Inside the Underground Meme Marketing World: Jason Levin of Memelord

memes reveal hidden truths and they can make people realize different things the same way. Good joke at a comedy show can make you realize something about yourself or about family or whatever it might be like. It hits you really hard. I just have this thesis like this is another Elon quote right of like the most entertaining outcome is the most likely right if you want your business to be the most likely. Then it should be the most entertaining right if you want your book to be the most likely to be bought then it should be the most entertaining if you want your music career. To be the most likely to be Grammy nominated then shouldn't be the most entertaining Mr. Postman get the tattoos on your face right. It doesn't have to be that extreme but if the most entertaining outcome is the most likely then you should be trying to be the most entertaining by any memes necessary right. Welcome to the internet underground world of memes we're diving into the dark alleys today and I'm so excited to introduce you to Jason Levin he's absolutely one of a kind and he built this incredible company called meme lord. And it's based around this understanding that memes aren't just jokes but one of the most powerful forms of condensed communication and persuasion that can instantly transmit all over the world. He helps companies people everywhere from startups to fortune 500s to politicians wage what he calls mimetic warfare. And he spent years as an internet kid just coming up on those digital streets figuring out what works online why some messages stick and seeing that humor outperforms almost every other form of marketing. For full disclosure i'm just want to be clear that i'm a small investor in me lord like teeny teeny tiny but i think Jason is really compelling i think his thesis is spot on and he's unbelievably scrappy founder as a here in our conversation i just. Love how he goes about all this i think it's hilarious and he'll build a really unique company because he's a really unique person. This is covers all kinds of ground we talk about internet culture startup growth history of propaganda how a i's changing company building and if you're interested in marketing media startups or just how ideas spread this ones for you. It might help you give you a little immunity against the memes out there in the world it might. Put a sword in your sheath if you're running around trying to persuade people about things we talk about the midwit curve one of those common memes out there we talk about why funny companies beat boring companies and personality matters we talk about. He's sort of interesting conspiracies things that look organic that are actually not and go behind the scenes on a few of them and how agents can actually start to produce humor and memes and marketing in a world where distribution is often the real advantage. People and talent like Jason can command incredible. Respect and incredible resources i think this is a company and a man to watch and i'm really excited that you get to meet him. Today i hope you enjoy our conversation arriving at your ears in three two one what is the single most effective meme you've ever seen in your life what meme did the most good or the most damage. I think it's a bell curve meme the midwit meme everybody knows where's IQ graph and for me i think i first saw it in 2021 2022 and it was the notion versus notes at one. And I was like notion heavy and basically realized i was like oh i am notion stirbating or whatever the word might be of like it's not real work you know like the real work is done in the notes app and like that like i got to be honest that one took me a little bit to digest and that's like the power of a meme right is like it changes your mind of like wow like. I really could just be notes at maxing and a notebook right now why do i have you know mini inline databases for you know tweets that i'm bookmarking like some kind of second brain guy i don't know. Yeah that would just like immediately change your behavior yeah that one that one pretty much immediately change it and like that was the beauty of that meme is like i've remix that now so many times that i think you know like is so helpful where it's. You know i made one that went pretty viral like you know on the right side and left side of the iq it's just make more money and in the center it's like i need the perfect budgeting app it's like. I like never use the budgeting app and like if you're an entrepreneur like it's probably not the best use your time you should probably just like figure out how to make more money and not like. Use like a personal budgeting app to save twelve dollars on starbucks like just just like i don't know sell another ad spot in your podcast those memes like it's almost a way of thinking for me of like oh wait like yeah i'm doing the stupid thing i'm doing the midwit thing and i hate being the midwit there's like a deep human truth in the midwit. Curve the midwit me yes you see it reapplied so many times and i feel like what's so interesting about that notion stories that it's not like it's not like the notes app. Set out to do a campaign against notion or anything it like it was just. A truth that somebody shared that totally turned you off of a product that you had been loving. In an instant that's the power of a medic warfare what we call and why so many businesses use us is because. Meme reveal hidden truths and make people realize different things the same way good joke at a comedy show can make you realize something about yourself for about your you know family or whatever might be like it hits you really hard i was just going to another one of my. Belkirk memes that popped off and i think it's timely i hope it's cool if i say retarded but on the left and right side it says i'm kind of retarded so i work up really hard to make up for it and the middle it's i don't need to work hard i'm too smart for hard work i will get by with no work just like school so many my friends are like people from high school you know like. Like they just like got by because they're good at school and like that actually is like not as you know like you know that's just not like how the real world works like you can actually be kind of an idiot sometimes like not the highest highest i keep like like i don't know how to code i don't know chemistry i don't know rocket stuff but i could go build a business and work really hard so i think like hopefully that meme like inspired some people just realize like hey i don't need to like you know be a genius i just need a work hard you know. The way to read the midway curve and if you haven't ever seen this meme like just take 10 seconds and google it so you know what the hell we're talking about like you can never actually be the guy on the right so you just have to embrace that you're the guy on the left embrace the stupid simple thing that works and that's actually like the path to the jet i outcome. Yeah and that's why we made him our logo the hooded woe jack is the guy on the right side and it's like we all aspire to be that guy and you actually become that guy by being the idiot and just like like you know means make millions like i was the guy on the left until suddenly like we actually raise millions and now like that's what we do right it's like. You just like force of will of nature is like whatever like you have to get through that midway valley the same it's like the cringe valley of some way like you have to like get out of it as soon as possible but like the only way out is through yeah yeah so you said a few things that i think it interesting like nvault just did a podcast about sales and his title of it was sell the truth and it's like it there is no amount of salesmanship that in the long run will sell a lie and so your job is just like figure. You can figure out a truth and state it clearly and that's that is effective sales and persuasion and my lots of share my screen here real quick you can do it but we're going to get a lot of people that are audio only so I would also say like where to send people are what to google if you. Okay alright just in my twitter highlight section have one that just says I won't worry about but whatever marketing genius switch switch bots to AI agents and it's just a dude like stacking up cash is like it's just it's just true right like it's. And memes reveal head interest like they're just like jokes on that's why they're so powerful right and that's why I like. People are scared of them right and people on both sides of the aisle are scared of them and why there actually is this thing called. Mamedic warfare that research papers have been written