Every company leaves a paper trail. The trick is knowing where to look.

Company research is one of the most common OSINT tasks — for competitive intelligence, due diligence, investigations, or sales prospecting.

Start with the legal entity

• **Company registers**: ASIC (Australia), Companies House (UK), SEC (US), OpenCorporates (global).
• **Business registration numbers**: ABN, ACN, EIN, VAT — search these for associated entities.
• **Trading names**: A company may operate under multiple trading names. Search all of them.

Leadership and people

• **LinkedIn**: Search for current and former employees. Look for job titles that reveal structure.
• **Crunchbase**: Funding, founding dates, investor information.
• **Zoominfo / Apollo**: Contact data (often a paid tier, but free tiers provide limited useful data).
• **Board members**: Search for directors on company registry sites.

Financial health signals

• **Annual reports**: Public companies file these. Look for revenue trends, risk factors, and subsidiary mentions.
• **News mentions**: Search for recent funding rounds, layoffs, acquisitions.
• **Job postings**: Rapid hiring suggests growth; hiring freezes suggest trouble.
• **Glassdoor / Indeed**: Employee reviews — biased but useful for culture and leadership signals.

A company that has been registered for 10 years with no website, no LinkedIn, and no reviews may be a shelf company. That is itself a finding.