#83: EXCLUSIVE — The $120K/Mo Faceless Founders

I wake up to my email inbox completely flooded with angry users. Our site was completely broken. You've ripped us off.

Scammers.

You're a bunch of scammers. What are you doing? You're taking my money. Give me my money back. But I'm excited at this time because I'm like, we have users. People want this. This is great.

Let's blow up the internet.

From the basement to the higher net. Scroll and tap in there. We ain't done yet. Let's blow up the internet.

You guys run a 7-figure software, nobody has heard of you, and you've wanted it that way. You have been purposely ghosts. So who the fuck are you guys? Are you even real, or are you like an enigma?

We're AI avatars, yeah.

You can buy us.

Which is a service that we offer. We, yeah, you know, we have that on our website.

We're jumping right into the sales pitch.

We come with the platform, actually.

Oh, wow. That'd be a nice feature, like a Palantir kind of thing, services software.

Yeah, yeah.

I like it.

I don't even know what Palantir does to be honest.

Nobody knows what Palantir does. That's the beauty of it. So who are you guys? Do you want to tell the world a little bit?

Sure. Yeah. So I had been trying to be in the public for actually a while. So I started out as an artist and songwriter, producer. So very much going public with social media in terms of posting music and trying to create a name for myself out there. Through that, there was a ton of challenges with music, so I learned everything I could about digital marketing and as far as advertising online with music. I took the application for what it normally was for businesses and applied it to my songs. And for a very low budget, it took it to close to a million streams and just thousands of like really engaged fans. So friends of mine were like, hey, is this something you could do for me? And that turned into my first business, music marketing agency. And then over time, just loved building software and automating tools and wanted to dive more into SaaS and ultimately, honestly, try to remove myself as much from the service side as possible so that I can scale.

Understood. Understood completely. And Alex, you first made your first dollar when you were 4, I think?

A little older than that, maybe 12, but I had a YouTube channel where I did visual effects videos. I was really inspired by like Freddie Wong, Corridor Digital, those guys. I primarily was in film and I still am in film. I have an animation studio where we do a lot of work for Marvel. But yeah, I always had loved software. Like my first actual job was an internship at Marvel and I was a web dev intern. So I'd always had one foot in film, one foot in tech. And so obviously the company that we decide to start involves both film and tech.

Yeah, that's what I love about all three of us as founders is we are artsy motherfuckers, but also software founders, you know, so faceless.

I think they go hand in hand, honestly.

Oh, I think they do.

Because there's so much resourcefulness in being a creative.

Yes.

And you have to apply that to being a founder as well. They go, they go well together.

Also, just having multiple skills is important as a founder. Like Jacob and I, when we started, we were a two-person team, so we were each doing a lot. You know, normally if you're, you know, some VC-backed company, you'll have, you know, one employee for each task. Whereas we were doing, you know, everything. Everything.

Yeah, 100%. We're both scrappy.

Yeah.

Bootstrapped as fuck. Alex is the man behind all my viral subway comedy videos. He was the one filming all those. And we're working on a new show together, too. Yeah. Alex was also behind a lot of Tim Dillon's work as well.

Yeah, I directed a lot of sketches for Tim. I used to run his website. I made the fake business logo, which nobody knows, but that—

I guess as well.

Yeah, I was on that show a few times. I was the first guest on his, his old podcast.

And so what I find so cool is like software, art, you could do both. And even at the same time, like, yeah, Alex, you know, Alex and I are texting at 2 a.m., right? And he's like, oh, sorry, I'm in the middle of writing, writing a new screenplay. And then he's back to software and I'm the same way. Yeah. And you could do All of it. So I wanna jump into early days of Faceless.video, your guys' software. Let's talk ideation and also how'd you just like get started building it. I don't even know the story of this actually. I'm with Alex every day.

Our day one story's good.

Well, we gotta backtrack to that.

I was gonna say, let's do idea first.

Aren't these AI avatars realistic, guys?

It's pretty, it's getting advanced now. It's getting advanced.

No, no, you guys.

No, I know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're getting the technology pretty good now.

Oh my God, they're sentient too.

Be expressive when he speaks.

I'm aware of myself. Yeah.

Wow.

So what's the day one story? Let's hear it.

So I had been building apps for about 3 years and this is just because I have loved this. I felt like I was finally being Jimmy Neutron and able to just like build my world based on what I wanted. And I had reconnected, not that we never really disconnected, but we reconnected, uh, somewhat recently, like as I was doing this. And I, I just let Alex know that I'm building stuff. So, you know, if ever you got something, I'm here. And that was actually a big part of what I did for a while was just outsource a little bit of the ideation to smart people like Alex. And then at some point he called me with an idea and he was like, hey, we should build something to automate faceless channels for the two of us.

Because I wanted to start a faceless channel was the first thing, because I, as you know, I'm always in Adobe Premiere. I'm always editing. And the editing that was required to make faceless videos was so simple in a way. And I was just thinking that, you know, I know I knew what APIs were out there. I knew what we could do. So I just had the idea. I was like, maybe let's make an internal tool for ourselves that can just generate these videos and I can handle a lot of the more kind of like artistic and editing side. And Jacob could handle more of the actual dev side of things.

And I remember at the time you wanted to build like for us to have just like 1,000 basis channels for the two of us.

Yeah.

And it was a cool idea. But since I had already been so much in like this building for apps, building for scale kind of mindset, I think it just shifted to, hey, let's build this for others.

Jacob was like, other people would want to do this. So yeah, you're, you're probably right.

Yeah, 100%. Same thing with Memelord where I built it for myself to find better memes, the newest memes, and like be first. I wanted to be first, the first guy. And, and then I wanted just a better tool because I was pissed off. And then it's like you build something for yourself and then because you're not that unique, you know, you guys are unique, we're unique people, but like there's a lot of us out there who have similar wants, similar desires, who find the same things funny, who like, you know, find the same things interesting. Like you're able to sell it. But when you build for yourself as a customer, I don't know, I find the growth a lot faster. Like I'm sure you guys feel the same way.

Well, it's because you, if you are the customer, you know exactly what the customer wants and you're obsessed.

And the interesting thing is that this, this had never existed before.

Yeah.

Automating Faces channels did not exist before Faces Video. So we also, as from that customer mindset, had to build this with UX in mind that was for us.

We had no touchpoints really. We couldn't kind of copy someone like people have copied us since.

Yeah.

You know, quite a few.

Yeah, of course.

Many, many.

Yeah. You know, it kind of validates the idea.

Yeah, it validates the idea. But we were going in blind pretty much.

Yeah. Yeah.

Including pricing. Like we, we set the pricing model for what has become this market of automated faceless channels. And it was— I kind of do remember doing this. It was very arbitrary.

I know.

I remember we were deciding to do it. It was so arbitrary. $29.99.

Dude, all of pricing is arbitrary. My pricing is $6.9 and $42.0. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was at this conference or event and somebody asked me, they're like, how do you come up with your pricing? Like, what's the exact science? Did you test it? I was like, dude, it's like meme numbers. Like, have you— like, it's—

if they didn't know that from the numbers.

