In this exclusive interview, we dive into the remarkable journey of Nathaniel Fried, co-founder of TurgenSec, a pioneering company specializing in national security and information security. From his early life in Surrey, England, to his ventures into the world of online gaming and failed businesses, Nathaniel’s path eventually led him to co-found TurgenSec, where he and his team revolutionized the field of OSINT (open source intelligence) collection and analysis. Nathaniel shares the story behind the birth of TurgenSec, their greatest achievements, and the challenges they faced as young founders in the industry. NATHANIEL FRIED Can you tell us a little bit about your early life and education? I grew up in beautiful Surrey, an area of rolling hills and suspicious properties owned by Russian oligarchs, just south of London. I was an average student with an addictive personality, more interested in maxing out my RuneScape account than getting high grades. I soon stumbled into the darker side of online gaming, immersing myself in the underground marketplaces of real word trading, botting (coding a program to play the game 12 hours a day so you didn’t have to) and account trading for real-world money. My insatiable desire to be the best at a meaningless online game soon got me in real-world trouble when credential misuse and hacking entered my skillset. Luckily, this was about the time I hit the angsty stage of growing up, where you begin to find other things to fill your time. I soon pivoted into trying (and spectacularly failing), at selling phone cases on eBay. Despite convincing my father to bulk purchase 400 cases, I couldn’t shift them. This didn’t discourage me, and I was soon on to my next idea. After a long line of failed businesses, I headed off to King’s College London to study Human Geography, where I promptly did not study anything and worked late into the night on my current business, an affiliate website that provided scathing (often unnecessarily harsh) reviews on things I could find lying around my and my friends’ university accommodation. Unsurprisingly, when you provide negative reviews, people don’t click through the affiliate link to purchase the item. So that idea died pretty pronto. It was around this time I met my TurgenSec co-founder in one of the darker parts of in the internet that I liked to frequent in those days. We worked together on a variety of projects (one of them spinning off to become a successful publishing company currently up for sale for £2m, built on the thesis of taking OSINT - open source intelligence - and turning it into valuable user content). My cofounder was an extremely talented developer with a long track record in building exceptional OSINT tooling. I did what any rational person would have done, I took every penny I had at the time, including my university maintenance loan and gave it to him to pre-seed fund TurgenSec. What gave you the idea to start Turgensec? TurgenSec was founded on the principle that my co-founder and myself could find national security and information security applications for bulk OSINT collection and analysis. We essentially started off as an R&D shop trying cool and exciting new www.ceotodaymagazine.com 39 Co-Founder of TurgenSec
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