E40: Making Money with Memes with Jason Levin

Have you seen, on the topic of memes, the, uh, Trump administration's memes recently?

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

I mean, they've been doing some like notes since, since he got elected.

It's been one of like the best fucking social media pages of all time.

Yeah. Yeah. That they're in, they're in our decks. Let me just tell you that we love 'em, dude. It's, uh, they're great. So we're, no matter what, we're gonna have a, a presidential memelord or memelord that's a, a president that's a memelord next. You got Newsom memeing, you got Trump memeing, you got Vance memeing, everybody's memeing. There's no future where government leaders aren't memeing. That's the future we're building at least too.

Nice.

Is this the mission? It starts with like just marketing and whatever, but really it's about like global domination, right?

I'd say memetic warfare, man, is spreading ideas. Memes are the most information-dense form of communication. That's not a quote from me. That's an Elon quote. and, uh, memes are the smallest unit of communication, right? And, uh, that's the inventor of the word meme, right? And so if you have an idea that you want to put, you make it as simple as possible. And like, you think about it from a marketing perspective, it's the same thing as 1940s posters, right? You just hang around and now you just hang them on the internet. What is it? It's just image, text, and that's it. And it's just funny, right? That's what a meme is. You know, whether it's corporations, public companies using our software, startups, government advisors, whatever it might be. You know, we want to help spread good ideas and give people the tools to spread their ideas, speak fluently on the internet. So, you know, we dip our toes in all facets of that. Everybody has a voice on the internet in some capacity for whatever idea you're fighting for, selling, or whatever it might be, right? So yeah, we're down for it all, man. And I think what's cool about the internet, social media, Town Square in general is like, It's all a marketplace for ideas. So generally the best ideas end up winning anyways, uh, or at least the most capital efficient ideas. Um, and so, uh, you know, we'll give our tools and whoever's got the best ideas can win, you know. Right.

Unless, unless the platform prefers certain types of content, right?

Yeah. I mean, we, we're not a platform. We're a tool, you know, at the end of the day.

No, I mean, like, you know, I'm sure you've heard about how TikTok in China works and how, I guess, Twitter used to work, right?

Yeah, I mean, that's why I think it's so important what Elon's doing is removing the censorship, because it's, it's like all the restrictions on capitalism or, or businesses in general. The more you, you add that, like, the worse people perform, the more there's lies and doublespeak. And, um, I think memes are, you know, hidden truths, like, in images. You think about, like, My best comparison when I'm selling me marketing to, you know, businesses, public companies is, right, like everybody here has probably watched some Seinfeld, right? He never says anything dirty. Have you ever noticed that? Nothing dirty. Yeah. No politics. All he does is just observe, right? And it's just observing situations, right? And that's all you gotta do is just observe. So I think like when you're able to observe those truths, And then share that. That's what scares certain figures, right? That's what scares the Tim Waltses. That's what scares the UK government is when people are making observations and making them in a very viral, funny way to do that. But this is the SaaS Operators Podcast, not the Government Operators Podcast. That's at 3:00 PM. So, you know, texting with my boys over there.

You wanna go?

Should we talk SaaS a little bit or what are we, what are we doing?

You know what, you know what the general I think like Taylor put this idea in my head and now I feel, now I really feel this way about this podcast, which is like, we just jump on and we just like literally learn, um, primarily from the guest and then a little bit from each other too. And that's, that's basically what we do.

So, yeah.

Can I, can I actually pull on the thread of censorship a little bit more?

Hit it. Yeah, let's do it.

I'm curious what you think is like, is there a limit to non-censorship?

I don't know.

I don't know, man. I'm Jewish, and so there's been a lot of antisemitic stuff, but I don't know, I kind of, uh, I think people should be allowed to say what they want. And, um, you know, you fuck around, find out. Sometimes bad things happen in both capacities. Um, I think, uh, the leaders trying to stop people from protesting or say— I just think it's weakness. And, you know, the more you try to do that, the worse it is for people in general. And the more, you know, anybody tries to censor people, it backfires, especially in today's world where, you know, you think about like TV in the '60s, right? There are 3 channels and you just listen to whatever the TV channels say. That's not it anymore. That's not how the world works. We're all citizen journalists, right? This is, a modern TV station, right? And all of us have, you know, my Twitter gets more views than a lot of TV stations, right? And, uh, or at least smaller ones. And, um, you know, it's like you can't really hide stuff anymore. It's like the same reason why there's not as many bank robberies, which is like kind of sad because they're cool. But like, you know, like, like there's just not as many because it's a lot harder to like, you know, rob banks and shit because there's just such better oversight, right? And technology and like freedom in that way. Everybody's filming, everybody's, you know, it's a little Black Mirror, but it also does keep us safe. I don't know. I think what I'm trying to say here with censorship is like Memelord is the freedom of speech company. We are freedom to post whatever the fuck you want, freedom to post from wherever. We got a big launch coming out about that soon. Wink wink. And, you know, basically freedom to make money being yourself and get out of corporate America. Go start your own thing, build a business, start a meme page, make millions, whatever it might be. So that's what we're about. And I think, yeah, it's pretty scary, some of the censorship going on right now. Like, I was supposed to fly over to the UK and my friend's family told me not to. And I was going to do a whole stunt there and we ended up axing that. Uh, so it's, it's definitely a little weird. Um, and, uh, I think there's a lot of people who want to shut people up in different ways. And, uh, a lot of it comes from foreign adversaries as well, unfortunately. Uh, if you look at some of the bots commenting on a lot of people's accounts, it's a lot of foreign money going around trying to shut people up and censor them in different ways. Um, and, uh, I also think like we're in a really cool point right now where The people in power are getting younger and younger and more internet native. Like JD Vance can post, bro. Like say what you want about that man, but he could post, right? Like say honestly Newsom too. And like, that's scary 'cause Newsom's like, like Newsom scares me. Like even my wife thinks he's hot, you know? That's terrifying. But like, you know, we're at this point where like everybody could post and every founder, or not every founder, but a lot, there are more and more founders who are 21 to 27 with multi-million dollar budgets, right? And that's part of the Memelord thesis is we are selling to them. You know, I'm texting with CMOs of unicorns and just like I would text my friends, right? You know, CMOs of public companies and I are just texting because we became boys from Twitter or friends, you know? And it's like, that's— it's only getting younger and younger. We're going to have a CEO that is broccoli-haired, bruhed up, right? Very soon. Like, you know, in the next couple of years, there's going to be a lot of broccoli-haired CEOs. And so that's what Memler is about. And I think Foreplay, you know, just down to the name as well, it speaks to the same kind of beliefs that like marketing's getting, you know, people are getting younger, chiller, the internet native. Like we're not, nobody's as uptight. It's not like the '50s, you know, that's just not the world we live in anymore.