about and proposals and books and billions of dollars spent in both sides and. Both an enterprise and politics and everything in between is because like if you can influence people's ideas and perception like that's actually worth a lot of money and the best way to do that is. A quick hit in joke right so going into Elon real quick like. Elon one of his his quotes about memes is you know means are the most information dense form of communication right and you think about selling as fast as possible you want a poster right you do a great with the book is it's like. It's no different than like world war two posters you know 50 years ago so different than surrealist art like it's just image and tax and like it has all this context here and if you could reveal truth. About the world about your product about like the problems of your customer right and what they feel every day you can make somebody like wake up and change their behavior yeah. I think this company is a really interesting one because it's like all great companies are an outgrowth of a unique person who just goes about being themselves. It's your point about school, right? There's people who are great at school, and then they're just kind of like a cookie cutter in the rest of their life. And what you find when you get out of the real world is like you're valuable to the degree that you're unique. And I feel like you are unique, and this company is unique. And I don't know. I want you to sort of introduce like yourself and your company through that lens, because I think this is unlike, you know, we eat a lot of like hard tech and deep tech entrepreneurs. We get authors on the spot, yes, but like you're something else entirely. I appreciate it. I think we're some combination of all of the things. And so, Memelord is software for memetic warfare using a mix of AI agents for meme marketing and trend detection and everything in between, right? We know what your brand is, you know, we can predict the memes before they're even made, right? And we help brands be funny. We help them get more attention. And that could be defense companies. That could be government stuff. That could be silly brands and e-commerce brands. That could be anything from advertising to organic bangers on X and TikTok. Or it could be billboards or merch or ways to sell your book for background of like who I am. I'm an internet kid through and through, like, start posting YouTube videos when I was like 10 years old. I like learned Photoshop sold like 50 grand worth of stickers when I was in high school just like cooking up grateful dead stickers, you know, at school, I was that kid freelancing for fast and sororities cooking up merch and really like it all came down. So like this, I was a graphic design kid. Like I was literally face swap in myself into like silly images when I was 10 years old and I still do that now. And you know, after college around that time, like I wanted to make money writing online. That's when I found Eric's work. I read your book about leverage which underrated and all those books and the Almanac and everything around 2021. I was working for startups, ghost writing for founders. So a lot of founders to see on this timeline, I was the guy writing those tweets. And when Chatsy Petit came out, I was cooked, right? I knew I was cooked. And fortunately like more and more of these founders were also realizing like what stands out, what gets attention is humor. I was like, oh shit, like wait, they want to pay me for being funny. Like that's what I wanted to do. I didn't want to write the serious stuff, but now you're gonna pay me to do it. And realize like the world was going towards boring. And if you want to stand out, you have to be funny and on hinge and it's the things that AI can't do. Chatsy Petit still can't be on hinge, cloth still can't be, but you can be as a human. And so that's really where I went. I was doing all these marketing for startups. You know, I was head of growth at product time. I worked with GM.dev. I did a lot of work there. And basically I just drank a lot of Red Bull and built meme lord with no code. And then after that raised a few million to grow it. In our software, what it does, it alerts people of the newest trending memes on iOS. And then you're able to cook up anything you want and remix it to your brand. Now the future is actually just agents doing all that for you and memetic agents. So yeah. - Yeah. And I was signed up for this back when it was like, you were just like texting, it was text alerts for her. - It was like, hey, there's a new trending meme. So you know how expensive texting MMS is? Ridiculously expensive. - Yeah. - Yeah, so happy. Now we've got iOS notifications, which are near free. It's pretty amazing. - Yeah, that's really oh bill adds up. - Oh, that's really oh bill is getting bad. I had my rep on speed dials crazy. But yeah, man, it's like, you see more and more like the smartest people on the internet are shit posting. They're posting memes, right? It's Elon, it's Andreessen. It's whoever it might be, right? Politicians on both sides. People are like, no, it's just Trump. No, actually Gavin Newsom is posting memes and so are the Democrats. It's both sides because memes are just like the way to communicate. They're the simplest base unit again, right? You know, I worked with Andrew Koma, I got invited to Gracie Mansion to meet Eric Adams. Like, you know, different politicians have hit me up since then, right? And like different parts of government stuff are we, you know, talk side by side, right? Advocacy groups, all that stuff. And it's like, if you have an idea that you stand for, you know, maybe it's nuclear, maybe it's data centers, stuff that's very common on this podcast, well, guess what? A lot of people hate you, right? A lot of people hate data centers and somebody needs to do propaganda for that and somebody needs to fight the memetic warfare. And that's, that's a lot of what we do for businesses. Yeah, I mean, Isabella Bemke, I think her, is how you pronounce her last name. So dope, like she's basically been doing memes for nuclear for years. And it's like what's brought so many people around because it's like, if it's not fun to consume, every people go to the internet mostly for their kind of like, let off steam, enjoy themselves. And so like, if you want to communicate with them, you've got to make it enjoyable for them and funny. And like, you've got to feed the algorithm something that's going to want to spread. And so people are interacting with it and enjoying it. Like, that's what's going to spread. And that's how you earn the right to reach more people. Like make the education or make the nugget entertaining. Yeah. And like, I remember when I was starting out on Twitter, like 2021, 2022, some kid was like, you have to either be serious or funny. You can't do both. It's like, no, you can do both. Like when Palantir is posting memes, I think you're allowed to post memes to buddy, like Mr. B to B SaaS for Fintech and Insurance. Like, you can be silly and serious. And like, marketing has always done this. Like, memes are just an iteration, the latest form of funny marketing. Like, it's been around forever. You know, I wrote the book on memes and studied the history of advertising and capitalism. Right? And yeah, let's go. You know, let's go. This is high up there. Like, books I wish I published to somebody else actually published. Yeah. Yeah. Funny marketing's been around forever. You know, it's probably the oldest form of marketing. You said sex and like, you know, it works for any brand, any topic, anything is if you can make it funny, you can do it. And I think one of the big things that people are especially in these serious businesses, like they're scared of memes is like, oh, it has to be on hand, sure racist. Like, no, like we work with the most boring B to B billion dollar companies and find things that are funny that there's no racism. There's no unhingedness. There's no sex of them. It's like, if you've ever listened to Seinfeld, he never curses. He never talks about sex or drugs. He just finds the humor in daily situations, whether it's in for us, we work with HR brands and sales and vibe coding and security. Because there's just funny things, right? Like, it doesn't have to be unhinged. Like, there's a lot of funny things that aren't unhinged. So yeah, I know some of this is probably sensitive, but like, are there people that you can talk about having worked with? We can't talk about a lot. Yeah. Yeah. We buy requests we're happy to, but I'll say a lot of like B to B SaaS unicorns, stuff like that. And then we have a lot of brands on our site too. Like, yeah, we are bread and butter is