It's really—

$69.420.

It's really a commentary on like pricing is bullshit. Like, price, like, you know, you could just make it up.

Of course, like, costs are a part of everything. Yeah, of course. And you keep that in mind. But for the most part, yeah, like, you just kind of set it based on what makes sense and what's healthy for your business.

Jacob and I were just thinking, like, how much would we pay for this? And then we set it at that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and you guys have had some crazy success stories too of videos on Faceless going massive viral. Like, your users.

Sometimes our users email us and then we'll put their video on the homepage if they let us.

Dude, it's such a good feeling to have that. I have that with Memelords where You know, somebody makes a meme on my software and now, and it goes viral. It's like, let's go. Like, alright, let's fucking go.

It's the best, dude.

It's a weird feeling when they have one that goes more viral than me. 'Cause like, I'm like, you guys rock.

I'm kind of responsible for that, but like, it's you. I'll give you the credit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. I love it. So let's talk growth of the software. So you come up with Faceless.video, you guys build it. You are secretive, ghosts. You might be AI avatars yourself. Unsure.

We don't know.

How did you get the first customers? Zero to one, you know, customers, the first, first few. Yeah. And then scaling it like madmen. And for reference, Alex and I, we go to this coffee shop all the time and nonstop for like the first 6, 12 months, it's Alex just emailing back and forth like a madman. Customer support, customer support.

So I did our customer support for a while.

I still do.

Like I said, we did absolutely everything.

Yeah.

Day 1. So Jacob and I were— I think I was with you actually. We were at, um, we were at French Roast.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, um, I—

Do you want to talk about friends and family?

Oh, did you get friends and family signed up first?

Jacob was mad at me at the very beginning.

I was really mad at Alex.

Jacob was really mad. You can, you can explain it.

What happened? Okay. So, so I had been coming from this perspective of building apps, validate before you build, before. I spend 3 months building this thing.

That's not my perspective.

No, no, of course it's not. We go on the subway and make stupid videos.

My perspective is vibes. Like, I'm like, if I think— no, I'm serious. I'm like, if I think this is a good idea and that people will want it, I'm confident in that. And so I'll give it a shot. I don't think that you have to validate because if you try to validate before you launch, you don't have a product when everyone's discovering you.

That sounds good in theory, except when I— when you built 5 or 6 products that you thought were going to work and they didn't, you start to get Like, I've had my fair share of failures, but, you know.

Yeah, yeah, I think I agree with that. Like, I remember, so Alex and I did the Man on the Street as a Service. Yeah, right. I just wrote that in a tweet. Like, I was with Shane, you know, our mutual friend, and, uh, I just started off a tweet trailer for—

there's a lot of, a lot of truth in what you're saying, and I think we've learned that for sure.

I didn't want people to discover our software through some sort of promotion and then have no way of actually subscribing, because if you put your email onto an email list Yeah. You know, join the waitlist.

Join the waitlist. Oh, you're fucked.

You get an email 3 months, 4 months later.

Yeah.

You don't care anymore.

You don't care.

It makes sense for MVPs to be accessible right away.

And now faster than ever with no-code, AI, all that stuff. There's no reason to have a waitlist.

Right. Which we can definitely talk about later.

We're on Bubble.

Yeah. But anyways, let's, let's jump back into first customers.

So what happened was I was of this mindset of Alex, while I'm building this thing for 3 months, and you were obviously a part of that too. So, but while, while we're building this, you know, Can you try to validate this a little bit? See if people want this. And of course there already was a trend of creating faceless content, so that existed. But Alex's job was to get users at that time before the, before the thing was launched. So he said, okay, I got 3 people. Like we're, we're good. And I was like, 3 people's great. Look, if 3 people can do it, that means 300 people might want this too. So we launch and we, the, and the site is live and 3 people sign up. And I was like, Alex, like you did it. And then I'm looking at the name and the last name is Steinberg.

And I was like, okay, let me defend myself here. And I was like, Alex, I didn't—

your mom.

First of all, it was my mom. My mom was user 1.

And then he said, good, good. And then he said, yeah, yeah, no, the 3 users is my mom, my cousin, and like my other cousin.

And I was like, Asher.

No, no, it was not. It was my cousin Andrew.

Yo, imagine—

shout out Andrew.

Imagine Asher running some like accounts on like old Chinese languages or something.

Yeah, my cousin is a genius prodigy and he studies ancient languages. Mongolian, I think he told me last week. It was, uh, I think it was Sumerian.

I don't know. Yeah.

But, but besides, that's besides the point. But I don't know. I think that's maybe the point.

Maybe that is. Yeah.

So let's, let's change up what this podcast is only about Asher.

Yeah.

Um, but on day one, I didn't think that Jacob's concept of trying to get users before we started necessarily—

don't give me the credit.

Listen, I didn't think it mattered. I thought we were going to do a marketing push and then see if people wanted to sign up. And so that's what we ended up doing.

I think you did it in response to me being mad a little bit.

No, I was planning on doing a marketing pitch before.

That's good co-founders though. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We gotta push each other.

I was like, Alex, who, why, I thought we had 3 real people.

Not that your family's not real, but I didn't think that 3 people's not enough.

Yeah, yeah.

No, no, of course not.

Growing by hand isn't enough.

But I was like, oh man, the people that I thought were gonna sign up were just your family, so no one actually really wants this. So, now you go ahead, Alex.

Okay, so the first thing we did to promote our software was I reached out to, honestly, Twitter influencers, and, you know, we had someone write a thread for like $200, and the thread went absolutely viral. I think it had hundreds of thousands of impressions.

300,000 impressions.

300,000 impressions. And I think she posted it overnight. So I'm in New York, so—

Yeah, she was overseas, right?

She was overseas. So she posted it during the nighttime in my time zone. I wake up to my email inbox completely flooded with angry users because our site was completely broken. They're like, "You've ripped us off." Scammers. "You're a bunch of scammers. What are you doing? You're taking my money. Give me my money back." But I'm excited at this time because I'm like, "We have users! People want this! This is great!" But I'm also freaking out because it feels personal because they're coming directly to me, and obviously, you know, we made the software. I didn't think we were gonna get sued, but I was, I was so excited and nervous at the same time. And I'm texting Jacob who is in California.

Yeah.

So Jacob's in LA sleeping. I woke up very early for some reason. I woke up at 7:00 AM, which is normally, you know, I wake up later than that usually, but I'm like, Jacob, wake up now.

Wake up now.

Wake up now.

We are— you notify anyway. Yeah, exactly.

You have to serve the notify anyway. Was— didn't work on this guy.

No, no. I'm on sleep mode.

I'm like, I, I'm sleeping.

Yeah. Yeah. You look well rested. Yeah.

Really? Do I? Oh, thanks.

AI avatars are advancing.

You know, it's, it's all the, the post processing.

But yeah, and the makeup that he's got.

Yeah. But that was the most, uh, scary and exciting day of maybe all of this still.

I thought it was a great day.