Why did you decide to distribute this thesis through a SaaS company versus a media company? Yeah.

SaaS is a lot easier to make $10 million.

So yeah, but no, is it, is it actually, is it actually easier to make money through SaaS than through media? I'm actually, I'm, it's not obvious to me.

Yeah, I mean, we're doing pretty solid, so I'd say so. But I started it as media, right? So I started my, I don't know if you guys know my full story, but I was a freelance marketer, social media marketer for founders, VCs. I was the ghostwriter behind a lot of big accounts on Twitter. And LinkedIn. And basically I spent that time learning from them and realized that they're, you know, I didn't know how to build software. I grew up a YouTube kid, Twitter. I've been tweeting since I was 11 or 12, tweeting at rappers and Chipotle and girls, and I've just always been a content guy. And then working with these founders, I thought you had to be a genius, and it turned out you don't. You just need to like, you know, grind on the right thing, and it's a lot more higher leverage to build software. And so I made a lot of money from the media company angle, but there comes a certain point of peak that you hit, I think, with media companies. It's why VCs don't really fund media companies and why so many of them fail is because it hits a peak. And software is the highest leverage. You can scale yourself a lot harder. So I just put myself in my media. I wrote a book called Memes Make Millions in 2023. I basically, that was my talk to users moment. Of talking to all these meme page operators, marketers, finding out how they make money. I put all that in my software and I just started selling that and we grew it really fast. And I didn't even know how to code. I still don't. I just built it with no code. And because I was just pissed off, I was working for all these founders and I was like, I could do this. Yeah. And so that's, I don't know, man. I think software, it's a lot harder to make your first dollar, but a lot easier to make your first billion, I would say, if that makes sense, or your first $100 million, $10 million, whatever it might be. Like, it's a lot harder to actually get the software working and monetize, but now it's not. That's the thing, um, is like now with every vibe coding app, like, it's not, not as hard as it used to be, you know? Like, it's getting easier and easier every single day. And so what stands out is the marketing, the brand, the taste around it. So I don't know if any marketers are listening to this out there, I would encourage you, it's our time. It's our revolution, man. You know, the nerds are, the engineers are, they're falling. They're angry. Yeah. You hear that, Jeremiah?

You hear that?

I was a, I technically started as a marketer.

Really?

Yeah.

That was my first job out of college.

Marketing. Yeah. Nice. Nice.

Yeah.

I mean, I look, everybody on my team is forced to both market and engineer in some way. All our engineers. Yap, they yap about their features. They all have Twitter followings. Everybody on our marketing team vibe codes and builds shit. And so we have, I've completely forced it from the top down is like, if my dumb ass could do it, you guys could do it. And so that's, I think we're hitting this point of like, everybody, you know, both are getting easy enough. Like both are getting easier and easier actually. Like marketing is getting easier and easier. And so is engineering. And so what stands out is taste and reps, I think. And hard work. That's probably another one of my base beliefs is like, in the age of AI, hard work matters a lot more. Because like—

I think so too, eh? I think so too. I think that we're going to have like this split in people who only consume and people who move forward, right?

Yes.

Yeah, dude, I disagree that I think hard work's actually like becoming less and less important.

Tell me why, because I completely disagree and I'm happy to discuss.

Like, I think it depends on like how you define hard work, but I actually think like right now we're at a time in which like you can out-leverage hard work very, very quickly. Um, and so like there might be a time in which, uh, like you need to compound hard work on top of like leverage, but I often find that like the concept of hard work can distract you from leverage. And I was like someone that for probably like the first like 5 to 10 years of my career, like worked 7 days a week, like 15 hours a day. And I like took pride in like the concept of like working hard, meaning like being in pain while working. And then I think what I've realized like relatively recently is that although that like somehow creates some sort of dopamine response in my brain and like making me feel like I'm useful, it's actually, I think, distracting from like leveraged work and like potentially that is like a, also like a, a side effect of potentially like more resource or something like that in which I didn't have to begin whatever. But I do think that like one of my favorite Nick New quotes is that if hard work mattered, the donkey would own the farm. And I've been like really like trying to like rewire my brain recently to think the most about leverage. And like, I think it will become clear then what to work hard on or like where there needs to be. A lot of like gasoline, but I actually think like the idea of hard work, if it feels like that, like you're, you're doing something wrong.

I would completely disagree. I think, so I think, uh, hard work means different things to different people, but like, I know a lot of people outsource their writing to AI for like 3 years, right? And, uh, a lot of people's writing muscles have atrophied the same way at the gym, right? And clear writing is clear thinking, right? I haven't, I've never used ChatGPT for writing anything, blog, tweet, LinkedIn, whatever, right? And like, I'm literally, it's almost like noticing like when you get into, you know, I'm at my grandparents right now before prepping for the Miami move. And there's a lot of people here who are, who are atrophying, right? My grandparents still play tennis and golf all the time, right? And they're vibing, they're 80, they, they're hanging all the time, right? And it's like, you're kind of, I'm kind of noticing that a lot. That being said, I do think we're approaching this really, really cool time where the clarity of your thinking matters more and more. So exactly what you're saying, Zach, about leverage. But I still think the Red Bull coffee working, you know, figuring out the agent, right? So like something me and my team are thinking a lot about is, you know, I was on the way home from Indian food last night and I was just messaging in Slack cursor, right? Coding up something new, right? Like that's the future is like 50 of those, right? Of like agents, right? Running all the time and I'm just kicking back, chilling, right? But like, it's still kind of hard to like, like it still requires work. Like it's still—

Yeah, no, I, I, I, by no means I'm saying that—

Figure out, you know?

