fit: Every company has a leader - the person who sets the vision and purpose for the company, the person who is the face, the voice, the soul of the company. The right company for you is a company whose leader is an authentic embodiment of the company’s purpose.

What does being an authentic embodiment of the purpose mean? It means their motivation, the thing that drives them, is singular and utterly authentic— to accomplish the purpose underlying the company. It means they are not driven primarily by fame, by hubris, by money or by assorted other things (though obviously these factors will have some place in the psyche of every leader). They are fundamentally, almost irrationally, driven to make the purpose a reality. How can you diligence this? Look for one or more of these signs:

• Authentic founding story: The company founding story revolves around a deeply personal problem that the founder faced, a problem that the company’s purpose is to solve. Whether it’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin building BackRub at Stanford because they were frustrated with search, or Mark Zuckerberg starting The Facebook at Harvard because he wanted to build a directory of his classmates, or Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey tackling payments because Jim had to turn down a sale of his glass sculpture due to not being able to accept credit cards. Look for founding stories that become a critical part of the company’s lore and are compelling, authentic and clearly tied to the company’s purpose.
• (Seeming) irrationality: The leader takes seemingly irrational (and sometimes bet-the-company) risks in pursuit of the company’s purpose. Google’s purchase of YouTube for $1.6B (an incredible sum of money for an acquisition back in 2006), or Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp for $19B (still staggering when you come to think about it) are both great examples of seeming irrationality, that cannot be justified by discounted cash flows or anything other than an alignment with the company’s purpose and an irrational belief in (and insight into) the future. Square’s creation itself is an example of irrational audacity — how could two co-founders with zero experience in payments or hardware think of building a company whose initial customer-facing manifestation was a piece of payments hardware? Look for audacious, irrational moves and bets.
• The R word: I’ve written about this before, but look for a leader who doesn’t use the R word. A leader who can inspire without resorting to it. A leader who cares about delighting customers, winning market share, and know that R will follow. Look for old videos on the leader and see how they talk about their founding story and purpose, how they inspire, how they motivate, and carefully look for R (or lack thereof).

To summarize, choose a company whose purpose inspires and motivates you, ensure that the company’s leader is an authentic embodiment of the purpose, and you’ll have made a smart choice. The company might not turn out to be the next Google, Facebook or Square (not many companies can lay claim to that), but it is likely to be a company that’s successful. More importantly, it’ll be one where you’ll be happy and excited going in to work every single day. And that’s what ultimately matters.

Postscript 1: A few folks have pointed out that “Purpose” and “Leader” (or “Leader / Purpose Fit”, to be more precise) are analogous to the primary two criteria investors look at while evaluating a company — “Market” and “Founder / Market Fit”. This makes perfect sense, since when you choose a company, you are choosing to invest your most valuable asset — you.