It was an incredible— I, I was resting easy even though everybody was so mad. I was like, validated.

Yeah, we're good.

Like, we know people want this. And exactly, something I'd never experienced before.

What's so cool is you guys have totally just doubled down on your wins, you know. Uh, I talk about this all the time, is like, how do you validate a growth experiment? Well, if it works once, then you double the down.

Exactly.

If it doesn't work, you double the fuck back.

You know, you guys have—

I don't know how many influencers are on your fucking payroll, but a lot, at least from what I understand. And you guys, uh, you've done a great job organizing it all. Like, Alex has, you know, top secret spreadsheets. You know, he is, he is the man with the, the influencer spreadsheets that, uh, you know, I haven't even seen them. Yeah, yeah, dude, it's top secret.

I mean, it's more like a Notes app.

Only— the only thing more secret might be your Japan itinerary, which was pretty impressive. That was a great trip, dude. That was a very impressive notion as well. Yeah. So let's talk, you know, paying influencers, figuring out pricing, because like something that we've talked about a lot is like, how do you track how much these influencers are bringing? And sometimes they don't have the link in their bio. Sometimes it's okay and it's vibes, right? Sometimes it's like, does number go up this month, right?

It was a vibe that stressed me out a lot. There's a solution.

Yeah, it stressed Jacob out more than it stressed me out.

Yeah, because I Because you're vibes, bro.

I'm vibes. He's data.

But we need—

you need both.

You need vibes and data. It's true. So essentially, we, we'd also seen a lot of organic virality because once we had one thread do well, people copied the thread and then people started making videos. And then Jacob had the great idea to include attribution on our website. So when people sign up, it's just a simple question. Where did you find us? And that has been so helpful for us because We don't care about link in bio. We don't care about ManyChat as much as other people do because we have, honestly, we have a great domain name, faceless.video, and it's very simple for people to understand. And so, we can just have it be said in the video. So, they can say, "Go to faceless.video," and people will go to faceless.video. It's very—

Which creates an issue for attribution.

Which creates an issue for attribution, but it also creates, you know, there is an upside to it, which is that people will just go to our site from a video.

Customer attribution is all kind of vibes and a little— it's like you could only do it so much. And then a certain point I'm seeing it and I've talked to a lot of people about this who run big software is like at some point it's just like vibes, you know?

Really? I would think it's the opposite.

No, I think— I mean, maybe at a certain scale when you have like a growth engineer and you have somebody whose like job is just like attribution, attribution, attribution, but like You know, there are some times where, how do you know? Like, okay, this person searched it, but from what? Did they see it on TikTok and then Instagram and then they got an ad?

True.

Or did they see it in a newsletter or Jason Levin's YouTube and they forgot where they saw it and they marked it wrong? Yeah. Like, it is never perfect.

Yeah.

And that's why I think like you have to trust your gut on some things where like the data doesn't always back it up. Like, I didn't have the data to say that like LinkedIn was working necessarily.

Sure.

but I knew that like people were signing up via LinkedIn. I didn't have the data to say that Twitter was, you know, slapping, but, you know, TikTok wasn't. But like, you just like trust your gut on something.

Jacob built a very beautiful dashboard for us. Yeah.

Of what, the UTMs?

It's an internal dashboard.

It's an internal dashboard. It's not UTMs.

It's usernames. Yep.

It's just usernames.

Of Instagram usernames?

Of people who have referred to us, essentially.

Oh, nice. That's smart.

That's the influencer. But Yeah, because the issue with, with vibes, at least for me, where I would get stressed out is like, okay, what are we spending on if we don't know if it's working?

What are you spending on vibes?

We would know it's working fantastically.

We got a great return on it, but it's just, how can we optimize it a little bit further?

Oh, that's smart. I love that. I love that.

Well, we didn't know that we were getting more sales because we obviously were, we were just checking Stripe and we saw that, but we didn't know exactly where they were coming from. And one time we had a huge surge in sales, but I hadn't done— I hadn't launched any promos. So normally we know, like, if I launch a promo and then after our free— like our trial period is up, if we see a bump after that, then the promo worked. But there was, there was no promo that went live and we just went—

It's a very weird feeling when that happens in a good way. Like, it's like, oh shit, like something's working, but I don't know what.

So what it was, it was just an organic video that someone had made on Instagram. It was a few people really at the same time.

Yeah.

And then Jacob built the actual 'Hey, can you get an attribution dashboard from us?' And then we found all those accounts and then of course we doubled down with them.

Yeah, I love that. I'm gonna start doing that. I'm just gonna build a simple attribution thing. I already have it for like Twitter, Instagram, whatever, and the UTM, but not like asking the person, 'Where did you find me?' Right, 'cause the UTMs don't work if people are going to Facebook. Exactly, exactly.

That was our challenge.

That's the problem, yeah. I love that. I'm gonna start doing that, especially we're doubling down on Instagram and got a whole squad working on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So exciting things.

Well, the cool thing with Instagram is you can do the ManyChat solution.

And what is ManyChat? Tell the people.

Go ahead. You know this.

Sure. ManyChat is just, uh, it's like a piece of software that you can comment something on an Instagram video and then it'll automatically DM you a link. So if you see those videos where they're like, comment AI and we'll send you a link, that's ManyChat.

Wow.

The thing is for us, we didn't want to rely.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's also great for engagement. So we didn't want to rely on that though, just because the domain name. So. If we can.

It also doesn't work on TikTok or— It doesn't work on TikTok.

That's true.

Dude, let's talk TikTok. I remember when they almost banned it. Yeah. Alex was, you know, I would say panic attack.

I was very panicked.

24/7. Yeah. I think I saw you pee your pants at least once.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for telling that to everyone on the podcast.

Well, that's what the podcast is for. It's to be vulnerable, you know?

Okay, yeah, I didn't know that was— this was that kind of show.

This is a therapy show. This is not actually about software or marketing.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. So let's, let's talk the TikTok ban. I feel like you haven't thought about it much. We haven't talked about it much since.

Well, what the TikTok ban forced us to do was diversify our marketing strategy. And I'm actually kind of glad that we had the threat of a looming TikTok ban because it forced us to diversify and it ended up being great for us in the long run. So we still have TikTok, which is a great platform for promotions, but now we have a lot of other ones, right?

Yeah.

Platform perspective, I was very stressed trying to get other platforms to approve us for integration.

So I remember, so TikTok was about to get banned in the US, and then you're like, okay, I'm gonna pay some more TikTok influencers in Europe, but then I'm also going to double down on Instagram. Like, it was a very smart, calculated play.

Yeah, we were trying to go international because if TikTok was banned in the US, maybe it wouldn't be banned in other places. But then it was also like, what other platforms are there to do promotions on? So it just, it kind of was a slap in the face for us where we're like, we don't want to be reliant on just one platform, one thing. We should have, you know, we should have many.

Yeah. So what's, what's next for you guys? What do you think is like big for Faceless Video, like growing it this year?

We got a few things, but I think that kind of is a good segue as far as like diversifying too. Part of that, we are AI avatars and part of that is actually having AI avatars on the platform now. So, you know, that's one thing that we launched recently. It's appealing more to businesses.