Yeah. By no means am I saying that you should, like, shouldn't be working. I just think that, uh, defining success on a day-to-day basis as I worked hard isn't a good input. At like, in which I think I used to believe that like a lot, a lot more.

Yeah.

And I think you get a lot farther. Like I, I think the incremental extra 3 hours is losing some of its value, especially when you're saying the thing about like clear thinking. In no way do I think that you should just like veg out in front of like and consume things like in no way am I saying that that's what should replace like work. But becoming sharper and like getting more context and things like that. I think that there's more space for it now that the clicking and dragging has been more replaced, um, than it, than it was.

Yeah, I agree with Zach for what little is worth, mostly because if you just look at amongst my most successful peers and just generally the people who I admire the most, the way I spend, see them spending their time has much more to do with getting more context and exposure to more ideas. In order to refine what is the one thing that actually matters the most, that if I hit that, I will unlock like a massive upside opportunity because, because the doing has become so fast. Now that's not to say that you don't have to iterate and like once, once you're in the doing machine, you got to do the doing. But I see way more, yeah, high, high, quote unquote, high leverage activity.

Right.

Like I would describe this podcast as high leverage.

Do you think we're going to see a massive influx of OnlyFans girls entering the tech market because they're getting replicated by AI, they're able to do more complicated, difficult things, they have an entrepreneurial spirit? Yeah, I think that like breaking down like what hard work is, like symbol grounding it might help because I think that we're going to see people who just consume and then people who use information and execution, right? And what you're talking about here, Rashab, is people information gathering so that they can execute very well. It's kind of like that silly, you know, work smarter, not harder thing, right? To work more efficiently. But the person who works efficiently but doesn't actually work, doesn't put in the time, sure, then maybe they can get like a day's work done in an hour and then go chill on the beach. But the person who gets a day's work done in an hour and does that 9 hours a day is going to outwork, right? So I don't know. I think, I think we might be competing with some OnlyFans girls in the future.

I, I would probably say so as well. Also, women buy, spend a lot more money. And so, uh, you know, if, if I was an OnlyFans girl and wanted to start marketing some software to women, I think that's not a bad idea. But yeah, I definitely agree. I like, I'm a huge like barbell theory guy. Like if you guys know about that where it's like two sides of the thing, right? Like, like for everything in my life, I swear to God, like I need to write a piece on this and maybe this will be my, my post Sunday cuz I've been brainstorming on it. But like, like I'm either completely locked the fuck in Celsius is steeping writing or I'm like out in nature, like in the woods vibing like a fucking hippie or like I'm totally like you know, locked in grinding or I'm just reading or, you know, like, like there's so many options of this. Like you're either like totally locked in or you're just, you know, totally free thinking. And I think like it's that combination that matters more and more. Like my favorite example to bring up is like, you know, when you're on a plane and your wifi is like in between going out and you know how miserable you feel like when you're just like, like trying to get it. It's like, that's the worst time ever. Like that's the in between, you know? Like, I hate when I'm watching a movie with people and they're checking their phone. It's like, go enjoy the movie, bro. Like, you're either locked into a movie or you're like not. And I think, I think everybody's hitting that where you're either deeply, deeply relaxed or you're working your ass off. And like, like I think the, you have to be like either one of those. And when you're in the middle, that's the hell. But yeah, I, Rishabh, I definitely agree with that. I think we're, we're hitting this point where it's like so much. Is about what you should work hard on. And, you know, we're experiencing that a lot right now with Memelord of like, hey guys, we like, you know, kind of hustled this and we kind of didn't set up PostHog correctly. Maybe we should fix that. You know, it's like we should probably have our data analytics right. And it's like we're making a lot of money, but like, we actually probably should set that up correctly, right? But it's like, sorry, I was in the middle of fundraising and didn't have time to do that, right? And so, you know, it's, it's like, yeah.

Fundraising is a good thing to spend time on.

Like, dude, so fundraising is, that was my counterexample in my head too, is like, you can't just not work. Like fundraising, like I slept about 2 hours a night for like 3 weeks straight and it was, it was 100% worth it. You do what you gotta do. Like there's no, you know, I have a lot of friends and a lot of people in my life. I'm sure you guys know these types who constantly ask you, hey, should I do this? Should I do this? Like there is no like, Like you can't do that with fundraising. You can't ask everybody, like you have to just not sleep and respond to emails and jump on calls and jump on the flight. Like you have to do what you gotta do for that. And like, I think the work ethic can't be, you can't out-leverage that. Like there is no, there's also no out-leveraging. I think a lot of people are trying to outsmart everything with AI. It's like some things you just gotta do. And I think that's the arbitrage. Like This type of shit is an arbitrage against AI influencers. Hosting events and parties in New York that people have the time of their life at and get laid. Great arbitrage against AI, right? You know, like we're, we're hosting a lot of live events, like, you know, like that kind of stuff is more and more important, you know, in the age. But do both, right? Like do the automated meme accounts, do the automated AI shit, but also do that. Like I think it's one or the other.

I don't know.

That's probably my thesis for this year is just Barbell Theory to the extreme.

I don't know.

Hey Jason, I was going to ask, you said something about feeling like SaaS, you can like, it's easier to scale. If you, if you're comfortable sharing roughly what scale are you at right now and what makes you say that you feel like it's easy to scale and where do you think you're going to hit your like first plateau that you're going to have to break through?

Yeah. Yeah. So between our SaaS and our services, we're doing a solid, uh, over, over a mil a year and we've been, We've been fine with that and, um, and growing pretty fast on that. Uh, so we, we do both SaaS and services and productized services there. And, um, I think it's like, I'm, we haven't even hit close to plateau with that. I haven't spent a dollar on paid ads and that's why we're getting post-hoc set off. So I've got, you know, I raised $3 mil and I've got about $2.7, $2.6 in the bank account. And, uh, so I'm chilling. So the only thing that's stopping me right now from signing up for 4Play Max is that my PostHog is not set up correctly, so I can't track my Facebook ads.

