The 'reverse search' approach to finding companies

The job board is a supermarket. You walk in hungry, you push a cart, you grab whatever looks edible. You end up with a cart full of stuff you didn't really want but you're committed now.

Reverse search is the opposite. You decide what you want for dinner. Then you figure out where to buy it.

I'll explain what it looks like in practice, and why it tends to work better for people at a career inflection point than the default approach of trawling LinkedIn.

The usual path

You open a job board. You type "product manager" or "backend engineer" or "marketing lead." You get 4,000 results. You sort by date. You start clicking.

Within an hour you've applied to seven companies you'd never heard of that morning. Some sound cool. Some you're honestly just applying to because they're there. The whole process is reactive: the algorithm decides what you see, and you choose from the menu.

The problem: the best companies often don't post, or post only after they've already filled the role through their network. By the time a role is on a public board, dozens of people with warmer intros are already in the pipeline.

The reverse path

Flip it. Start with what you actually want.

Sit down with a blank page and write out, honestly, the conditions for a job you'd take. Industry. Stage (seed, growth, public). Team size. Remote policy. Domain you'd enjoy learning. Kind of manager you want. Budget floor.

Now build a list of 50 companies that fit those conditions. Yes, 50. It sounds like a lot. It takes about three hours the first time.

Sources I use when I do this:

• Crunchbase filtered by industry and recent funding
• LinkedIn company search, filtered by size and location
• Industry-specific lists (a16z portfolio, YC batches, Sequoia India, Index, whatever matches your target)
• Conference sponsor pages — if they paid to sponsor SaaStr, they have money and probably a team
• Podcast guest lists in your domain
• The "companies that rejected you before" list — timing matters, and two years later the fit might be different

Now you have a list. Most of these companies aren't publicly hiring right now. That's fine. That's actually the point.

What you do with the list

For each company, you spend maybe 15 minutes. You answer three questions.

One: is this company in a hiring phase? Check their careers page, their last funding round, their LinkedIn growth. A Series B company that closed $40M six months ago is almost certainly hiring, even if the careers page is quiet.

Two: who would I report to? Find the VP, head of, or director whose function matches yours. Read their LinkedIn. Understand what they worked on before. Note anything specific they've written or said.

Three: do I have a warm intro? Check mutual connections. A warm intro isn't a stretch second-degree — it's someone who'd actually take your call.

After this pass, your list of 50 becomes, realistically, 12-15 companies where there's a real opportunity and a real path in.

The outreach

This is where most people stall. Sending a cold LinkedIn message feels weird. Do it anyway.

A concrete example. A few months ago I mapped out eight fintech companies in Berlin where I'd want to work. Five didn't have open product roles listed. I wrote a short note to the head of product at each — not asking for a job, asking if they'd spend 20 minutes telling me how they think about their roadmap. Four replied. Two of those conversations turned into "actually, we're about to open a role." One turned into an offer.

The note itself was boring. Two short paragraphs. Who I am, why I was specifically curious about their company (referenced a real thing — a product decision, a blog post, a hire), and a soft ask for 20 minutes. No pitch, no resume attached.

People dramatically overestimate how rude cold outreach is. If your message shows you've done real homework, most operators will respond. They're flattered. They're also hiring for things that aren't public.

Why this is better for a career crossroads

If you're switching industries, switching functions, or coming off a big life change, the job board approach punishes you. The algorithm doesn't know you'd be great at X, it only knows your last title was Y.

Reverse search lets you design the story. You pick the companies. You reach out with a framing that makes sense for your situation. You're not competing with 800 applicants — you're having a conversation about a potential fit.

It's also a better filter. By the time you've spent an hour on a company, you know whether you'd actually want to work there. No more showing up to final-round interviews and realizing you don't care.

Takeaway

Don't shop from the menu. Make your own menu, then go find those companies. Fifty companies, three hours of research, a dozen thoughtful outreach messages — that's a week of work that will reshape your pipeline more than 200 applications ever will.

The job board will still be there if this doesn't work. But try the other way first.