Yeah, you guys look great.

Thank you. Yeah, this is a walking ad.

He's still in California, right?

I am actually in California, by the way. Oh, okay.

So am I. Yeah.

No, but we— so we launched a B2B feature for the site. So, you know, as far as like diversifying features, kind of like what you're saying for the promo strategy, from a product standpoint, that's also been of interest too. So having stickier retention, you know, with a more B2B angle, but also higher value and with the design to sell a product and sell or sell a service.

What I find so cool about right now, this moment in history, is that there are so many people working on cool AI models and we as software founders, all we need to do is just lock into the API and we're good. Like yesterday I added, uh, animation of memes so people make the meme and then they could animate it, right? I added clothing swapping, like face swapping. Like as soon as like whatever API comes, like you guys are using one, right? For the AI avatar. If some other one is better, you just switch APIs. That's it. Absolutely. So the, the value is getting, uh, you know, uh, extracted by the founders like us who, okay, let's just switch.

Who cares?

I'm not loyal to this one.

You know, you want to build on top of something to provide actual value.

But what's so sick though, is there are so many of them now. It's like countless, like, and what could have taken minimum $100,000 investment to build for you to do yourself. Yeah.

Yeah.

To build out avatars or just that.

You pay pennies.

Yeah.

You know, it's, it's crazy.

Yeah. And I think a lot of these API companies, like these companies that are making APIs are making really great products, but they're not making a great user experience. So it's up to people like us to figure out how do we take this existing tech and then package it into a user experience that's actually, you know, valuable.

It all comes down to creativity. I've seen people tweet about, oh, I've never seen like an interesting use of AI in software. It's like, what are you talking about? Like an interesting integration. I'm like, dude, well, you're not using the right software. A, like B, like, you just got to be creative. Like, obviously, like, adding, okay, assist me with writing this doc, like, isn't interesting.

Go to ChatGPT. You're fine.

Just go to ChatGPT. Yeah, exactly. But, like, AI avatars that are automated, like, that's fucking cool with, like, I've used the B2B function. It's pretty sick. And there's, like, 6, 7 at least different filters and templates. Like, that's cool. Like, right?

We have a ton of different avatars too. Like, we have people who look like they're in a podcast studio like this, but then we also have a video of a guy. It looks like he's, uh, just holding up a phone. The walking ones.

Walking in a forest. Those do better, right? I've I've heard those do better. The walking ones are more— it makes sense.

They feel real.

They feel real.

They feel like— yeah.

Interesting. So, Alex, I want to talk a little bit about some other stuff too. So we're launching a show very soon. Yeah. So we got like Silly Valley Ventures. Very exciting. And, you know, our first software was DuoFucko. Yes. Yes. We've got some other fun ones coming up. Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about like silly software. Like this.

This is the king of silly software. I know the Goon Maps.

I know Goon Maps, dude. Multi-preneurship, man.

Explain what Goon Maps is.

So Goon Maps, if you're unfamiliar with it, is a masturbation startup. It is essentially Citizen, but you log where you goon, where you jerk off. Is that what goon means? Yeah, that's what goon means.

I should know that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you should really know these things, Jake, as a millennial. Yeah, yeah. This kid Kevin—

It's more of a Gen Z thing.

This kid Kevin at college, he built it. And I acquired it, um, just for the memes. Like, I literally just bought it for the content. Um, and I think we're, like, approaching a place right now where, like, software's so cheap to build, uh, that, like, you could just build software for the sake of it, for the content. That's what our entire show is about. We built Duofucko in 3 hours. We built, like, the next one in a few hours. Like, what are these?

You know, Duofucko? I don't know what these are.

Duofucko is Duolingo. Oh, Duolingo. Got it. Yeah, yeah. It's Duolingo only for learning curse words. So that— the show's coming out in a couple weeks. In a couple of weeks. I don't want to reveal too much, but what I think is just so exciting if you're out there is like whatever weird ideas you have, it's no longer super expensive to like build it. Like you can just build stupid software and have fun, especially with Bubble.

Like we love—

Yeah, we love Bubble. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're all three of us here on Bubble. I haven't been too public about that, honestly. I don't know about you guys. I was a little embarrassed at first. I was like, well, I was like, I'm using a no-code platform.

I didn't care. So like, I I approach this from, I'm, I'm teaching myself. I'm learning this stuff myself. I'm gonna be as resourceful as, as possible. I don't care what I'm using. If I can get the idea and the execution, that's what matters the most to me. So I wasn't that embarrassed. I wasn't like, now in my conversations with engineers, I can speak the language and I, I also am an engi— you know, I've become a software developer over time.

Yeah.

But I wasn't that embarrassed because I was like, you're still programming at the end of the day. It's just a different language. And it's—

we also have a bunch of custom code on our platform.

And so, yeah, I was kind of embarrassed about it and now I'm just taking pride. It's like I'm a scrappy motherfucker. Like, it's exactly exciting. I figured out how to build a profitable software and yeah, whatever, who cares? Yeah.

And the reality is, I mean, what, you'd be using custom solutions built on top of AWS and you're doing everything custom, but it's the same output. Who cares?

Yeah, 100%. It's all about the value. Even if you can't code, you know, you can, you can build cool software out there.

Absolutely. 100%.

Yeah.

I mean, Jacob and I, I feel like we are. I mean, you've become a software guy, like you've become a bit of an engineer, but we came into this just being more like creative guys, idea guys.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel that. I mean, I, when I'm looking in Bubble or whatever and it's, you know, API, like I actually understand this stuff and I get how it works and I get the sending back and forth. I get like the conditional, like I get that stuff, the recursive, like I get it. Uh, so it's, it's cool. So it, just because you can't code, you know, you can still build shit.

Those tools, like, to me, it just, it feels like a superpower. Oh yeah, it really does. Like, anything you think of, you can make. Again, going back to that Jimmy Neutron, like, that is really what it feels like.

Yeah. So I, I texted, uh, both of you guys about this was, uh, you know, what do you think about vibe coding? So this is like all the rage right now on Twitter. You guys had no idea what I was talking about.

I found hilarious.

It's just, it's talking to cursor or whatever to code, right? You guys run a 7-figure software, you know, over $100 grand a month or or whatever, and had no idea what vibe coding is. Like, you will break people's brains when they hear this. I find it hilarious.

We're so out of that sphere. Like, we kind of operate in our own little, little world. And I feel like a lot of people in the Twittersphere, um, they always think, okay, I need to build an audience and I need to sell my software to my audience. But that only works if your audience is the market, uh, for your software. Yeah. Um, which yours, you know, you—

Mine is.

Yeah. That, that works really well for you because—

Yeah.

You post memes and then you make a meme generator. For us, we don't have audiences, so we needed to find other ways to—

I did have a TikTok page for a hot second.

Yeah, I forgot. Jacob is an influencer.

So yeah, I actually didn't—

you had what, like 100K on there?

I had 100K followers.