actually the B to B. And the boring are the better, which is like, I think like one of the reasons why there's such an alpha there is like, if you're a boring company, like nobody's reading your white paper, except for like 12 dudes and like a shack, like you want attention, like, there's so much arbitrage to make it funny. That's why I like very excited about like the boring are the better, man. Like, give me, give me a data center company. Like, a like, you know, I don't know, like I was listening to podcasts with the Koch brothers, like give me a chemical plant or like an agriculture tech company and like, let me try to make that funny. Because like, it's really easy to make like, I don't know, like some consumer like brand funny. That's just easy. Throne, though like, it can't run like the camera for your own. It's too simple. And like, there's too many kids competing actually for that. Like give me the boring stuff because that's actually where the money is too. And like, it's more fun too. Yeah. And I think to your point of the arbitrage is like, there's a lot more alpha, the more boring the industry, the more you stand out by being brave, by being funny. Like, I would love to see a bank or a financial institution or like, but there's so many people who sort of like dumb down their brand and make it so plain and vanilla because, because trust is what matters. But also like, you build that bond with people and by revealing the truth, the shared truth. And I think there's so much. Yeah, there's so much good that can come from that 100% out of position to the entire rest of the industry when you start to like make fun of the boring people. Yeah. And I also think like on that note, what I always tell people is memes won't save your business. If you have a bad business, like you're fucked. Anyways, like you're just not going to make money. Like that sucks. Like, memes could get you attention on your good business. But like, that's why you saw so many brands like 2021, like the crypto scams. Like, like, none of those are good businesses. We don't touch any of that. Like, they're just not fundamentally good businesses. Like, like at the end of the day, like, I'm a business person and like, we make a lot of money and we try to like, help other brands make more money. Like, that's like what we do. And I don't know. I think like there hasn't been somebody who takes funny marketing as seriously as it should. It's just a lever to pull the day. Like, I'm going to go off on this, but like like SEO, paid ads, serious blogs, podcasts, all levers. We just want to be the best funny marketing lever in the world. That's it. Yeah. And one of the least one of the least explored like of those spaces, you know, SEO is like slowly dying or quickly dying, depending on your category and how often your customers use use LLMs. I mean, you just some of the stuff gets saturated so quickly. Like the ad platforms are just going to crank up ads until, you know, they make most of the marginal dollars. But funny is interesting because it's so uniquely human. It's so timeless. And it's It's like, yeah, it's John Pleas, who's like, it's actually really hard to explain why things are funny. You never quite know. It's kind of this process of experimentation to see what resonates. And even when you know that it is funny, you don't always know why. - 100%, 100%, we wanted to do data classification and we've tried it with why is this meme funny and getting really autistic about it. And it's just like, this is a waste of time, somewhat like, yeah, we're gonna try to do it, but I think it's just like surprise and shock value a lot of the time, to do it in truth. It's like, I don't know, I heard another quote too, where it's like, the funniest people are actually not the jokes where you immediately start laughing, but it's the one where it's like, it takes a second and then you're like, wait, what? And like, that's what memes, like a good meme, like, oh, and then you start laughing, right? Like, I don't know, I just like, it's really hard to benchmark it. We're actually like working on some stuff around that, where like, can you see which AI models the funniest, right? But, and it's not hard, you just AB test stuff, but we've been doing that internally for a while and building up that data, but like, I don't know, I think it's one of those things that's unpredictable, man, it's, I don't know, if it's a deep philosophy, I guess. Yeah. How do you handle that? I mean, like, your business is interesting 'cause it's part software, like, I'm an investor, but I also just like subscribe as a user. So I use it to make memes for, you know, to market books or just like, mess around on the internet. But there's also a service aspect, and then there's also like an AI piece now, right? - Yeah. - All right, so it's coming through those. - Yes, we ever software that anybody could subscribe to, and that also has an API, where you could get access to AI meme gen, and we also have now launching agents, and we have services as well for the really big ones. So like, services we've been working with all these big unicorns, whatnot, and now we're launching these agents for anybody, any business can sign up for an affordable rate. So that'd be, I don't know when this pod comes out, but that should be out very soon. And we're like, basically, like, the world is heading toward a gentick meme marketing, like, or a gentick, everything. And the best brands are running five accounts. Like, they're actually not just running one. Like, they're running five, and like, whether that's a human, whether it's us, whether it's agents doing that, like, the best are running even more. Like, these app creators, like a lot of big apps are running 100 accounts, right? And the only way to do that at a certain level is, is scale is AI, and like to scale that, right? And, you know, that's the power of memes is it sticks out. And so, you know, it's not just, you know, one dude yapping, it's humorous, unhinged, it catches the eye, it scroll stops you. And so like, where me more is going is, is we are this gentick platform, right? We are dropping agents all summer long, very excited about, and there's gonna be agents for everything, for book marketing, for podcast marketing, for music marketing, for meme ads, for every kind of marketing you can imagine, memes are applicable for everything. And so like, you know, just another, we'll get some more Elon quotes here of like, you know, who controls the memes, controls the universe, and then Richard Dawkins, right? Like, memes are the smallest unit of cultural transmission. If you wanna like, break down your business as idea into the simplest unit, like memes are the way to do that, right? Hit and truth. We have like, home security businesses using us. We have, you know, like I said, defense companies, your public companies, and B2B SaaS, everything. Authors, record labels, post-molones, record label, is like a customer, like, that's so weird. But like, they need to break new artists. How do you do that? You put the music behind meme videos, right? It's just strange. It's crazy. It's so weird, man, it's so weird. I mean, we've been Twitter buddies for a while, so it's very strange. And just, yeah, it's crazy. So I'm like, I don't know, I think we're entering this world or just like, like nobody's taking memes seriously enough still. And like, I've been preaching this for a while. Like, the world's catching up. It's gonna be fun. It's gonna be really fun. - Yeah, you are, like we've been following each other for a very long time, which is like, I think hit me up to invest. But the, like you're very reliably at the frontier of the internet. Like, you kind of figuring out what's come in, what's just starting to work, which is always a really interesting thing, 'cause it's hard to know what to believe, what is gonna be, what is gonna catch on? Like, what's just like a flare and what's this new kind of big thing that's gonna be around for a really long time? And this feels like one of those shifts that's absolutely, like you've been dead on on this for a long time and there's been so much to sort of support it. When you say there's people running like five accounts or a hundred accounts, like are they owning their own, they're building their own audience on meme pages that are dedicated to what their industry or a new specific meme site is talking about that. - Yeah, yeah, so like, for example, say you're an HR unicorn and nobody wants to follow your main page 'cause you're an HR. Well, why don't you start up funny HR meme accounts and satire accounts about the workplace? And why don't you own those pages, but you're not actually doing the work, you're paying us to do