So we don't track our Facebook ads properly either. Fuck.

All right.

I'm good. I'm good.

I'm good.

I'm good.

I was actually good at Facebook. I was actually good at Facebook. You're actually responsible for growth.

So now here, we're going to listen to the one-on-one.

Well, okay. One, one, I just signed up for you guys and I played around with it. And so after this call, I'm actually going to like, just like launch like 10 ads that I made on on, on Memelord. So that was nice.

Hell yeah, dude. Hell yes.

But I, one thing that you said that I wanted to touch on, you're like, oh, uh, we never set up our post-hoc events correctly and now it feels like something that we should do. I think it, I think, I think you probably shouldn't. Like, I think that the, yeah, I mean, like the, the problems become glaringly obvious when you should sort of like do them with a lot of this stuff. And like, to be fair, we're actually going through like a post-hoc implementation right now. And like we have never had proper event tracking ever.

Yeah, it's all, dude, it's a post-hoc, I don't know. Look, I didn't need it when I raised. I just show 'em MRR. I show 'em, you know, what people say and love it. And, but it does help to really, I think, to get to the next level. And we're about to, you know, I could keep it here and, you know, we're launching iOS very soon and that's gonna be really important. And so, you know, that I, I don't know, we already paid the, paid the post-sale consultants, so don't tell me that, Zach, you're going to break my heart.

Yeah.

But I think it, I think, you know, Nikita has a great tweet about it. It's like, if you want to know what people are doing on your platform, you have to track fucking everything. And, you know, right now it's great to have MRR and DAU and all that stuff. But like, I want to know, you know, what AI buttons are they pressing? I want to know, You know, dude, for some reason we're going fucking viral in Turkey. I have no idea why, but like, I want to know how Turkish people are converting and using my software. Like, I don't know. I think—

I think doing it with the lira. That's it.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so, um, I don't know. I, uh, I think, you know, the plateau of a media company is different. That's all I'm going to say on that one is like, I was doing ghostwriting, hit like, you know, this, I guess this agency, but like I was doing like $50K a month solo as a ghostwriter. And, um, you know, that was good, but I was on my honeymoon getting texts from founders who were going bankrupt, you know, bugging me about their fucking tweets. I was like, dude, your company's going to zero. And like, here I am, like on my honeymoon. It's like, there's a, there's a max on that stuff. There's a max on a newsletter business, you know, like, you know, I love Austin Reef. He's, he's one of my investors, but there is a max. There's a reason, you know, that's just the truth of it is like, that's SaaS. There is a reason why every. There's no, not as many public media companies and it's public stock.

Well, it's very easy to see like how, if you wanted to take the media company route and get really, really big, you just look at history to see how they got really, really big. All of them just did it through acquisition.

Yeah.

So it's like, it's just like a different thing. Like, can you scale one media thing infinitely forever? Like the answer is no. But if you just look at like every other media company, like just fucking watch Succession. They just, they do it through acquisition versus like with SaaS, you can kind of scale a thing and build new products under one thing in perpetuity forever. Look at Salesforce. So like, it's just like two different approaches to scale. And like one of them is like capital intensive in one way, one of it capital intensive in another way. Um, well, acquisitions are more capital intensive than engineering, but it happens at different phases, right? So like you have it, your capital at the beginning is way, way higher risk than than the capital at acquisition. Like, and so it's, everything is priced into the market. I mean, yeah, you could make a big media thing. I've never wanted to make a really big media company. That seems like hell on earth, right?

Yeah, no, it's everybody, you know, everybody I talked to, it does not seem fun. But look, what's nice about software is like, and my software specifically, and all of our softwares here is like, you can just launch a media company as part of your software. Like Memelord's actual full, you know, full name is Memelord Movies Corporation. Like, that is where our investors wired $3 million, is because they know, like, part of our long-haul plan is to launch movies on Memelord and launch shows. So, like, we're gonna do that, and, like, but we need tens of millions of users to watch that shit first. So, uh, and you look at Stripe, like, Stripe Press, right? I asked John about that, John Collison, uh, when I met him in Stripe. I was like, why'd you guys do that? He's like, for fun. Like, you know, it's like, because it's cool, and, like, there's a chance that these books will end up in people's houses. You know, it's like every software company can launch media now. Like, I don't know. I think like—

You guys hear about how Jack Dorsey bought Tidal?

Yeah. Uh, no, wait, what do you mean? Like, what was the story?

He was on a boat. He was drunk and he was partying and he was just like, let's buy Tidal.

Fucking go. Dude, I've been thinking a lot about Jack Dorsey. He like liked a couple of my tweets this week. And, uh, I don't know. I think I want to be more like Jack Dorsey than Elon. I think that's, that's where I've like my head's at these days. It's like—

You gotta start growing the beard, dude.

Dude, I can't grow a beard, but I'm a, I'm a go to Costa Rica for sure. But how are you guys thinking about, you know, like, kind of state of advertising, AI, UGC? I'm just curious, like, what you guys are seeing in your space. Like, all I see is that shit on Twitter and I'm like, there's a bubble, man. But like, at the same time, I know some of it works. Like, I'd love to hear, I feel like I'm doing a lot of yapping and I know I'm the guest, but I have a lot of learning to do about this shit that I just don't know about either. Like I said, never spent a dollar on paid ads, so please, I mean, advertising formats is very fluid and it will be fluid forever. Yeah. Yeah.

And, and like, isn't the silver bullet, right? Um, like it all comes down to like what's resonating with people. And like, I think that's like probably like a bit of a hat nod to like what you guys are doing, which like the current meme, uh, aesthetic will not be the meme aesthetic in the future. Um, And like, in the same way that the advertising aesthetic will not be the advertising aesthetic in the future, and it just gets wider and wider and wider. Like, uh, it never gets replaced. It only is additive over time, forever and ever and ever. And like, there's more formats, more styles, because like human taste and attention evolve.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Does an ad— if an ad is really good, or a piece of AI UGC, if it's really, really good, does it become a meme?

Right?

