Business surface intelligence for UK companies

The founder

Observes is built by Nathan, its founder. He writes and reviews every page on this site and is also the single human reviewer in the measurement method used to test the resolver: the person who labels the samples it is scored against without seeing what the resolver produced.

Background

I have spent around 25 years building and marketing internet businesses, much of that in UK telecoms and technology. My work has involved turning messy technical and commercial information into products people can actually find, compare and use.

Observes grew out of a more specific problem: reliably connecting a real business to the website it actually operates. What looked simple at first turned out to be an identity problem involving trading names, group companies, old domains, redirects, franchises and sites that disclose very little about the legal entity behind them.

Why Observes exists

A great deal of company data is acted on first and questioned later. A business is matched to a website, a risk score is attached to it, or a commercial decision is made, but it can be surprisingly difficult afterwards to answer a basic question: why do we believe these two things belong together?

I wanted Observes to work the other way round. A relationship should exist because there is evidence for it, that evidence should be attached to the answer, and the date it was observed should be part of the record. If the evidence is not strong enough, the better answer is to say that we do not yet know.

That principle is the foundation of the company: build data that can survive being questioned.

How this site is written

Every guide on this site is written from the legislation or official guidance it cites, checked against the source on the date shown on the page, and reviewed before it is published.

Nothing on the site states a figure about Observes' own performance unless it has passed through the documented measurement method and received a recorded verdict. Where that measurement does not yet exist, the page says so.

The same principle applies to the product. Observes separates what has been observed, what can be proved, and what remains uncertain rather than presenting all three as if they were the same thing.

Contact

The contact page lists the relevant addresses. Nathan reads the general enquiries address himself.

Written by Nathan. Last reviewed 9 October 2026.