it, right? And then you're plugging the link underneath right, this is all hypothetical of course. And you're driving demos and inbound sales but you actually own their accounts and now you have all these accounts that can retweet you. And now imagine if there's this in every niche and you need a funny defense guy and five accounts of that who can then plug your brand and retweet your launch videos, right? And as we know, being online, like we're in this weird circle where all these launch videos are going viral 'cause people are paying people. Well, what if you own that distribution, right? And we're seeing this again and again. And so like, you know, open AI by TPPN, like that's actually not anything new. Like HubSpot bought my first million and Stripe bought indie hackers or something like that. And like that's not new. Like big companies buy media pages to get lower CAC and meme pages are like the cheapest form of that. And so like why not just start your own, right? Like a record label bought the Dequan meme page and that asset for $85 million because it helped them reach artists cheaper than, you know, buying pitchfork or Rolling Stone, right? It gets the same audience and bigger for cheaper. So that's like, you know, every brand should have secondary assets and meme pages and a lot of pages across multiple platforms. And so we own a lot on Twitter. You know, if you look at, you know, Twitter LinkedIn lunatics, that's our Chashupti lunatics, that's our tech bromimes, that's us on Instagram. We own riches. The Instagram handle rich riches, RICHS. We own lunchroom, which is our fake news page. Like both of those are fake news pages that we plug meme or them. So like, you know, every, every brand I think and honestly like a lot of influencers were seeing this too with clipping pages or they have fan pages that are all run by them or their record label. Fun fact, like every artist record label is run by the record label, especially in the beginning, they all ask for a turf it. And so like, I don't know if you're a brand, like don't sleep on it. I think there's just, there's going to be a massive wave, something that your audience might like. I am extremely bullish on robot memes for 2026 and the future. I think that there is going to be an onslaught of robot memes that SpaceX goes public and these other companies start actually going to market. And we're going to be able to, going to market and we are building up robot meme pages for the masses right now because brands are going to need that very, very bullish on robot memes. And the meme itself is like a humanoid robot. Just like meme pages about robots and clankers. Yeah. Because like, we're about, they're about to finally commercialize, right? And so like, right now we have a bunch of pages around CPG or about software, but like we're about to, like hard tech is about to go from spending hundreds of millions to billions on catbacks to finally spending on marketing. And personally, I want to be like the best position possible in the world. So like, take that capital and put it in my pocket and grow their brand and my company at the same time. Like, I think like we're going to see a massive spend in robot and hardware marketing over the next 5, 10 years that like, has never been done before. Yeah, I think the early adopters and in particular, hard tech right now is also super primed for, for humor as a distribution channel. I feel like, you know, the companies that are succeeding or building, they're like doing incredible, like humor driven or affirming all over. This is super interesting though, because I feel like a lot of people, this is these like very deliberate, calculated appearance of an organic following or organic catching on. And I think people would be really, really surprised to learn how much of what seems organic is contrived. Oh, absolutely. And the people on Twitter, where you see paid partnership, that's the obvious ones, right? Like the unobvious ones is like the dudes like me who have, you know, meme accounts with millions of followers who like, we've just been building and we own them. We don't pay. We just own them, right? Or like anonymous accounts that are actually yours to like, one of our investors has like a very popular anonymous account like multiple of our investors, right? Like, like, that's like the calculated moves that like the big boys are playing like all the YC guys like Sargas, but like, they're all just fucking shelling to the same agency, spending like 50 grand for a launch video to retweet it. It's all the same agency. I know because they pitched me all the time and it's annoying. That's like, it's so annoying. It's all the same agency or like two or whatever. And they're, they're clowns. But like, That doesn't actually get taken seriously and you're going to burn all your capital. I'm like, personally, I'm not trying to do that. I'm trying to save money and make money. Yeah. It takes more than one big day. One launch, what do you mean? Dude, no. Oh my God, dude. It's crazy. Everybody's spending on their launch video, what I spend in like three months, it's crazy. Dude, always be launching. We're going to be launching all summer. Every day is launch day and it's just slow and steady and it's really sad. Like me and my team were talking about, oh, we should start like a page of like people who had beautiful launch videos and then went bankrupt in under two years. Like, it would just be like so many. Highly correlated. Highly correlated. It is, I hate to say like the statistic of like, if you spend a lot on your wedding, there's like a higher divorce rate or something like that. It feels like you're overcompensating for lack of a product and like, I think that bubble is going to pop very, very quickly. Yeah. Or hopefully, hopefully, soon. Yeah. That is super interesting. I'm thinking about this as like an artist or an author too. You're like, well, if I'm comparing, you know, three record labels or three publishers, whatever. I want every author's biggest fear is like, there's two big fears, right? Either the book is going to suck or the book is going to be great and nobody's going to care. And like almost every publisher and almost every author can reach a level of greatness on the book. That's just like a controlled process. But once you get into the like, all right, how do I get this out into the world? That's a really squirrely difficult problem that money can't necessarily solve and grit can't necessarily solve. And so like going to the, you know, the record label or the publisher that owns these media pages and can be like, look, we control a bunch of this that seems organic that can really give you the appearance and actual outcome of like, you know, driving up a ton of followers to your core account, driving a ton of sales, getting this like organic interest, making you go trending. Yeah. And the puppet masters all over the place. 100% man. And it's, it's nothing new. I mean, like I learned from the goats performing it like the Ryan holidays, the world. Like, you know, people know him for stoicism, but like, that's not Ryan holiday. Like Ryan holiday is the 30th marketer alive. And we saw that this week with his, with his little blow up a couple weeks ago, but like, you know, Ryan's background, he was, he was a PR hacker for American apparel and like, the dirtiest marketer calling fake, you know, starting fake billboards, you know, print calling journalists. Like, this is nothing new. And it's also like hundreds of years old, you know, like the father of PR at E. Bernays, like in the 40s, 50s or 60s was like, you know, starting these fake protests and stuff like that, which could incidentally I will, hey, let's go. Let's go. Edvard Bernays underrated. Underrated. Well, one of the G's man, I'll be taking a play out of his book this, the summer. Did you know it's only like 10 grand a host of protests? It's actually not that expensive. You could just buy a protest. So we're going to be doing a protest this summer for free speech in France. And it's going to be sick. It's not that expensive to just launch a protest. And like, you know, people like, I don't know, you could spend that on a, on a mid tier influencer in LA who doesn't respond. It's like, I really like what I've always tried to do. And like, this comes from me being broke like three years ago. It's just like be the scrappiest marketer alive. And like I was like, put up flyers. One of my favorite bits that I did, you know, how like dogs pee all at the same place, because they smell the urine, right? So we put up stickers that says, hey, is your dog peeing? Sign up here to get memes, right? But it's only where the dogs pee because they all go to the same spot. And