Does it like meet the definition and the criteria of a meme? Because like, in my mind, I know that there's like probably a very official definition of a meme, but it's like something that's very shareable. It's something that gets the point across like instantly. It's something that when people look at it, they, I guess they're somebody who's like aligned with whatever the message is of the meme. They're like, they instantly recognize it as true and reflecting things that they feel.

Right?

So if you, I don't know, if you take it to the extreme, You have a really, really good ad. Is it a meme?

Yeah. I mean, I've never thought about that, but I like it. Definitely. I mean, like you think about like some of like the Subway ads and shit, like as a kid and like weird ads, like the, all the super— yeah, definitely. I like that.

Or like the Sydney Sweeney bath soap thing. Yeah.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's, that's—

there's an ad that becomes a meme.

That's, that's definitely the goal I would say of an ad is for it to be turned into a meme and why so many like people are turning themselves into memes in different ways from, you know, it started out me just face swapping myself onto silly shit and now our users posted and you look at any, you know, politician creator to some degree, the Jake Paul meme-ifying himself in Sora. Everybody wants to turn themselves into a meme in some aspect. Newsom, who like, that one surprised me. Like he's a very like, you know, stick up his ass kind of guy. And I was like pretty surprised that he was able to joke around with himself and post funny memes. Yeah, I mean, you want to be shareable, right? Like that is like kind of a good thing. There's a good book that I would recommend. It's like, it's called Anti-Meme actually. And so it's the exact opposite and it's by something Asperoff. If you guys know Deleon, he's a VC at Founders Fund. His wife Nadieh Asperoff wrote it. And the idea is like an anti-meme is like something top secret that you shouldn't share, that like you don't want to be shared. And like, I don't know, I find that kind of fascinating of like, are there any like things like that in marketing, advertising, secret groups, you know, stuff like that. Like you want to be an anti-meme, like you don't want it to be shared. I don't know. I wonder if there's something around that, but I don't know.

I mean, most of the time the only things that people don't want to be shared is like their like their company strategy. Past that, I think most people want everything to be shared. Like they want their product to be shared. They want their go-to-market to be shared. They want, like, they want everything to be shared. The only, I can't think of anything that I've heard anyone keep dear outside of their product strategy.

Well, I think it just comes down to the individual, like, um, uh, like Company Affairs, even though it was a great meme on an individual level. Wasn't the best thing. What was that guy's company at the fucking Coldplay concert?

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Astronaut.

Astronomer.

Astronomer.

Astronomer. Like, great meme. Great meme. But like, probably wouldn't, uh, be—

but dude, everybody knew what Apache Airflow— sorry, knew the words Apache Airflow because of that. I still don't even know what the fuck Apache Airflow is.

Dude, I have no idea.

I went to my co-founder and I'm like, do we use Apache Airflow? Cause I was like, I don't know what the fuck this thing is, but—

your, your point is that, that, that wasn't good for the individual, but was still good for the company, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think there's good memes and bad memes, both like, like of, of your brand and also like there are so many memes about whatever it is, PayPal. Like, I, I don't know. I'm trying to think of like really bad UX software, like.

You know, there's like anything that's negative about your company other than price. Like, I actually think price memes that are negative about your company are probably net good. Like, generally, I don't, like, I don't think that really matters. I don't think people like look at memes as a way of just like thinking of like value and stuff like that. And if anything, you're like, well, why does this cost so much? Like, I actually think the why does this cost so much thought process in the human brain is like very, very powerful.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, especially when you're trying to sell to companies with for people with like lots of resources, like, like as a luxury brand, like the best feeling you could have is why does this cost so much? The worst feeling you could have is why is this so cheap? Um, so I think it really depends on like the positioning, but I think, yeah, like any sort of meme about your product outside of, um, like the quality of the actual product is probably really great.

Yeah. I, I was working with an e-commerce founder, uh, a buddy who like, He noticed when his meme, you know, product was getting dropped in memes, like it was driving sales and it was like, how do we amplify that? So introducing him to different meme pages in his area and just surreptitiously placing it in like the Tech Bro Starter Packs, you know, those kind of memes. And it doesn't have to be crazy. It doesn't have to be super obvious, but memefying your own product is super powerful with that. Like our old pricing wall, like it became a meme where people would post it because it was called like a micro penis plan and it was $6.99 a month. Like stuff like that. Just the little things where you could share it. It had an eggplant and everything. And you know, I think we're hitting this point of like software as content, software as memes. Like my, I started this YouTube series last year called Silly Valley Ventures where every week we'd build a stupid startup. So we built Duolingo only for cursing called Duofucko.com. We built a dating app with only one man on it and unlimited women. Like we, we are, yeah, we built, you know how like some bars in New York have like have couches. We built an app to find all the bars that have couches. Like we were hitting this point where I would download that fucking app. Thank you.

That is my— I'll send you the link to the show. That is literally— I was like, where do you want to go? I'm like, I want to go to a place with a fucking couch.

So I went to Brooklyn and found those and we raided them. And I think we're hitting this point where, like, you know, like you said, I agree. Everybody wants everything to be shareable for the most part. That's why, you know, like if you can make your make it delightful and weird. Like I think, yeah, we're, we're in it. You know, if you, if you can make people say what the fuck and share it, it's such a, and it's showing true for Instagram content too. Like the reels that I've noticed that of mine popped off the most was ones that have the most shares. Like, you know, I'm sure you guys have seen the same and like, you know, we're, we're living in the shareability world. Like, is your shit shareable? Is it memeable? Is it, you know, does it make you want to share it with your friends? You know?

I don't know.

Jason, I'm curious what the, like, what is the thing that surprised you most about starting? Like, you were working with all of these SaaS founders and you probably had some point of view about their life or what the fuck they were doing, or, and then you started doing it. What was the thing that surprised you on the upside and what surprised you on the downside?

