---
title: "OSINT"
url: https://jelmerdejong.com/osint/
description: "Open-source intelligence as practised by Jelmer de Jong: using public data, code and the open web to understand founders, companies and markets, both as a hobby and as the basis of the data and intelligence platform he built as CTO of RTP Global."
date: 2026-11-09
author: Jelmer de Jong
---

# 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](https://rtp.vc/) 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](https://jelmerdejong.com/posts/why-we-believe-in-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](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jelmerdejong/) or [X](https://x.com/jelmerdejong).

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Jelmer de Jong, Partner and Chief Technology Officer at RTP Global. More at https://jelmerdejong.com/ (https://jelmerdejong.com/llms.txt).