then when the dog is peeing, you check your phone, right? And we saw signups from that for like, you know, $20 of stickers, right? And then I did like these like viral stunts in New York doing that. And it's like, I don't know. The amount of like time that you put in thinking about your hardware and building your robots, like, think about it, the marketing as technical and like sneaky and clever and exciting to because like somebody else is thinking way harder about it or based on the outsourced you're thinking. But yeah. And a lot of like, there's a lot of fun that you could have if you're willing to just not pay some agency to like retweet your launch video. Like that's all I'm saying. Like, it just pisses me off, man. Like, I don't know. I hate seeing people just waste money. Maybe it's the gearshness. What's that old say? Like first time founders focus on the products. Second time founders focus on distribution. Yeah. I mean, I think it's super important. It's probably true for authors too. Right? There's probably a lot of authors and I don't know if this is true with your with your story. Like, has this changed at all? Like marketing down the neck and then we'll all versus biology versus Elon now. Yeah. I mean, Elon, I've definitely shifted more like, I've got less time and more money. So I've got like, I run more experiments. Yeah. And like, I just, I understand. I think now that like word of mouth is the only thing that works and all you're doing is like trying to light the, get the kind of link to go so that the word of mouth carries on. And so actually, I mean, the mean Lord comes in for me where I once I resolved, I was like, okay, all the greats, you can't launch once, right? Be launching every day. You've got to post about your book every day. It's so noisy. It's so loud. Okay. If I'm going to post about my book every day, how do I do that without driving myself and everyone who follows me fucking crazy? The answer is like, you have to be funny. You have to be enjoyable. You've got to like make it pleasant experience. And so I started using mean Lord to like, either make memes about the book or memes about Elon or Photoshop the book into these like funny situations or make celebrities look like they were reading it and then and then say very clearly like, you know, this celebrity is like this image is fabricated. Don't let it influence your opinion of the product, right? Like, there's just so much, there's so much more you can do when you're just, as you point out, just like a little creative. Yeah. If you just have like think just a little bit outside the box and think about how can you do this in a fun way. You know, I had this week of viral a few weeks ago of like, don't invite me to another fucking dinner series. Like every day I get invited to dinners as a founder and like, I don't like food that much. Like I like food, but I can make myself food. I prefer to just eat some sushi by myself personally. I like, I'm a big sushi bar kind of guy, just solo like stop inviting me to dinners. Like, I don't want to go to Dorsi, dude. Like, I'm done. Like I get afforded dinner and like, they're all just copying each other. It's like this memetic bind virus started by like this founder dinner series in New York that's put on by a bank and now every, fucking every company host dinners. And it's like, dude, just think of something more original than a dinner. It's not hard. And so like examples here, it doesn't have to be this crazy. I hosted a, I rented out a movie theater to watch Instagram rails on April Fool's, right? And that was three grand, probably what you'd spend at Dorsia, but like it went viral and people loved it, right? I during a Halloween of a couple years ago, I hosted a bug horror story night where engineers came in and talked about bugs and like told it like a horror story, right? You know, I hosted startups VC and ping pong where just 200 people in New York came to them and played ping pong. Like it's just like, it just drives me nuts. Like I feel really bad. Like I literally like, I've had to tell people like stop inviting me to dinner. Just like cut it out. Like I don't know. Maybe I'm will regret this when I'm eating alone and you know, in my mansion one day, but like, at least I'll be like having some peace and quiet, you know? Like, just pisses me off, man. Like I'm sorry for this rant, but it's just so many dinners. Like I hate it. I just hate it so much. And like I don't even live in SF. I can't imagine how bad it is there, man. I was expecting you to rant way before 40 minutes. So I feel like you held it together for a long time. It's good. Yeah. I held that one in, but I could I could rant more. So just on the on the topic of SF, I think both of us like we have chosen not to live in the mind virus bubble, right? Like, and I think like it's it helps a lot. I don't know about you, but like not living in like the hive mind, like it helps living outside of that. And like I think that is why everybody is copy-pacing each other's launch videos is because they're all comparing themselves to each other, the people that they see every day. And when you're not in that, like you're playing your own game, right? Like, you know, like you're just doing your own thing. Like, you know, in SF, who knows maybe you're starting like a AI writing startup, which is like totally against your philosophy, right? I, you know, like same as me where you want to have fun writing or whatever, like, or maybe you're you like it's just like get out of the mind virus, like stop hosting dinners. I'm back to that. But, you know, it's just like, I don't know. I have this like, I just have the thesis like, you know, this isn't me, but like this is another Elon quote, right? Of like the most entertaining outcome is the most likely, right? If you really take that into like belief, right? If you want your business to be the most likely, then it should be the most entertaining, right? If you want your book to be the most likely to be bought, then it should be the most entertaining. If you want your music career to be the most likely to be Grammy nominated, then shouldn't it be the most entertaining Mr. Postmone get the tattoos on your face, right? Like it doesn't have to be that extreme. But if the most entertaining outcome is the most likely, then you should be trying to be the most entertaining by any means necessary, right? And so that can mean being super unhinged. Like I mean throwing events that aren't dinners. Again, we're getting back to this of dinners. I'm just going to keep going back. But like seriously, like like being entertaining. in some aspects and embracing that makes you more likely to succeed. And that's just my thesis for how I see a world is like, people want to be entertained, you know? Like, entertain them. Give the people what they fucking want. Yeah. Mr. Beast is maybe the best example of this. And he's a, I think he's going to be an iconic entrepreneur. He's going to be the entrepreneur of a generation of a decade. And he already is, I think that's very clear to everybody who's under 30. And I think people kind of over 30 are like, either who is Mr. Beast or like, oh, he makes those YouTube videos. And he's actually one, he's the Michael Jordan of YouTube. But to he's also going to be an unbelievable entrepreneur. And we're going to go from like Warren Buffett to Elon Musk to Mr. Beast in terms of like the generational striations of, you know, their generations of iconic entrepreneur. And Mr. Beast takes this to heart deeply. Like listen to the audience, cut anything that's not entertaining. And he's going to make a huge empire out of learning to command attention through YouTube. 