OSINT
Open-source intelligence, OSINT, is the craft of answering questions from information that is already public: websites, code, filings, job posts, domain records, social profiles, shipping data, satellite imagery, and the traces every organisation and person leaves on the open web. It started as a hobby and it has become the way I work.
Why an investor does OSINT
Venture capital is an intelligence problem. Who is building something new, before they announce it? Is a founder’s story consistent with what the public record says? How big is a company really, how fast is it hiring, which customers does it name in job ads but not on its website? Which open-source project is quietly becoming infrastructure?
Most of this is knowable from public sources if you know where to look and how to connect the pieces. At RTP Global I turned that into the firm’s data and intelligence platform: the systems we use to find founders, check claims and watch our portfolio. Data-driven venture capital is the longer argument for why this matters.
What I actually do
- Founder and company diligence. Verifying track records, mapping teams and advisors, finding the customers and partners a company does not talk about, and the ones it has lost.
- Market and competitor mapping. Building the landscape of a category from code repositories, hiring, patents, filings and web footprints rather than from analyst reports.
- Signal hunting. Watching the places where new companies show up first: GitHub, domain registrations, early job posts, conference line-ups, package registries.
- Investigations. The occasional question a founder, co-investor or friend brings that needs a few evenings of digging.
Everything I use is public, and I stay within the law and within what I would be comfortable explaining to the person I am researching. OSINT is about reading the open record well, not about getting into anything.
Interested?
I am always happy to compare notes with other practitioners, to help a founder or investor who has a specific question, or to take a hard puzzle. Find me on LinkedIn or X.