Did you ever post Faceless Mushroom?

30 million views.

Once.

We did one video.

It did, it flopped.

And yeah, Alex wrote the video and then I posted it. But this was like a year after I'd kind of stopped posting. Yeah, I just look, content creation is a full-time thing and I just— it wasn't what excited me. It was actually getting stressful. No. And I was working with big brands at the time. Honestly, people reaching out and I was excited. It was cool to get insights into emerging AI tech. But at some point I just was like, yeah, I just— I love building.

What I've learned so much from you guys is you don't have to be the influencer. You could just pay an influencer.

It's all—

you also have to have a sticky enough product for that to actually work. Also, I totally agree with what Jacob was saying, and I don't know how you do it, how you maintain being an influencer, because Jacob had his TikTok era and I was like, I used to be on Clubhouse a lot and I had a bit of a following on Clubhouse.

Yeah, you did.

Yeah, of course, the one platform that I actually had a real following died. But, you know, I had like a couple.

Yeah, bro. Yeah, that's what it is. You're good. You're good at kibitzing. The Jewish Art of Kibbutz. Of course, that is, that is your—

they were Jewish. I ran a Jewish dating room on Clubhouse.

Exactly.

And we would go like the rooms would last for like 5 hours.

It was in the middle of COVID That is your, that is your sweet spot. We need to bring that back.

I wish. But it was a lot of fun. It was so much fun. We had like a real community on there of like a couple hundred people who would tune into the livestream every time, which for livestreaming is— that's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot for livestreaming.

And especially on a new app like Clubhouse. Yeah, it's very—

yeah, we got to the front page of of Clubhouse a few times, but I love trying to explain Alex to people.

I'm like, oh, he worked at Marvel and then Tim Dillon. He runs a 7-figure SaaS. He was a Clubhouse influencer. He's also just— I don't know how to explain you sometimes.

Well, you say you're like, just do shit. And like, I feel like that's kind of why we're true. We just do.

We just do.

If we want to do something, we just do. Yeah.

You texted me. We were like, we're just the Avengers of doing things.

Yeah, I think I said that. Yeah, we're the Avengers of just doing shit.

Exactly. I love it. I love it.

But I mean, just keeping up with making content is really difficult. And but, but it's— you have that fire in you that I just do not have. Like, I have it and then I burn out. Just, you know, it's hard being public-facing.

Yeah.

Which is also why we were kind of inspired to make Faceless. I feel like kind of our both of our experiences as like influencers on these platforms and then feeling that burnout, we're like, okay, what if there was a way where if you were feeling burnt out, at some point, you could still have content going out.

Yeah, 100%. I, I don't know what it is. I— it's a drive and I just love it. I don't know.

I love it.

Yeah, I love the game.

Like, it's, it's pure love of the game. You said that before where you're like, I don't want to start on Twitter because like you just love it. Yeah, well, that's—

I know I'm never going to be like you on Twitter because I don't love tweeting.

Like, sure, fucking love of the game. Yeah, just pure obsession.

But I loved Clubhouse because I love to talk.

You love to talk. And I liked, you love to keep it specifically. Yeah. The drama. The drama.

Yeah.

I, so my TikTok was specific to AI tools actually. Like it actually was a pretty good fit. I was like one of the first to kind of break DALL·E as that's how long it was. DALL·E 2.

Yeah.

On TikTok. But yeah. Or it just, it just, I don't think I got the drive to do that. I just would much rather build.

Yeah.

Not that you can't do both. No, you can't.

You can't do it.

You can do both. I was up till 2:00 AM setting up, uh, it's actually pretty sick. So if you're listening to this, maybe you're listening to this inside of Memelord. So I built a thing yesterday where inside of Memelord, the software, right on the side is my podcast, the most recent 3 podcasts.

Smart.

So it's like the platform for my podcast and all my content. I'm also going to like, you know, put some vibey music in there maybe at the bottom. So like it turns into a whole world, right?

Well, it's interesting because you're using your platform as an influencer, as like a central hub for everything you do.

Yeah.

Which is interesting because I feel like we are both people who do a lot of different things. I don't have any sort of centralized platform like you do. Like, I just directed a short for Marvel and I have my animation studio. I do that. Then I also have Faceless and then we also do stuff together. I don't have like a hub where someone can just—

it definitely helps having it all around one thing. It, it helps for sure. The synergies and I hate to use that corporate word, but that's literally what happens is like, you know, the other day I posted a stupid meme of, of me turning a Celsius, uh, into Fahrenheit. I don't know if you saw that. I posted a sticker. And from that, somebody followed me. He had 300,000 followers on Instagram, a big meme, meme lord. Now he— today's his first day working for me.

Wow.

Right. And it's like these weird synergies. And I only met the other meme lord because I wrote the book and he saw that book. And it turned out that I went to college with like a friend. Like it was a whole thing of like weird synergies.

Very internet, internet-driven.

Luck.

Yeah.

Luck surface area is very real. The more.

Yeah.

You put out onto the internet and the more good quality shit, the more people you DM and meet, the higher your luck surface area. We met on the internet. We met because of fucking Kyle. Yeah, I went to Chinese food with this kid. He messaged me, hey, you want to go to Chinese food? I was like, alright, I like Chinese food.

And then we met through a mutual friend. And even— you never know, like, you're totally right. The more people you know in the world or on the internet, the more the serendipity, bro. Exactly. Well, like, Jacob and I met through something that was very organic, very organic, but also very weird. We have a mutual friend, Josh, And, um, I met Josh because, uh, people who know me know that my knee sometimes slips out of the socket and I dislocate my knee and then I'm on crutches for a little bit. And, uh, I was in our sophomore year college dorm hall and my knee slipped out of the socket and then Josh finds me on the floor with a dislocated knee. And then I became friends with Josh and through Josh I met Jacob and then we started a software company together.

That's your story.

We met in college. So like, yeah. I guess 5 to 7 years before we started.

Speaking of dislocating knees and legs, um, so I'm double-jointed here.

Okay.

And so is my dad. And so while he was in college, he pranked his roommate by pretending that he dislocated his leg. Oh my god. So similar to what you did, but the opposite.

Yeah, it's a bonding experience, right?

Exactly, exactly. They became friends, you know. A nice little prank there.

Well, now I'm like, I'm really glad that I dislocated my knee all those years ago. You never know where things Jason Levin.

Yeah, 100%.

And that's true with the internet side of things too.

It's true.

It's interesting that we don't really do that because I totally see the value in having like a greater distribution network to it. But yeah, I guess at the same time, if you just have a product and I think the important thing for us too is to be able to remove ourselves from the business as much as possible so it can grow outside of us. Again, not that you, not that you can't, but I think where it's really, really valuable is for validating things, honestly, like you, confer no money and extremely quickly validate things way faster than probably the both of us could.

Yep. That's fair. That's fair. I could just tweet an idea, see if people sign up, which I send out an email to my newsletter.

So like, as far as the software thing that you're talking about, the, the fuck, the fuck ducks, whatever it was, do a fuck off.

Fuck ducks. That's another software.