100% and like again, Jake Paul as well. Like the other day I was like, washing old Jake Paul videos just like for fun. And like if you go back to his early videos, it's him like half shirtless dancing like a girl. And like doing pranks in the street. And it's like, that dude is now an investor in Androle. And going to be a billionaire in the next like five years for sure. And it's like he's just a goober who like took it really seriously and like took his entertainment super seriously. I'm like, you got to respect that. And like, I wrote this in my book was like, this is not like new like comedians getting rich. Like signfelds a billionaire, Larry David's a billionaire. Like Kevin Hartz very, very wealthy. Like plenty of these guys are rich. We just like now live in the best time to monetize with sense of humor. And like memes are my way of doing that to each their own. I think like memes are the most spreadable. But like, you know, it's it's nothing there. It's just like again, it's just a leopard again on your your real product, your real attention, your real ideas. And I think like in DC, it founders like we're on the business of ideas here. And like if you want your idea to win again, it should be the most entertaining, you know, version of that at least. Like, can we go back to this protest? Yeah, protest in France for 10 grand. I feel like we kind of glossed over that and I need to know everything. Yeah, yeah. So we're going to be in Nice and Cannes for, you know, my team retreat and then the marketing festival. Trying to wheel and deal, get some clients and can lie in or is that a different thing? Yeah, it's like the can lie in but the marketing side, not like the cool movie stuff. We are too cancel for that. And there's companies all DM you about it. But there's companies where you can just sign up for a protest. And they just find the people. And when you think about it, all you're doing is just hiring actors. Yeah. And like, I mean, you look at Columbia in 2024. That was all actors. They're all paid actors. It's all whoever, right? Like whatever side you're on, it's both sides. They're most protest are asher turfed. Like, and then similar to a business, then people start talking and coming. But most of it is asher turfed, right? And I was like, oh, I've been wanting to do this forever. Like, host of protests last summer. I did a viral boycott of the energy drink Celsius to change your name to Fahrenheit. But I didn't get a chance to really do a protest. And, you know, France is very famous for their topless female protests. So let's just say we're going to have women on the beach protesting for why memes are free speech. And we may or may not be spending more than France spends on AI this summer. So we'll see what happens. But it's going to be fun, man. Like, again, like you it's like experiments. Like we both, I think since we met, like we both have less time and a little bit more money to spend. And it's like I got to just trash it. I'm going to film it. I'm going to post it. You know, leverage, right? Like the the the Navale idea, all that stuff, leverage is like, oh, like now I actually have like, you know, all these mean pages I could just post this on. Like, I was scared to do this stuff before because I didn't have the leverage or distribution. And now I have this. It's like, oh, like, why don't I just drop a few hundred bucks on a video or, you know, drop a thousand dollars trying this. Like, it's like, oh, wow, like I could really try some stuff. And I think like that's super exciting. And like, there's a lot more exciting things than dinner. So back to dinner. When you, yeah, when your experiments are cheap and the upside is really high, you can run a lot of them. And they, you know, they start to pay for themselves and you keep on with it. So I'm wait, I'm back to books real quick. I'm curious, like, you've 100% found like, word of mouth, because that's the same with software, 100%. Like the best is just something about it. Word of mouth, man. Yeah, trust. It's, it is the, I mean, if you just think about your own behavior as a person, like how often do you click through and add and immediately buy the thing? Like, only if it's like super low stakes and you know exactly what you need. And it's like, well, one impression sort of conversion is super rare. And if I think about books, it's not, it's not that 20 bucks. It's the five hours or 10 hours to read the book. And so I have to hear about a book three or four times before I'm like, okay, yes. Like I should read it. I trust the sources. I'll put it on my wish list or I'll buy it. And then it sits on my nice stand for another couple more nights before I'm like, I'm going to open it and read it. And once I read it, I recommend it or it comes up in conversation. And I'm like, oh, you should check this book out. I read this book about this problem. Also with books, it's like, you only make a couple of bucks a book. It's like, you can't run around spending money on ads trying to like get, you know, you can't spend five bucks on an ad. To make three dollars. Should I know it? No, it just doesn't work unless you're selling a course on the back end or something. Yeah, a lot of people are selling courses or consulting or services or whatever. No, there's no like brute force marketing effort in the world that can sell a million books. Like you can maybe you can will your way to like 10,000, I think, over time. Yeah. And the difference between 10,000 and a million is just like how many people recommend it? How many people gift it to others? Do they put it in newsletter? Yeah. Is it shareable? Is it is it? Is it? Is it? Is it self-recommending? And like, I think, you know, the things like a lot of these, the hard tech, a lot of these serious companies do miss sometimes is like the importance of narrative of alliteration of metaphor. Like my book memes make millions, right? This is like, I still use it all the time, right? That alliteration, you know, the metaphors of of meme lord and like, you'll see the gesture. Now we have our AI model. It's called gesture. It all goes back to that same, that kingdom empire stuff, right? A keyboard is a new battlefield, you know, the camera, like build worlds, right? I don't know if you know Nathan Ball. I think you guys are, you guys are both awesome. He's an investor too, a long time friend and like, he wrote a newsletter about world building that was super influential on me and just like, you know, whether you're building a book or you're building a software, like, you got to build worlds. And I think when you look at these hard tech companies that are successfully doing that, the pound tiers, the hand rolls, the rain makers, I think is a great example. They have these heroes, like a hero's journey, literally the founder, you know, whether it's Augusto or Carp or Palmer. And then they have these worlds around them, these fucking universes, they have symbols, they have symbology of like, you know, the low, not just the logos, but literal symbols and characters, right? They have colors, they have these worlds and like, I just, a, like, I wouldn't underestimate that and B, I wouldn't outsource that either. Like, especially not early days, like, yeah, sure, maybe higher in ad agency later, but even, like, even if you're the most autistic engineer, hard tech guy alive, like, take that times, like, build your world of creativity, you know, and like stick with it because like it pays off, like, there's no world where I could have outsourced me more to somebody else, like it just wouldn't work. And a lot of these guys are big sci-fi nerds, right? You think about Elon and all these people, right? Like, build that world that you want to see. I think that that would be my, my personal advice around that. Yeah. You, you, you were through an interesting inflection point a few years ago. I think it was kind of around, it was around when you raised capital. I feel like there was a super, this isn't the way it is for every person or every company, but I feel like for you, you sort of went from like, solo, like practitioner to like, oh shit, this is like a movement and a company and like, you, that was you like, planning your flag in this idea and like taking it to a different level. I'm curious like how that process was because we talked a bunch kind of like through those, yeah, six, nine months or whatever. It's been the biggest self improvement exercise. Like, I think like startups are a self improvement exercise, I was hidden in a quest to make $10 billion. Like, like, I've gotten in the best shape of my life. I'm like, sleep, you know, trying to focus on my sleep, like mentally, like improving as a leader delegation, right? Like all these things, like you either step up or you step out and like, I, I, I'm not losing this opportunity. Like this is, this is my shot. I'm not a Stanford kid. I'm not like a, you know, an engineer. So like, I'm stepping the fuck up. And that's how it's been since, since day one and like, for me, it was very organic. Like I said, like I started meme Lord is, is actually just a newsletter of memes. And then I built no code software and then I built, you know, there are raised some money. And like the way I found the raise was actually just listening to cyan banister on the Tim Ferriss podcast. I was like, wow, she's cool. Like, she has a crazy story. She's been through some shit. I like her. Let me message her. And then she's like, yeah, fly out. I was like, cool. And then like, I had 100K on Thursday. I was like dope. But like really like, like it was just like naturally just like doubling down again and again on what I do. And like, you know, that, that period was crazy, right? Just kept doubling down. And like eventually