What happens, in full
You are considering a partnership and you want two things that normally come from two different places: a real picture of the company, and someone who will tell you the truth about it.
So you ask for both in one prompt. Who runs it, who backs it, who their partners and clients are, any red flags. And then: who in my network is connected to any of those companies, and who can give me a warm and honest read.
What O does
This is a long run, and it does the public half first. It researches across many sources and assembles the organisation: the CEO, management tenure, the board with references attached, who backs it, whether it is listed, the key partners and board-level connections, and the sibling or parent companies that sit around it.
Then it turns to your side, and looks through your network and your team's for people attached to any of those companies.
What comes back
The company brief, cited, with the risk areas named rather than implied.
And then the part that decides what you do next: not one way in, but several. A first-degree connection who has been inside since 2012. A contact at a company whose board chairman overlaps with theirs. Someone who worked where the CEO now sits on the board.
Each one is a different kind of read. One can tell you how it works inside, one can tell you how they deal with partners, one can tell you what the CEO is like to work with.
Why this is the hard half
Any research tool can assemble the public record. Knowing which three people out of your several thousand can speak to it honestly requires something that holds your side of the relationship as well as theirs.