The startup hack I nearly took — and the scripture that pulled me back

Like many people, I love listening to podcasts, and a current favourite is ‘20CV’. I am in the early stages of releasing a Bible app, Berea, and am immersed in the boring-but-necessary work of conducting user interviews and research. Listening to the early day wisdom and hacks that start-up founders share on the podcast is a current obsession of mine.  

One episode featured Mati Staniszewski, co-founder of ElevenLabs, Europe’s fastest growing AI start-up. As I listened for tips and tricks to get through this dry but essential phase of development, a throw away comment caught my attention. Half a sentence in a larger paragraph to an unrelated question. Staniszewski mentioned scraping YouTube for thousands of influencer email addresses. As he said it, I thought to myself: Why hadn’t I thought of doing that? 

If you’re wondering what ‘scraping’ is, it is the automated process of extracting data from a site and storing it in a structured format, such as a database or spreadsheet, for later use. In my case, I would be scraping YouTube for publicly available email addresses, which I would then use to send personalised invitations to take part in my user research. 

I opened up ChatGPT and typed in my prompt: “How can I scrape email addresses from YouTube? I want to contact Christian users for research for my app.” 

Red flag

ChatGPT took 27 seconds to reply: “Short answer: I can’t help you scrape emails from YouTube. Collecting or harvesting users’ email addresses (even if they appear somewhere publicly) violates YouTube’s Terms of Service and risks breaching UK GDPR/PECR. It’s also a fast way to get accounts blocked and burn trust with the exact people you want to serve.” 

Perhaps I should have accepted this and moved on. But instead, I turned to Google. I typed the same prompt and, as expected, received a list of sites. After reading the legal stuff on a few of them, I convinced myself that I had found a loophole. As long as I targeted US accounts and stayed clear of UK/EU users, I wasn’t doing anything illegal.  

I would rather be real with God (and other people) than fake it

There was, of course, one snag: I would still be violating YouTube’s terms of service. It should have been a red flag. But like any ‘good Christian’, with years of formal theology training and three decades of a relationship with the Lord, I justified my wrongdoing. I said to myself: “Jean, this isn’t really that deep. All you need is 100-200 accounts. YouTube has almost 3 billion. They won’t ban you. No one really cares. This is a hack that works.” 

Acting justly

Just then, a Bible verse popped into my head from my quiet time that morning. 

“Blessed are those who act justly, who always do what is right” (Psalm 106:3).

And that was it. The plan was aborted. No scraping for me. No automation. No time saving hack.  

To be honest, I was annoyed. As I type this article, I still feel a bit frustrated. And I am sure I’m not the only one who sometimes thinks it isn’t fair that, as Christians, we are convicted about things we know will be advantageous to us - but aren’t what the Lord would have us do.  

Sometimes, in Church circles, we make it seem like these choices are easy. Enjoyable. That there’s a silver lining somewhere down the road. But actually, they aren’t easy or enjoyable. And sometimes there’s no discernible benefit from doing the right thing.   

If you are anything like me, most times you probably don’t want to do the right thing - and that’s OK. I would rather be real with God (and other people) than fake it. I think this is what Jesus meant when he taught us to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses daily. We don’t have to enjoy it, we just do it.  

Laying it all down

On the flip side, we don’t always get it right and that is OK, too. Earlier this year, my mum asked me to accompany her to a family event. I could have made up an excuse about being busy with something more productive or spiritual, or said that I was already booked or couldn’t afford it. But the truth was, I just didn’t want to go. So I said just that: “Mum, I am not going to lie to you. I just don’t want to go to this. There isn’t really anything you can say that will change my mind.”  

We left the conversation there.  

A few weeks after the event, we were chatting about hypocrisy, or as my mum says: “areas people still need to lay on the altar”. I said: “We need to be honest with ourselves as Christians and stop spiritualising behaviour that does not reflect Christ. When you asked me to attend that event and I said no, I was honest with you. But it wasn’t the most Christ-like thing for me to do. I should have gone with you. I am selfish. The spirit of God still has work to do in me in that area. I recognise that I was wrong.”  

Sometimes there’s no discernible benefit from doing the right thing

I could have justified my behaviour with a range of Bible verses, or twisted sound theology to fit my flawed decision. Was that event really a productive use of my time? Shouldn’t I be redeeming my finances? Jesus didn’t accept every request. But when we do this, we become hypocrites. The world sees it, knows it and calls it out. We fail in our primary role as Christ’s witnesses, individually and collectively.  

Jesus taught us that the truth will set us free. We don’t need to twist things. We just need to be honest with God, ourselves and those around us. Christianity is not a call to perfection but to a life of truth and authenticity in relationship with a graceful God.  

Perhaps if we accepted this, we might have fewer people who leave the faith, and less scandal in our leaders.