you doubled down so much like exponentials in your stacking potato chips. Eventually those potato chips hit the mood. And like what it, what looks like double. building up pennies for three, four years, the pennies get tall, right? And then you have a lot more pressure on you. Like I feed like eight families, right? Or whatever and like insurance and shit like that, which is crazy. And like for me, like a lot of it has come down to like, just like how seriously we take it and finding the right people are, you know, have to fire people a lot. I have to, you know, have these hard conversations, right? Quote from Almanac that I repeat again and again is hard conversations easy life, easy conversations hard life. Like I repeat that again and again to myself, to my CTO even and to my wife even. Like the hard conversations like step up, right? And like I want to run a business on truth and like these higher conversations. So I think like it's been a really a lot of sacrifice, a lot of not sleeping, a lot of self improvement. I'm like, I think a lot of just like trying to get better at delegation, a lot of like, it's very weird man. Like I think I, I don't know if I share this investor update or a tweet, but like my life's very strange where I'll go from like shaking hands with Alex Carp and like, you know, meeting Post Malone's team to like the next day I'm just recording SOPs and like looms. And it's like, I mean, it's the same with you where you're just like one day you're meeting famous people and the next day you're just like recording like some like, you know, in a notion doc. Like it's all like amazing. Like to me like it's, you know, some days are like highs, but like it's all like a gift. And like, I don't know, I think for me again, like as a founder, not coming from a traditional background, I'm not blowing my cash. I'm not, you know, hiring my friends. I'm not making these mistakes that like, you know, maybe me at 20 or me straight out of Yale or Harvard would have done, right? And you see this a lot right now. You see a lot of founders who like, they just immediately raised for some idea and just like, they just blow it and like, I don't know if I'm gonna blow it. It's gonna be for damn good reason not because I wanted to throw a party and go viral or some shit. Maybe a protest, but that's only five grand. I think it's 10 grand. So anyways, I guess I was getting kind of deep here, but like the, I think like one thing that you don't talk about in your book is like, you know, what happens when you fucking get the leverage, bro? Cause like I got it and I feel like a dog chasing a car, you know, you get it and you're like, whoa, like, oh boy. Like what do I do now? And it's a little intimidating. And nobody really talks about that. It's like, I have the leverage now. It's like, well, if I don't use it, it's just going up waste. Yeah. But like, it's really hard. I don't know if you, if you felt that over the last couple of years where your time becomes so much more valuable and it's a little scary, it's a little freaky. Yeah, it's like, once you catch the car, the car goes faster. Like if you're doing it right, like the whole thing speeds up and compounds and in order to get it in the first place, you're kind of skating where the puck is going. And so yeah, this is very interesting. Like, oh, it's a self reinforcing thing where now you have a team of eight and you're like, oh, I can't do the things that I used to do to get us here. Like I have to shift that you're just like constantly kind of climbing stairs and re-adding things. I like, you know, I grew up a video editor, right? Like I said, I was posting YouTube videos and like, I went to video editing camp. Like I want that was my dream. I was like doing that. And like, probably not the best use of time for me to edit my Instagram videos anymore. Like, and like, even though I love it, right? Like I actually do enjoy the process. It's like, here's a hundred bucks kid, go make a video, right? And like a lot of things like that, you know, I've, I think actually a weird thing a lot of founders these days, probably are feeling this is like my biggest competition to marketing, actually and writing and making content is now vibe coding, which is very weird, right? I didn't know how to code. I don't know how to code and never did anything until a couple of years ago. And I was just this marketing guy writing a newsletter all the time. And now I can vibe code stuff and it's like kind of a dick dang. And like, I actually have to shut off cursor because like my time is like, much more valuable marketing. And actually I have engineers who can do the coding. And like, yeah, every now and then code some stuff. But like, that's actually not the best use of my time. And like, that's kind of weird. It's really weird. It's very confusing. And I'm curious if you have any exercises about like figuring out what's the most leverage in your life and like how you grade that stuff. Yeah, actually, I think I'm due to do this. So it's kind of in top of mind of like, I do quarterly or like inventories, like snapshots of like, where is the leverage? What's the next best lever? What sort of things? I call it like a, there's like an opportunity cost where you're sort of forced into leveling up by the last steps that you've done. And so you should be changing your attention threshold. I call it like the level at which you pay attention to things. And when you're like broke, it's every fucking penny. And then it's a dollar and then it's every $10. Then it's every $100. And your job is as a leader of an organization is like set the standard, right? So like, yes, you delegate the editing of a video, but you hold the bar for like where it should be. You hold the bar for the product should be. You, you know, communicate that to your team and reinforce that, but you should have some leverage in terms of like you spend one hour on this for every 10 hours that somebody on your team spends on it or one hour to every 40 or one hour to every 100. And like as you become a better delegator and you have a better team and you have these sort of like stacks of leverage in the culture becomes more clear, you get, you get more and more leverage out of the, you know, the time that you spend on any given thing. And if you do that, you know, every quarter, and maybe every month, I don't know how fast things are changing for you, you know, you'll kind of see the levers build. And it'll sometimes reveals like, oh, I'm falling behind in this one over here or this is my most obvious next step or just give you a sense of how far you've come and you can be like, well, it's okay. I can take the next step because I just reminded myself that I took the 10 previous steps and they were all okay. - Yeah, dude, it's funny. I like just had a flashback to, I was looking through my old notebooks a few months ago and like seeing my like, money goals, right? And it was actually like around when I'm reading on the knack like 2021, and it was like make like five grand a month, right? She was like, yeah, I wasn't doing that then. And like, you know, it's weird and delivered saying, it's very hard for, I think people not in it to understand too and why it's so like crucial. I think like, I feel like no ball talks about this a lot, just like the protection of time. It was like the freedom around it. Like I didn't get rich to be on somebody else's schedule, right? Or like I'm not trying to get rich, like real rich to be on somebody else's BS. Like that's not why I'm doing it. Like I'm doing it for freedom. And like just to leverage every day to think about that is, it's intimidating at times. I've been, you know, I was very like against the idea of executive co-shane and then I actually got recommended one from our VC fund and he's been great. And there's, you know, just this kind of like push that like, okay, you know what? Like your time is super valuable. Just like start hiring. Like you're in the, in the exponential business like higher. Just like, you don't need to do everything yourself, man. Like you're not 18 anymore. You're not, you know, this scrappy kid anymore. Like I think that's been the biggest personal transformation that I'm sure a lot of founders go through that like, it's very weird. Like it's very strange to to suddenly have leverage and you don't want to fuck it up and you want to maximize it and it's hard. And back to memes, why I think memes are the best lever, you know, to just talk my own book for a second. They're fast to make, they're cheap. They're inherently viral, right? They make people laugh. They could be spreading whatever it might be is that's the power of it. And, you know, why we built this