In this solo commentary, the speaker recounts being scammed by a fake Instagram advertisement for a premium cycling brand, describing the hassle of declined credit cards and the subsequent realization that Meta platforms are rife with fraudulent ads. He references a Wall Street Journal article that later confirmed the prevalence of such scams, using the two pieces of information to illustrate a broader entrepreneurial lesson: early, obscure insights are far more valuable than widely known facts. He contrasts his own delayed awareness with the approach of his friend Chris Backe, a serial founder who sold a company directly to Elon Musk’s X. Chris avoids mainstream media, instead gathering unique, under‑the‑radar data points by talking to many people, seeking “secret” insights that could seed new businesses. The speaker argues that entrepreneurs should adopt an “information diet” focused on uncovering these rare insights—ideally being the only person who knows them—rather than relying on popular news sources. He concludes with a call for comments, mentions the hot weather in San Antonio, and promotes his weekly email newsletter for more insights.
Chapters
So today this article from the Wall Street Journal showed up, and I'll put a link to it right here. It basically talked about how the Meta platform is getting totally overwhelmed by scams and that sort of thing. And, uh, it reminded me of something that happened to me, and it reminded me of something pretty important in business, is, uh, a lesson I'll talk about in this video. So, uh, let's jump into the story. So about a year ago, I started to shop online cuz I saw an ad on Instagram. Basically, out on Instagram was one of my favorite brands for cycling gear of stuff that I really liked as a premium brand, uh, was showing like an 80-90% sale off, like really, really good deals. And, you know, as you can imagine, I clicked on it and I went to a website that looked pretty legit and I put in my credit card and the credit card said, "Oh, that's declined, try another credit card." So I put in a second credit card and then I started to figure out, oh, This is not legit. And I went and looked at the website and look, I have a freaking computer science degree. I've worked in tech for like 30 years. I should not be getting scammed or phished by stuff like this. But yeah, it happens to the worst of us or the best of us, depending on how you think about it. And of course I have to go spend the next half hour going through and calling my credit card company and getting them to turn off those credit card numbers. It sucked. Fast forward a year later, you see this Wall Street Journal article come out and talks about how Meta platforms are full of all these scammy ads and people running scams on them, and they're finally having to do something about it. And the reality is, like, I knew that was the case a year ago. And look, these are the same pieces of information, like knowing that Meta is full of scams, just learned at different times. And if you think about, okay, from an entrepreneur standpoint, which of those two pieces of information could have actually been useful if I wanted to start a business or figure out some sort of angle around them? Well, it turns out it's the stuff that only I knew or a few people knew a year ago. That was the time to go figure out ways to help brands potentially get around these kind of scams or customers to have a browser plugin where they could like avoid getting scammed like I did. The idea is that information like that and insights like that are useful when a few people know them or only you know them, not when everybody knows them. Because now if I was to go try to launch one of those business ideas based on this particular insight, which is not really much of an insight anymore because everybody reads the Wall Street Journal, like, there's not going to be much opportunity there. And right now I'm watching one of my friends, Chris Backe, who's a great guy. He's built a couple companies. He sold the last one to Elon Musk's X and sold it to Elon personally. It's kind of cool. He's going out after selling his last two companies and trying to kind of figure out what his next idea is. And Chris is not going out and reading the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, uh, to figure out these kind of ideas. In fact, he's pretty much like totally ignoring kind of mainstream publications and mainstream ideas. Heck, I asked him the other day who the name of a host was on ESPN, kind of a mass market media type thing. And he was like, ESPN, like I don't watch that crap. What I'm seeing Chris do now that is super genius to find his next idea is he's going around and just visiting with a lot of people. And what he's looking for are pieces of information that look a lot more like the insight I had looking at Meta ads a year ago when I experienced kind of that secret of learning that there were a bunch of scams there by getting scammed. Like, he's focused on that kind of stuff and talking to a lot of people, not necessarily to understand their potential secrets, but understand what insights or data points that not many people know that potentially could turn into great business ideas for him. I think in the end, this insight that kind of these things that kind of feel like secrets are not widely known insights into kind of situations or markets are why guys like Chris keep building like amazing businesses and why a lot of folks who are just like looking in the newspaper or expecting using the television to tell them a good idea tend to not come up with very good ideas to pursue. And so I think this is the big takeaway from all this, which is if you're looking for an idea to pursue or a business to start, really you should be on an information diet. You should be doing like Chris and looking for things that are gonna be unique insights that maybe only you know. Maybe you're the only person in the world that has this insight and you can build a business around it. And, uh, that's the formula. Much better than reading the Wall Street Journal, which you can leave to people like me who are just catching up a year later after everybody else already knew the thing was happening. All right, that's what I think about finding great business ideas. Let me know what you think in the comments below. And stay cool, it's getting hot here in San Antonio. And if you want to hear more from me, I send a weekly email with insights. Here's the link right here. Please subscribe and it'd make me very happy. See ya.
