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The startup market has reached its peak in 2021. Then we had a few turbulent years. Even the artificial intelligence boom, which attracted significant investment, was unable to revive markets affected by the banking crisis and unfavorable conditions in various industries.
Beginning of 2024 brings hope that the enterprise capital (VC) market will stabilize and financing will begin to extend. This is excellent news for startups, especially in the technology industry, as recent opportunities for development and fundraising appear. However, these opportunities is not going to be wide enough to accommodate everyone, and competition shall be fierce. Open source intelligence (OSINT) can turn out to be a differentiator for those startups that excel at leveraging it.
Challenges and opportunities for startups
In the heyday of tech startups, the public and investors were captivated by visionary, relentless CEOs who could act quickly, often called “geniuses” in the media. At least for now, those days are gone. The difficult economic climate and lack of obtainable resources require frugal entrepreneurs who can exhibit the ability to chop expenses and achieve sustainable growth at a lower cost.
Startup founders and leaders will face each challenges and opportunities, and turning the former into the latter without all the time having the resources to do so would require creativity.
One of the opportunities is provided by the recent one wave of layoffs in the technology industry, which has made much more talent available. But this 12 months, competition among tech startups shall be fierce for every little thing, including top talent. Additionally, many older, established firms shall be blissful to accommodate outcasts from Google or Meta.
Another disruptive factor is that investors are paying more attention to European start-ups. For American firms, this implies even greater competition for financing. On the other hand, entering the US market is never easy. If firms in other countries want to succeed in U.S. audiences, they are going to need to speculate in their understanding and mastery of digital marketing.
Moreover, navigating the ever-changing regulatory landscape on each side of the pond shall be difficult. Public and legal control of the IT sector is increasing. Fintech is especially under the microscope because one of its newest superstars right away is: supposedly, selling canned mackerel in prison. On the one hand, regulations provide legitimacy and a fair playing field. On the other hand, having to deal with legal proceedings and their outcomes can severely limit innovation.
Finally, technological innovation is as fast as ever. Startups can use this to implement higher solutions and introduce exciting recent products. However, recent developments can even make their products obsolete before they are even introduced to the market. Additionally, probably no one implements recent solutions in their “business” faster than cybercriminals. And who is a higher goal than a recent, promising company that has little or no cybersecurity resources?
What is open source intelligence (OSINT) and how can it help?
Open source intelligence (OSINT) is the gathering of data from publicly available sources to derive actionable insights. In other words, anything that is publicly available, from books and archives to what may be freely accessed on the Internet, may be analyzed to reply intelligence questions. These resources are vast and powerful beyond imagination. What’s more, it’s free so long as you have a solution to extract and use it.
So this free resource has the potential to alleviate many of the problems of frugal entrepreneurs. The examples below show how OSINT may also help startups thrive in a demanding market.
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Market research: You can learn a lot about consumers in specific markets by collecting OSINT about e-commerce – for example, which products sell the fastest. Additionally, OSINT provides valuable information about competition in these markets. For example, you’ll be able to predict your competitors’ plans based on job advertisements for individual specialists and in specific regions.
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Identification of opportunities on the labor market: Following labor market developments through open online sources can even boost your headhunting efforts. In this case, automatic monitoring shall be the best solution. It means that you can discover about layoffs when they are reported or even rumored.
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Customizing your marketing and pricing strategies: Digital commerce is extremely dynamic. Both customers and competitors may act and react in unexpected ways. OSINT means that you can collect real-time insights and immediately adapt your practices. For example, you’ll be able to change your prices to supply higher deals than your competitors.
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Risk navigation: OSINT helps you track reports of cyber attacks and threats and improve cybersecurity. Additionally, you need to use software tools to trace international regulations and repeatedly check for data leaks that will impact you and your customers.
Achieving all this without inflating costs will allow some startups to face out when presenting their case to investors.
How to effectively obtain OSINT?
The Internet is the world’s largest source of data. Manually collecting OSINT from the Internet is possible, but requires time and staff. Early-stage startups often have neither. Even if they determine to spend some time browsing web sites and reporting on competitor prices or the latest technological advances, the results is probably not very accurate. They also often appear too late to take motion.
Therefore, the only solution to obtain OSINT is through automatic Internet data extraction. Known as web scraping, this method uses proxy servers and advanced software tools to immediately collect large amounts of publicly available data. Real-time data, collected inside budget, is exactly what firms have to survive and thrive in the still quite turbulent and ever-fast-changing tech startup market.
Today’s big data landscape is sometimes in comparison with the gold rush of the nineteenth century. Gold was available on public lands to anyone who could find it and take it. Another valuable commodity, data, is also in the public domain, giving everyone an equal opportunity to make use of it.
However, unlike gold, the same information stays where it is, even if someone extracts it. However, time is still of the essence because, unlike gold, data depreciates over time and can quickly turn out to be worthless. Therefore, the race to be the first to succeed in the resources and make the most of them is still on. Startups that use OSINT consistently and effectively will have a strong advantage when competing for growth opportunities in times of cautious funding.