On creating value

Perfectionism has held me back many times: missed deadlines, misunderstandings and above all missed opportunities. Last year I took the fight to perfectionism and I learned a few valuable lessons about building products and OSINT.

In research and data analytics the key is to create value however small and then deploy it before iterating.

I learned that your features, investigations, and ideas will never be perfect and that those who take an interest are not the ones who care if they are perfect.

I felt stuck building front end for my app Know Your Business. I wanted it to be perfect. When I deployed it as an API instead I was able to deliver value fast and in smaller chunks.

Value creates momentum and this is true for OSINT investigators.

At OSINT for Ukraine we envisioned building an AI model from thousands of satellite images. Ten images and a jupyter notebook should get us on our feet.

Creating value is similar in OSINT as it is in software development.

When I investigated the owners of Yi Peng 3 and I promised to keep the scope narrow and cut my losses if data was scarce. Today more than 1,000 people have read the investigation.

My goal this year is to create value that builds momentum and to escape the trappings of wanting it to be "perfect".

​https://albintouma.com​
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​