That's episode 4.

Yeah. Like, you know, you can, you can do that quickly and you can validate. And that's the power of your distribution network, whereas we don't really have that. We maybe got to spend more to get to that same.

Yeah, I do. I am learning a lot from you guys about going ghost though. So I have been on the low, low, low, low, low, low paying some influencers and stuff like that. I started, started experimenting a little bit more and now with that dashboard, I'm going to, going to add that in there because I was doing vibes basically, or I gave them links, but it would be nice just to have like a dashboard. Yeah. So I mean, we have our affiliate program which drives a ton of sales, but then I gave specific links to these influencers that I was paying. Okay. And so I like the idea of just a quick ask, like when somebody signs in or whatever, just like, hey, how'd you find it?

Because your domain's good too.

Yeah, yeah. And I got a better domain that I'll be announcing very soon.

Nice.

Oh, have you heard about this?

No, I haven't.

Oh, you'll be hearing about it when the camera's off. It's exciting.

Okay. Very exciting.

I also think what you, to double-click on what you said about having things outside of the software.

I love that, to double-click on what you just said.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's pretty good.

It's a biology term.

It's a good term, right? Yeah.

Yeah, double-click.

You gotta zoom in on it. You know, I think it's good to have hobbies outside of the software, you know? Alex is the man with the most hobbies out of anybody I met. Like when he's not running his software, he's writing screenplays or a new book. And I'm the same way, you know? Last night I was up till 2:00 AM working on the software. The night before I was up till 2:00 AM working on a screenplay. And you could do all of that. You could be a modern Renaissance person and do it all. It's, there's no real excuse for it.

I think they all feed into each other as well.

They do.

Because you meet someone through one thing and then they help with another. And then also maybe you learn something in the process of doing one thing that helps the other. Like, I think that all of everything I know from video editing and making videos and animation really helped us with Faceless and actually figuring out how to generate these videos.

Dude, 100%. When I'm writing, you know, a screenplay or working on a book or something like that, it's, it's a, it's improving my writing for my newsletter, for marketing, for, for copy, whatever. But it's also filling me with weird creative ideas that like I then use for our show or something like that. Like there's— yeah, it's a total spillover effect of skills. So just because you're a software founder doesn't mean you have to be 7 a.m. cold plunge every day.

Yeah.

Alex is usually, what, 9 a.m.? Yeah, you're up till 4, 2 or 3.

I wake up at 9, but then I stay up until like 2:30 a.m. You're late.

Yeah, you'll text me at my 10 p.m. when I'm like, yeah, exactly.

Or we'll text at like 2 or something.

But you're also up at that time too. I've always been a night owl.

Me too.

I tried adjusting to the corporate, it didn't fucking work.

I feel like that's who we are, like even just like even in middle school and high school I was always up really late doing projects. 2 AM.

And so I was always exhausted in school and people thought I was just like stupid or whatever cuz I was sleeping, but I was like up working on Photoshop, like selling shit online. Like your sticker business? Yeah dude, $40 grand in high school just selling stickers I made on Photoshop, staying up late. That's awesome. Yeah dude, like, but I would look exhausted in school because I was exhausted. Yeah. Yeah. Because we had to get up at 6:15 in the morning.

I also feel like I do some of my best work at night.

Oh, I don't know why, bro.

Yeah, I can't do it in the morning.

There's a Kid Cudi line. It's, uh, the lonely stoner frees his mind at night. Like, I don't smoke weed anymore, but like, that is when I free my mind. It's like my craziest ideas. Even my employees notice it. He's like, dude, like, after 12 AM, your shit gets insane. Like, your ideas get weird.

I wonder if it's like a lack of distraction. I've always thought that because everyone else is asleep, especially in LA too. Now I'm realizing this now. Like my 10 p.m. is when it gets silent, which is great. Like I have the whole night to just go.

I love it, but I love it because Jacob is the only one that's awake, so I have no distractions. And then Jacob's awake so I can ping him if I want. And then you're also awake if we're doing something. So I feel like it's like a little band of either people in LA or people who stay up late and it works well.

Brian Johnson would not be proud of us, but it is really fun. There's a lot of founders in New York who are like very cold, plungy, like you need to be like, you know, whatever, maxing. And it's like, dude, they are going to like I actually know multiple of them who are like, they've gone to zero in the last 2 years. And it's like, dude, you don't need that stuff to be a successful founder.

It's not about that.

It's never about that. It's just about making money. Just make it. Make the money.

No, because they want to project an image of themselves as this optimal human being. And I'm like, I'm eating Oreos and doing this shit, man. Like, shut the fuck up with this cold plunge.

Last night we were at a talk and I'm eating fucking Nutter Butters that I bought at a bodega next door. Like, you can't be perfect, you know?

But I do think, I don't know if for them, them it's some sort of marketing tactic because they're trying to sell themselves as this hyper—

like, like you said, maybe. Yeah, right.

But honestly, if you're a VC and you care if someone is cold plunging, like, figure, you know, that should not be your— that's your priority.

No, actually, I do care. I won't invest in them. Yeah, yeah, it's a deal breaker. I did, uh, I saw a tweet the other day. It was like, yo, founders, watch out, like, stop shitposting on Twitter, your VCs are watching. And I tweeted back, I was like, dude, if a VC can't handle memes, they don't deserve your millions. Yeah, you should be shit. You should, you should be A, shitposting because it gets more attention, and B, like, be your real fucking self. Yeah, for God's sake.

Like, if you're not someone who likes to cold plunge, don't try to cold plunge. If you want to eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch and, you know, as you code, do it. Don't eat a— drink a Soylent or whatever.

Yeah, you know. Well, you also— I don't know how you're so fucking skinny, dude.

I know he eats a lot, right?

You eat a lot of crap.

Yeah, I do.

You're just a machine, bro. You're a machine. He's a fucking— I'm the meme machine. You're the cinnamon— cinnamon— Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

I just dropped that as a random cereal.

I do love cinnamon.

It is a great one.

Underrated.

Shout out, shout out to Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Shout out to Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Sponsored by Goon Maps.

I'll faceless that video if Cinnamon Toast Crunch wants to sponsor us.

Sponsor. Dude, I think Goon Maps and Cinnamon Toast Crunch should be the ideal sponsors.

That makes perfect sense.

Yeah, they go together, you know.

Goon Maps, sponsor us.

It is interesting though, but what you're saying about like the shitposting, we don't really do that, right?

No.

Like we are doing the ghost thing. Not really intentionally, I guess, but maybe intentionally. I don't know.

I think part of the reason we started Faceless is because we got burnt out trying to be influencers at a certain point.

Yeah.

So it makes sense.

But yeah, I guess. And I also felt a responsibility, I think, to the clients I was working with through my marketing agency too, where it's like if I'm posting all these other varied things you know, that might not be good. And if you take it from a VC perspective, they might feel the same.

Yes. Yes, I do get that. But it is getting attention on your business.

It's true.