Um, I always thought that like founders were jacked and healthy cuz they were just like superhuman and now I'm like, in really good shape and it's just 'cause I'm stressed out all the time and I need to like box and punch things. I think that's been the biggest surprise, honestly. Like, I, I just was like, these guys are Greek gods and it's like, oh, they're just really stressed out and like want to cry. And so they work out a lot. All right. And besides that, I would say like, again, like I thought these guys were geniuses or like founders in general. Like I thought, you know, I wrote this in a piece a while back. I thought you had to be, Zuck to be a founder, right? And then you work with people, you're like, I'm the one writing their words. Like, what am I missing here? Like, I'm the one who got them viral. I'm the one doing all this. Like, and then, you know, Ariel Zuckerberg invested in us. I was like, ah, I guess you don't need to be the next Zuck, you know? Like, you don't have to be Zuck, you know? It's like, you could do it your own way. Um, I think that was a big thing. And like, I guess the third was, oh, biggest surprise was like, I was very like anti-VC. I was a bootstrapper through and through, and a lot of people thought I ran VC Brags, which I don't. It's a buddy of mine, but like, I was completely wrong about venture capital in general. My VCs are dope. I love them. They aren't up my ass. If anything, they're hard to get ahold of sometimes because they're all mysterious and disappear to their own world. And I don't know, I worked at Product Hunt. I was like very indie hacker and like I only raised money because I have a, you know, I had a product that was successful, that it was indie hacking, and then it was, you know, I wanted to take it to the next level. And I think the mistake of thinking that all VCs are assholes was probably an immature Jason Levin, you know, mistake that I made. And I'm glad that I learned that that wasn't the truth. There's some really cool VCs out there. And yeah, if anybody's listening, I would recommend like, don't just pitch every VC, like find the ones you think are dope. I found our lead check, Sayan, because I listened to her on the Tim Ferriss podcast and I was like, I love her. I love her story. Like she's been through some shit. She reminds me of myself. And then like, you know, a lot of our VCs I had talked to from Twitter for years and years, Balaji Srinivasan, and we had DM'd for years and like, you know, Sam Lessin, we got introduced via mutual friends. We had like a, You know, it's like a lot of our investors were just my Twitter buddies that, you know, I was friends with. And so I don't know, I think like it was probably an immature perspective and there's some really, you know, they're, a lot of 'em are just like 5 years older than you. They already got rich. They don't have the time to grind on a founder thing. They just want to leverage their money better. And so they invest and that's, it's really that deep. It's not that deep, you know? So I don't know, I guess there are 3 main things there, but yeah.

I mean, we've had a lot of discussion about like different way to capitalize the businesses. Here, um, by the way, I totally agree. I think this like idea that VCs are bad or that VC funding means you can't get rich, like there's this insane idea that, oh, if you can't sell past this number, then the founder doesn't make any money. It's just totally false. But, uh, the, I mean, I, I, I personally think that people should do exactly what you said, which is understand like what the ecosystem looks like, who's out there. Cyan is exceptional. Um, and so like, that's awesome for you that she, she was in the round. Uh, I have other friends who have raised from her and they say awesome things. Uh, but yeah, I, I, I totally agree with that point of view.

Yeah, I, I think like find people who are aligned, don't spray and pray. Um, you know, like they're, especially if you're working on something weird, You know, like we did end up with calls with like some institutional investors and like it was just weird. It was like they don't get it and they'll get it once it's bigger. They'll jump on, on the growth rounds, whatever. But there's a reason why the weirdos are the, are the seed checks and everybody follows them, right? Scion's arguably the most successful angel investor of all time, right? And was our first check. And once you have that and somebody who believes in you and loves you, like it helps a lot. And so I don't know, I think like I'd also challenge any, I think a lot of people are, could build software more than they realize. It's back to that before about media and software company was, it was a limit in my brain too of like, I already learned everything I need to do for the most part about media. Like I've been making YouTube videos. I went to video editing camp. I had run big newsletters. It was like, it's, I wanted to learn how to build software and like the challenge of it is so much fun. It's so hard. It was like new pieces of my brain unlocking, you know? I love, I love it. Like I actually love it more than media stuff. Yeah.

And you did it on max difficulty, right?

I mean, maybe not max difficulty because you're coding, but you were doing it on Bubble. I was, I was doing Bubble. It was all workflows and like, that's what I mean of like, if you don't have the skills to leverage, like I didn't know how to code, so all I knew how to do was drag and drop workflows. And the only option for that was staying up all night drinking Red Bull and doing that. And now I have engineers who are doing the work for me and I have to step back. It's forcing me to step back and, you know, I've been taking off every Saturday for the last 3 months to just journal and, and think. And that's been huge. But yeah, I don't know, it's really fun building software. I think like it's way more fun actually than doing a lot of media stuff. And I've been taking a step back actually. I made a big decision to go private on Instagram like a month ago. I was like, I don't need to be public. I have money. I could pay people to be influencers for me. Like, why am I spending, why am I doing this? You know, like, Uh, my Twitter is where we, you know, like I could write, you know, it was like, I've gotten tens of millions of views on Instagram doing viral shit, but like, it's not the best use of time anymore for me. I have to like be honest with myself about that. And that was actually really hard. But, uh, I don't know, you, I look at all the founders I respect, you know, you don't see fucking Karp or Elon or Zuck, even Zuck who owns Instagram. He's not making daily yap videos, you know, it's like. I don't know. I think software's really hard and I think a lot of people are starting to see that with some of these influencer-y founders. I'm not going to name names, but they're starting to realize that product is a lot harder than just making viral content. That's actually, it's really hard. Yeah.

You know what? This reminds me of what Jeremiah was going to say on like clarity of what to pay attention to. I think that even with Um, all of this tech making it so much easier to build. I think the majority of people just have no idea what to build. They don't have a use case to solve for. So they've got this, like, I don't want to say unlimited, but there's, there's so much capacity. There's so much horsepower and there's no direction. Everyone's just building like another habit tracker.

