A three-question smoke filter
Social media doesn't create personality, it amplifies it. If you're a serious person, it amplifies that. If you're a con artist, it amplifies that too. And in a feed full of AI videos, cloned carousels and "founders" who have never billed a single euro, your only job as a viewer (and as a buyer, and as an investor, and as a partner) is to filter.
My rule, three questions before you believe anyone on the internet:
What is verifiable? Public accounts, a product you can touch, customers you can call, employees on LinkedIn who have been there more than 6 months. If it's all "trust me", run.
Who pays them? If they live off selling the course on how to build the business they claim to have, the business is the course. That's all there is to it.
What do the people who worked with them say? Two 15-minute calls to former partners, former employees or former clients will save you months of grief. And those calls, if you ask properly, can always be arranged.
This play isn't optional. It's basic hygiene in 2026.
What I learned
For years I swallowed the narrative that you had to "project more" to play the game. That if everyone else inflates, so should you. That it's marketing.
My honest conclusion after a decade in this: whoever inflates always ends up paying for it. Sometimes it takes 2 years, sometimes 8, but the bill arrives. And when it does, it doesn't come alone — it takes down the people who trusted them.
The most profitable personal brand in the long run is the boringly honest one. The one that reports the real number, the bad month, the client who left. Not because it's pretty, but because it's the only thing that truly compounds: trust.
On the radar
- EY hires six professionals from Alvarez and Marsal to strengthen private equity. The Big Four have been taking ground from the boutiques for years. Talent follows the mandate, not the logo.
- Solum Partners, a Harvard-linked agricultural fund, is in talks to buy Projar. Patient university money entering Spanish agriculture. Careful — there's a wave there almost nobody is watching.
- Bankinter accelerates lending in Ireland and Portugal, now its key foreign markets. While we argue here about the tax of the month, they grow abroad. Diversifying geography isn't a luxury, it's survival.
- Liber turns Barcelona into the centre of Spanish-language publishing with 250 exhibitors. The Spanish-language book market is still brutal and silent. Nobody talks about it, everybody bills.
The actionable advice
Today, before you close the laptop, do this: take the 5 people you most admire in your professional feed. Look their company up in the companies register (or your country's equivalent). Check filed accounts, real headcount and years trading. In 20 minutes you'll recalibrate your sense of what "success" looks like, and you'll sleep better tonight.
Behind VIVIO
Everything above is exactly the problem VIVIO is trying to solve in its vertical. In influencer marketing, the lying is systemic: bought followers, inflated engagement, case studies nobody can audit.
My rule building product in this sector is simple: if it isn't verifiable, it isn't worth anything. Metrics you can cross-check, results you can audit, creators you can validate by data rather than vibes. The industry has spent years running on pretty PDFs and screenshots. That's ending.
The next cycle of influencer marketing will be won by the platforms that treat data the way a CFO treats it, not the way a creative agency does.
This is a version of what I send every week, unfiltered, in my newsletter "Eso no fue suerte". If you want the rest, subscribe for free.