It's true. That's, that's, that's the point there. Yeah, I think, yeah, there's, there's definitely a rise of like software influencers. I, I don't ever call myself an influencer. I'm Meme Lord, but like, I guess I do have an audience. And so I guess vis-à-vis I am an influencer, but I think what's so cool is like whatever you build an audience in, say, say you built a newsletter, right? My newsletter was like an MVP for the software, right?

Yeah.

So you can, you can build an audience first and then you build software. So you remember Justin Feinberg? Yeah. Early podcast guest. One of my, one of my early friends. Yeah.

You know, there was a funny story with that is that someone you knew also knew Justin.

Yeah. So just Justin runs Cassidy. I think they raised 5 or 7 or something. And, and he told me that like 2, 3 years ago he has a giant TikTok audience. He's like, He was like, creators are the next B2B founders. I was like, I agree with that 100% and you are absolutely right.

Not B2C, he didn't say B2C, B2B specifically?

B2B specifically.

Why B2B specific?

Because—

I think with the audience thing.

You build an audience and like, sure, B2C like is still so hard.

Yeah.

Like you just need a viral product for that. Like you think about like Nikita, like Nikita's audience, Nikita Beer, right? His audience has nothing to do with the product. You just need a sticky product. But B2B, you build the influence, you build, credibility. For me, it was me marketing on Hinge Marketing. For, for Justin, it was AI marketing. You're right. For, for another guy, there's this kid, Tommy something. He runs like a, you know, an AI writing thing. Like his was all around writing, right? So it's like the future of, of software. Like every— I've tweeted this a bunch, but like every founder is an influencer, every software is a media company. And I think I am taking that to the fucking extreme. Yeah.

Like, yeah, you said it's an exercise in brand building. And if you've built your brand around and like being something, then you can sell software off of that.

Yeah.

See, what was funny though, for me, like I was getting advice from, from people when I was starting to build software and people were like, you have a marketing agency that's working like, you know, just build— like, what are you doing, bro?

Have you heard of scale? The internet is big.

Most of the advice we got was bad.

Well, no, most advice is terrible.

Most advice is really bad.

That's absolutely true. And I'm talking just personally, even before Faces, like when I was building stuff, I had people that were all about this like growth partnership and then building, you know, scaling agencies. They were like, what are you— what are you building these other products? Like, what is that?

Yeah.

And I'm so glad I didn't listen to that.

I'm the same way. So I started— I was doing freelance, as you know, for 2, 3 years, had crazy months, $50,000, $70,000 a month, right? By myself. Wow. But like freaking out, right? I was on my honeymoon working, not all of it, but like taking calls, which is like a terrible feeling, right? You know, Erica, she would not be happy about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I was like, fuck, man, like I need to go, you know, get out of the agency, the services kind of thing, right? Build software. And so Yeah, most advice I got was pretty terrible. They were saying, why are you doing that? You have a profitable agency. Or a lot of advice around, oh, you should do a free product first. It's like, no, like I'm not VC-backed. You are basing your pattern off of what you've seen in VC-subsidized businesses, the Ubers of the world that could do it for free or a bunch of other ones. Like also, like I don't want to start a freemium product and then have thousands of people when my product's not ready for that.

And you have operating costs too, so you're losing money.

Exactly. So there's, there's just like, you've got to listen to yourself, you know?

And it's really true.

It's, it's people try to give advice they don't fully understand. Like, I've— this might sound like an arrogant thing, but I've stopped taking advice or I've stopped asking for advice. And about a year or two ago, I've just stopped.

Like, well, I don't know if you get unsolicited advice all the time.

We get it.

Do you?

I block motherfuckers. I literally do. Yeah, it's nonstop. I had people commenting the other day. I'm like, guy has 500 followers telling me how to run my business, my content business. I'm like, bro, like shut the fuck up. You're a dork. And blocked him. Like, all the time.

Did you send him that?

Yeah, yeah. I said, I said fucking dork.

Of course you did. Of course you sent that to Jason Levin.

I said fucking dork. Like, stop. Like, I'm not asking for your advice.

I probably should start saying that to people too.

Dude, it's just so rude. It's like people who think they're smarter Hey, like, he wasn't even a customer of the software and he was giving me advice about the software. Yeah, like, try the software and then give me feedback. That's always like, that's one thing. But just from some dude from afar, like, I have that all the time. Like, our friend's old boss, Shane's old boss, he does that. He sends me messages. He doesn't even use the software. Shut the fuck up. I don't need your advice.

I don't get why people do.

I'm just—

I actually do know why people do it because they want money. No.

Yeah.

So what they end up doing—

that's it.

Yes, I know it is. Because every single time at the end of the tunnel. I entertain these people.

But you're nicer than I am.

I'm really nice.

You're a nice guy.

I'm nice.

But like, I'm a sweetie.

You're kind of a dick, but in a way that like, yeah, but I smile.

No.

Yeah, exactly.

You're straight shooter. You're a straight shooter, which is respectable. And I'm trying to be, you know, I'm trying to say no more. But, you know, like, yeah, I entertain these to a pretty large extent. And at the end of the conversation, it's always, you know, well, I can help you. I can be the thing that does more for you. People have tried to tear me away from the business I'm working on, and it's It's like, I know. Yeah, it's—

and that's where I wish I had Jason in me to just be like, shut the fuck up, you're a dork. Which I wouldn't send that message, but I wish I did.

You have that. I've seen you have that. Maybe Alex, one time we're filming and we're at his house. He starts screaming, commit to the bit, Jason!

Oh yeah, well, you weren't committing to the bit.

You have that in your first.

Maybe I do.

Maybe you have it more. Yeah, you definitely have it more than you. Yeah, you have more than me.

Yeah. Uh, yeah.

But you have the most.

You have the most.

Yeah.

It goes in order right here.

Dude, my, uh, I think you said that the other day, but my, my entire life, my, my parents warned me about burning bridges. And I'm very glad that I burned bridges.

Really?

Some bridges—

I'm not a bridge burner, but you are.

Some bridges deserve to be burned.

It's true. I, I, at the same time, like, you don't know till you know. And that's the thing that's in my head, you know? You don't know if 5 years down the road you're building something that you might want that person or need that person.

There's a lot of people out there and I don't need anybody but myself. You know? Why do you need some random schmuck telling you what to do?

It's true. I go back and forth between those thoughts all the time, honestly. But like, I've done so much by myself and we've been able to build this together and we've done it the nontraditional way, bootstrapped, like, you know, so there's a lot of validity in that. But I don't know what it looks like 10 years down the line.

Bootstrapping versus venture real quick.

So I love bootstrapping.

I know, I know you guys do. So do I.

It forces you to think about a healthy business. It forces you to focus on value and it forces you to do all those things.

And that's why I will always love that answer because my answer was just like, it's easier, it's chiller. I don't like getting bitched at by Jason Levin.

You literally just can't— you can't have a business if it's not— if it doesn't work, both in terms of scalability, profitability, and the actual value.

If people want it, there's so many VC-backed businesses that if they never raised VC, they'd be great businesses, but instead they fail. Or sometimes they wouldn't be a great business.

I was actually going to say the opposite.