Yeah. So I was, I couldn't sleep the other night. So I was like up till 4 AM watching YouTube videos about how my refrigerator works. And then I like realized that I'm too stupid to understand that. So then I was like watching HVAC videos and then I, I was like, all right, you know what, I'm gonna watch physics for middle school kids cuz I was a dumbass. And so the reason why I'm talking about this speed versus velocity, velocity is speed with direction, you know? And a lot of people have speed and I think right now it's like, how's your velocity? How's your direction? And that's, that's what we're, really working on, you know, like Memelord, we're, we only launched this version of the product 3 months ago. I only started the company 15 months ago. And so like, we're so early, like we are so fucking early. We're like, shit is not done. Shit is not where I want it to be. Like, it stresses me out so much. Like, I know it's not perfect. I know, I know all that, but you know, the only thing we can do is keep going forward. Otherwise we'd never launch. You know, you just keep on improving, iterating. Also, if you're watching this and, and you are trying to start a SaaS, exactly what you said, Jack, find the problem in your own life and solve that. Then use the magic of the internet to find people like you. You know, I solved the problem in my life, which was I couldn't keep up with trending memes and I wanted a meme editor that had everything all in one place. So I built that for myself and I built a stupid version. Memoard V1 was a newsletter and a Google Slides actually, and people paid for that and loved it. And, um, and then I learned how to build the software after people paid for it. So I don't know, solving your own problem. Um, it also makes you a lot more passionate about it. I don't know. I think all the people who are like, I'm seeing a lot of dupe for software, you know, cloning software, they're fucking losers. Like, I don't know how else to say it. Like, you're gonna give up eventually because you don't love it and you hate it and you hate your life, you know? I don't know.

Dude, can I just say something on that? We, we, we have a couple of competitors now that are like literal replicas of what we do. Um, I kid you not, I saw the founder of one of those companies post on LinkedIn almost exactly the same post I had posted 3 days before. And I'm like, man, how do you wake up in the morning and feel inspired by doing this? Like, that's, that's actually the more troubling thing. Like, there's just no way that's sustainable.

Right.

I mean, and you guys have had, we've talked about this before, Foreplay has had some insane copycats. Like it's just like literally a lift, right? Am I remembering right, Zach?

Yeah. I mean, there's like, like I, there's, there's more probably that have came out and died than I, than the ones that I'm aware of.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Same, same. We had, we had one kid literally copy word for word our pricing and I was just like, like, how do you feel good about yourself? Like you gotta, you gotta like, you gotta look in the mirror and be like, damn, I'm an idiot. I'm like, think for yourself, bro. Like really just like take some time, man. Grab a notebook.

The truth is I feel like all of those actions are based on them looking at the, in the mirror and saying, I fucking hate myself. Like, realistically, right? Like, it's like that conversation happens before doing that. She's like, oh, it's like, it is just like the greatest form of flattery. And I feel like bad about it. Like, it's like. Oh wow. Okay. Like, like it is like years of someone's life, which like you don't get that many of 'em.

Like, no, you don't. And especially like, ah man, like especially in today's age, what you guys are talking about is we have more leverage than ever. So if you're working on something you hate, working on something that is miserable, like it just sucks. Like I, I just don't, I, I feel bad for you. Like I don't, I don't really know what to say. It's like, um, yeah. And maybe that's just like a meaning issue in society is like not enough people, you know, feel like they have something that means something. I don't really know what, if that means anything or if we're just in a bubble where everybody thinks it's so easy to copycat other people and make money. It's one of the two or the both, but like, it's not that easy. Like if it was that easy, there would've been 100 other meme apps that raised $3 million. It's not easy. Like it took 4 years of me looking like a retard. And, you know, endless blood, sweat, and tears. And so, and I'm sure the same with foreplay, you know, people probably thought you guys were crazy with it. And, and so it's, I don't know, I just don't, I, I talked to this college kid and he kept asking me like, you know, what should I do? What should I do? I said, literally, my best advice for you, stop asking me for advice, please. Just like, ask yourself, man, please just ask yourself, stop. Like, just go do it. Like, it's just, ah, man, I don't know. I hope, I hope the kids are going to be all right, but I think Jack, you're right. It's like most of the kids ain't going to be all right. They're going to be consuming, you know, but the ones who do it right, they'll be fine.

You know, I was trying to think about this and I think that like, you know, if you have a problem, like a real problem, and if we make it like the simplest problem, hunger, you have an obvious direction. It's like, I need to get to the solution so that I'm no longer hungry.

Right.

But if you have no problems, right, and you haven't created problems by yourself, for yourself, by being ambitious, then you've got like, you've got to come up with a direction. You've got to find a problem to solve. And I think there are a lot of people that are like, oh, okay, there's no problem. Just, I don't know, anime and Doritos.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. I, unfortunately, yeah. I don't know.

I think, I don't think it's unfortunate. I feel like sometimes these conversations come up.

I think it's incredible.

It's like people can do whatever the fuck they want. It's great. Like, The reason why people can do this and not be working on a farm is because a bunch of other people created a bunch of wealth in a country and now they get to do that. And like, that's what they would have wanted to do anyway. So like, are these things really bad? No, they're fucking great. Like, like, like the duality of society is incredible. And like, if everyone was like young, hungry, like young, dumb, and full of cum, just fucking coding and making a bunch of money, like nobody would be. And so it's just like, it's great. Like, we need people consuming, otherwise Instagram wouldn't be a fucking massive company and my Meta shares wouldn't be up. Like, this is all good. This is all good. Like, it is great. And like, people can do whatever the fuck they want with their lives, but like, if they're complaining that they don't have a bunch of money and they're doing that, then whatever. Stop complaining.

I like that. I agree. Um, what do you guys think of like, I'm curious about you know, what you guys are seeing with, with vibe coding in general or anything like that, or how you, how marketers are doing it. You guys seeing any cool things lately?

I actually think some of what we've been talking about is the challenge with vibe code, which is you can look at it and have an idea of what I want something to be, but then when you get into, which is good for like prototyping something, right? But like even Jason Levin, it sounds like you got to this point, right? Like you get far enough in, but you get to a point where If you don't understand how to code and you're trying to create something that requires good code, you kind of get stuck. And I think that's, that's where we are right now with live coding. I think probably will be for a long time. Uh, eventually I, I would assume that changes eventually, right? But there's always going to be, or not, maybe not always, but at least for a while, some sort of level that you get to where you kind of plateau and you need the expert to help unlock that. So I think that's what I'm seeing right now with live coding.

Yeah.

I just finished building something, um, that's really big. Um, as in it's a very big project and a lot of it started in Sheets, like in Google Sheets for, um, more complicated explanations of the things that I wanted to build. I haven't hit a wall at all. I haven't hit a point where I did with Gemini, man, that was a terrible experiment. Gemini doesn't work. Claude 4.5 and Claude 4.1. Fine, right? Opus is, uh, yeah, I haven't had it, you know, run into any, um, bottlenecks. And one, one part of the product uses like Robin's MMM, uh, like, which is like Meta's, like, very robust, basically it's, it's a very big, uh, component of the product and it did it like it one-shotted it.

Right.

So I don't know.

It's, um, The conversation about vibe coding needs to have this context, which is the idea of commercialization. And it was a lot, it was a, it was a lot bigger of a topic, probably like 10, 15, 25 years ago where you'd think about technology and the commercialization of technology. And right now people are only thinking about technology and they're having zero like thought about commercialization. And so it doesn't fucking matter. What you can create without the commercialization of the technology. It's the only thing that makes it sustainable and worth continuing to do. And so like, yes, it's all this cool that you can build all this type of stuff. But if anything, what's becoming more important because this is becoming so much easier is the commercialization aspect. And so if anything, it's just like, stop thinking about the things or the, the roadblocks you might hit and try to commercialize the thing that you're at right now. And if you cannot commercialize it, then you need to approach the problem in a different way and like not wait for the future in which all your problems will be solved. You need to create value today. And so if the thing that you're doing isn't creating value today, it's probably not worth doing. There are some examples in which maybe that is not true. Like you could think about the Thigma story in which they focused on technology for a very long time and commercialization caught up with them. Um, but I, that's, I would look at that as like a lot of luck and timing. And so if you want to eliminate the luck and timing side, try to commercialize what you have now. If it cannot be commercialized, you then need to just look in the world today with what we have, how can I create some fucking dollars?

Yeah, I love that. I completely agree. I think a lot of people are just building stupid shit with no business model. And I was actually talking to a buddy about this, like, there's gonna be a lot of vibe coders who have like no idea how to run a business and there's kind of an opportunity there. And I was talking to another friend who's like an Excel guy, like, you know, finance guy. I was like, there's a lot of creatives who are multi, multi-millionaires who just have no fucking clue how Excel works. Like, I have no idea how my finance, how Excel works, dude. I haven't worked on it in 7 years, 10 years since like I dropped out of undergrad business program. Like, I haven't touched it. You know, it's like, there are a lot of people like that. I think, uh, Excel, like, I think. We're seeing that a lot, commercialization, or there's a lot of people who are building, you know, silly side projects, whatever, and there's no business model, there's no underlying anything. You know, the reason why Memelord works is because we have a core business offering, which is, you know, the trending memes, and then we just do a bunch of crazy shit to get you there to the trends. And like the canvas that took a long time to build, that entire editor, that was not easy. And it was like, yeah, you could vibe code something on Rourke or vibe code and have it out in an hour. And it's like, so what? Like there's no, there's nothing there. You know, like those are, so I don't know if I could share my screen, but if I can, I could show you guys some cool stuff. So like me and my team are, you know, I vibe code all this, these silly tools. We do a bunch of this where like, I just spend like a couple hours late at night, like, you know, building these silly tools. Right. And like, this is like worthless if there wasn't an underlying business model that was worth millions. Right. It's just like silly tools otherwise. Right. 'Cause like now in the age, like where anybody could do this, right? Like I built this last night when I was in the car where it's just, you know, uh, Always Sunny generator. Like this has driven tens of thousands of views, right? Like, and it's only because we actually have a real business model and marketing system behind it. And, um, I don't know, I see a lot of people trying to go viral and whatever it is, like the, I saw the other day like some AI monk, which was like great, but like if you don't have anything valuable to sell with it, Like you're pointless. Like this guy had, you know, 60 million views and they, all he was doing was selling an ebook. It's like, that is the least leverage. I mean, maybe not the least leverage, but pretty low leverage, you know? It's like, I don't know. I think like it's one thing to build a bunch of silly stuff, but you gotta have a smart business underneath. Like I've always lived by the dumb meme, smart threads, right? It's the silly memes are the top of funnel to get to the smart shit. And I think a lot of people are forgetting about the bottom shit for a while because they're so excited, which is good. It is good. Yeah. But, um, I don't know, you, you gotta have a real business too. So I don't know. I don't know how much time we got left, but I like it. I'm thinking about this.

I love the way your product looks. Looks so funny.

Appreciate it.

All of it is just, it's so consistent.

I appreciate it. We, uh, we're trying to build a world, you know, we, we, uh, we're having a lot of fun and, uh, you know, we, We fired the, you know, we tried hiring a designer, like, ah, he just does dashboards and B2B SaaS. We're like, we gotta have fun with it. And I don't know, I think more people should do that. I would encourage them to do that early on.

Yeah.

What's the most amount of money a customer can spend with you guys?

We have customers spending tens of thousands with us that are doing per month for services. So we do a lot of meme pages. We don't advertise 'cause we're at capacity right now, actually. But we have, you know, 6, mid-6 figures and we just actually sent out a contract for $1.2 mil for a 6-month contract. And so everybody, like, this is what I'm saying about the silly stuff to get to the smart stuff. Like, everybody who's like on our free tools ends up in our CRM and like we're hitting people up. Like, you know, we, like, there is a smart business model. There's a method to our madness where, you know, we're working with unicorns and public companies on smart stuff. And, I don't know, right now it's the services is basically like a great way to work closely with customers and have no burn basically as we build out the product even more. So another encouragement to SaaS founders is don't be afraid of services, like especially in the age of Palantir where they have broken the metaphorical barrier, VCs understand it. Some won't, some will criticize you, but like many are like, like RVC wrote us a $1.5 mil check was like, no, that's proof. Like that is proof that people will pay for your shit. You know, it's like, yes, like there is proof of that. Um, I don't know. So, so yeah, I mean, 6, 7 figures more in the future if we do it right. You know, I don't know. We'll see what happens. Maybe, maybe more.

But dude, this is exciting. I'm excited to see how this thing continues to scale. Um, I gotta bounce, but this was awesome, man. I really, I really appreciate the time.

All right. This was, this was awesome. Uh, I'll talk to you guys soon.

All right.