Yeah, no, but you're right, because sometimes these VC companies companies are only focused on growth and they're not actually focused on making a good product. They're not focused on actually being a healthy business that has good margins. They're just like, acquire more users, acquire more users, acquire more users.

Well, even then it's like, okay, we're going to give you millions of dollars. We don't even know if your idea is good yet. We don't know if this is going to work. And there's a lot of founders that pivot and that's great. I totally support pivoting. But, you know, that it's, it's like you can pivot for free.

Yeah. I remember when I was starting Memelord about 6 months ago, I, had a lot of people giving me advice, right, about, about, you know, do I take VC, whatever. Right. And that was a time when I was asking for advice. No, I was asking for advice. And you, you gave me very, very hardcore advice. And even some of our VC-backed friends told me not to, which I found—

because they find VCs to be annoying and always breathing down their necks.

It's not even that. It was more just you don't need it. You run a profitable business and And also software is getting cheaper and cheaper to build. Like I personally, like it's weird. I, you know, invested in a couple startups last year and I'm starting to invest, you know, still some more. But I also feel a little hesitant where I'm like, why would I invest in software when you could build it? You could just build it when anybody could build it so fast. And I think that's why the hardware thing is so hot right now in Silicon Valley too, because you still need capital for that. Yeah, you don't need You need capital for most software.

I wouldn't know. We started with $200.

Yeah, dude, I mean, same thing. And then, you know, you take your profits, you reinvest. If you run a smart business, you run a smart business.

And it works.

And you guys have clearly done that.

I completely agree, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think, I really don't think there's any reason for a software company to raise anymore.

I think it depends. I think that if you're a company like Uber where you really need to disrupt the market.

Software, right?

I agree.

I guess you're right. Uber is hardware because it is cars.

You're right. You're right.

Right. Like, I do wonder sometimes, because people ask us if we're, if we are considering raising stuff. And, you know, I, to some extent, like, I wonder if it's limiting to not be thinking about raising. But at the same time, it's like, if you're profitable and it's scaling comfortably, like, what would you—

And if you have other hobbies. A lot of the people who raise, you know, boom, boom, boom, like, all they do is, is work, you know, which is great. I'm a very—

We work on this quite a bit.

I would say I probably might be more in that camp than you.

We work on this a lot.

We do work, but like, you also like we're not cold plunging and we're, you know, we're taking time to ourselves.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, for example, like there are a lot of young SaaS founders who they wouldn't have a girlfriend, right? Or fiancée. You're getting married very soon, right?

Next year. We don't know yet.

Yeah, exactly. Like when I know many who don't because they're so focused, it's like there's something kind of pathetic about that. Yeah, there's a something pathetic. B, like life's short, man. You just never know. I had a— it's not Is it worth, you know, pushing back your life for 5, 10 years for an outcome that might not happen when you could just make it happen yourself?

And it's also like, for these VCs, you're one of hundreds. So it's like, why are you throwing away your life?

Also, isn't the point of starting a business to like give ourselves freedom?

Yeah. Yeah.

Like, why? Of course, it's— again, there's reasons to raise, but why sign up voluntarily to have bosses?

I wanted the—

especially for Memes, I needed the freedom where like, yeah, it need— I needed to keep it weird, keep it whatever I wanted. Yeah, it had to be.

Yeah. I had a friend who kind of was categorizing these things as far as like why you start a business, whether it's for impact or competition, just to be the best at something or for lifestyle. And I'm trying to figure out maybe what, where I perfectly fall into. But maybe being a bootstrapped founder is a little bit more about lifestyle and being able to give ourselves freedom.

100%. It's nice. Like for me, it's all about freedom. Like everything in my life has in driving towards freedom, freedom of speech, being able to say whatever the fuck I want. I wanted leverage. That's— you guys don't know this. In 2021, I started a non-account called Uncancellable.

I had no idea.

The whole goal was to get to a point where I would have enough leverage where I could say whatever the fuck I want. And I've done that. And under my real name. Right. And so it's the freedom of speech, freedom to travel, freedom to have with my time. Yeah. And so when you have other people people you're beholden to, it's a lot harder.

Yeah.

But when, uh, your software makes more money, the more unhinged you are.

Well, I mean, Jacob, you went to Italy at one, at one point, remember?

And with my, uh, now fiancée's family.

Yeah.

And, and we were totally fine. And I'm going to Peru next month.

Yeah. To meet with your animation studio.

Like, for the Marvel—

also, that was another thing, is VCs would not be fine with you having multiple avenues. Yeah. Like, you know, an animation studio, a show. Like, I was worried. I was like, oh, they're gonna to, you know, take my fucking agency that I run on the side, you know, or they're gonna try to take, uh, my book credits, or they're gonna take part of my news.

They're not gonna want you to have written a book.

Yeah.

Do they do that?

Do they overreach?

I mean, I— everything for me is under one LLC, so it was a little worrisome. Or it was like, I can't split everything, it's all under one personal holding company. And I know there's like some people out there who invest in personal holding companies, but I didn't want to touch that shit.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

I don't know. Yeah. What's the, what's, what was that weird look about?

Oh no, I was just, I was agreeing with you.

No, but you're right. I mean, building, building scalable systems I think is, is hugely important.

Yeah.

And, and, uh, obviously you can do so much with software. I think what I'm learning is I thought I could do everything with software, but you need people for, for a lot of things. Customer support being a big thing. Obviously AI is coming in there too, but there's, there's those little things and we've now hired a decent amount of people. So, you know, we're, we're learning more about that too. Yeah.

Same Same here. Same here. I do love, I love people. There's, uh, yeah, there's been a lot of like AI meme stuff out there. You still need a human touch. You still need a human to make it funny.

Yeah. Humor. AI does not do humor well.

AI does not do humor. It's the last frontier. It is the hardest thing. And, uh, it still hasn't touched that. It, it has not touched that. And that was my whole point of going into memes in the first place was, you know, ChatGPT was, came out. I was like, no, we gotta double down on funny cuz AI can't touch that. Mm-hmm.

And so I hope you're tracking performance performance in, in the backend for Meme, for Memelord.

Because what do you mean?

Well, you could build AI models, cross-validation performance.

Yeah.

And then you can start—

oh yeah, we track all the prompts, everything. Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Front tier.

So we're using Grok. We, we do track the, the prompts and, and outcomes as well. And, uh, I think the, the coolest part for me about AI, AI memes and AI humor is actually the, the image and video creation that you can do. And then you add your own touch, but you still still need the human inspiration and creativity to writing a prompt. You know, our friend Jared runs Prompt Layer. Prompt engineering is real. And writing a good prompt is really good, really hard. And so writing a funny prompt to make a video is still challenging too. But yeah, AI ain't touching humor anyway. We're Lindy. We're all good. We're safe.

Until you build a fine-tuned model based on what works well.

I mean, we'll see. We'll see about that. We'll see.

Yeah.

All right, guys, this was a pleasure. Go to Faceless.video, check it out, and then go to Goon Maps immediately after. Not for the same reason.