business. - Yeah. This is such a cool business because, and it's been really fun to like watch you market it for what it's worth. If you don't, I know you can't talk about a ton of case studies and stuff, but you can, anybody can watch how you market meme lord and how you talk about it and the things that you go through because this is a business that takes courage. And I appreciate it. - It's clear that you are having fun doing it, which is good, but you've got to be a little crazy. You've got to be a little like, you know, middle fingers up to like, - Yeah, you get, right. - Yeah, date 100% like, you know, hit pieces after hit piece for my work with Cuomo and whatever, death threats it might be. Like, it's a business like, it's not for the fan of heart being in the most cancelable marketing business. And that's what we want to build is something fun. And I think like, I just encourage everybody like to tell their story on the internet too. Like the goods and the bats, right. Share those wins building the software 'cause it gets people invested really. Like, you know, like, I've showed how I was building the shitty burden on the software. But I just waited until the software was where it's at now it would never be here. Because I would have never gotten customers, even on the crappy version, and I would have never met the people. And like, I think, you know, it doesn't need to be perfect. Share that process. And like, obviously, keep some sauce to yourself. Like, keep the case studies. Like, you know, if you're building rockets, maybe you don't spread the secret formula, you know? But like, you know, it's share those wins. That's what motivates people and gets people invested in your company. Like, the most beautiful thing to me, this is a demon I think or a fucked up thing. But I love it when somebody hates me, but still uses my software. Like, I just love it, dude. 'Cause it's like, that means I built some good software. Like, this guy just like, it hates me and like, well, flame on me on Twitter, but like, he's still using my software every day. Because like, it's that good, you know? Like, I don't know, man. Like, product distribution, everything between you need births, but I'm going another ramp. - That is hilarious. Yeah, you got a ton of hit pieces for a while. [BLANK_AUDIO] like that you just, you took pride in them. You're like, dude, if you're not getting hit pieces, you ain't a hit baby. (laughing) No, for real, for real. I always dreamed of being a Rolling Stone man. Like I thought I was gonna be a Rolling Stone writer, you know? I was, that was my dream. And then they're writing about me. They're joke, dude. Like there's a reason why like the best writers publish their own books now, like you and, and write their own newsletters and beehives and sub-stacks. Like, you know, like why are you writing for fucking Rolling Stone about me, man? Like there's actual rock stars, dude. Like why are you writing like a political hit piece in Rolling Stone? Like that's just so sad. Like I just like, how can you take these people seriously? Is like my belief around this and like, again, like I'll get, I'll got to it, right? Do we got to this? Yeah, I'll got to start, remake or like, I saw him last summer and like he's getting all those hit pieces too and it's like, she's like, like, I mean, what, it's a man in the arena, right? It's the joke series. It's like you can't. He's getting pieces from people with like single digit IQs. It's just like insane conspiracy theory shit. Well, I mean, like he can't control the weather and the juice. Like that would be my response to those people. It's like immediately like, that's where I would go. It's like, take one, bro. Like you can't have this kid doing it and the juice. So like if you're gonna be a conspiracy theory, there's take one conspiracy theory. Yeah. No, that's not how they can, that's how they work. Dude, a lot of these hardware defense companies, you know, whatever it might be, man, like you're gonna get hit pieces and like just know I say this from like the pit of my heart and it is like it will be okay. And like the people who respect you will still respect you after and probably respect you more if you handle it with grace and joy and have fun with it. If you are somebody who cowers over it, you will lose the respect, but you need to respond. The best response to being ridiculed is to act ridiculous right back. Like hit them right back, baby. Like we posted our hit pieces right on our website. Like they are, we say featured in hit pieces at these articles, man, like people still side up for our software every day. Like there's been, you know, if anything, they helped us raise money. Like, yeah, I think you were in the middle of the fundraise when that happened. And there's a bunch of, I mean, you're line up of investors is unbelievable for people that have not looked like, a science banister is one of the all-time grates. Bology was like early in, like, I don't know, you, you can, everything. Yeah. But there's so many people who read those signals so much better and they understand deeply that like what you're doing is super important. It is, yeah, I'm a medic infrastructure, which is like what controls the software and people's heads. - 100% 100% the way that I always put it is like, you know, you see these memes everywhere. Like on Instagram, I'm on Twitter, like they're all made on somebody's software. Like a lot of them are made on ours now. And like that's a goal. And like, I don't know, man, if you have an idea in the world, like just consider spreading it with me. Don't give up your ad agency or whatever, but like just consider that that might be the best way to spread a certain idea and change people's minds about it. - Yeah, pull that meme lever. - Absolutely. - My normal opening question, and maybe now it's my closing question, is who are your heroes? - Well, here is, I say like, I'm like a very weird mix of like Mac Miller and Peter Teal. Like it's very strange. Like I grew up like an absolute stoner, like 15 to 18, just like smoking weed, listening to rap, partying with my friends, and like doing graphic design, like while I was stoned, selling like psychedelic stickers, that's how I made 50 grand in high school selling stickers, just getting high, listening to Mac Miller. And then like, I just like stopped and just got really like, weirdly into tech. And like Teal is just like always early on stuff and based this fuck and stands out for these things and it's always early. And like I think on this weird mix of just like, you know, this arts and tech, that like it's just strange, man. So I don't know, I think those were probably a couple, Donald Glover's a big childhood hero mind, childish gambino, like start with comedy, and then he pivoted that into TV into movies, into businesses around that. What was my years are outside of tech for the most part writers, you know, Kurt Vonnegut, was a big one of mine growing up, the BX, Carewax, stuff like that, actually was more of my background. Yeah, and I think like, I think you can have a lot of heroes. For sure, you know. I should, like, small slices of many people, I think is kind of where the most interesting cats and you dropped a bunch of, I mean, like comedy legends and advertising and like persuasion legends, like Bernays is, I'm sure Bernays is a huge influence on you. I think he's like, dude, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm reading this book right now, which you probably like, called How to Win the Information War. And it's about this guy named Delmer. And it was during World War II, he was running fake German radio stations for England to try to dissuade Nazis from fighting and was doing all these insane tricks of like, they would drop propaganda of like, you know, Nazi women like, you know, blonde women having sex with, you know, the opposite sides, right? To try to encourage these soldiers to go home to their wives, right, and give up like, what? He was running these fake radio stations, him and people speaking in German and doing these, hold all these bits and trying to basically get inside their heads. And like, I would say people like that, man, are definitely my heroes. People who take their silliness extremely seriously and understand they can have world ramifications and change lives. And that's the goal with me, Lord, for sure. Amazing. All right, where would you send people to follow you, learn more, observe this incredible spectacle in action? Subscribe for their topless protest updates. Yeah, yeah, subscribe for that. I would check out memore.com, meme.org.com and follow me, I'm Jason Levin, death threats, please send them to the DMs. I accept those, 100%. So no crypto scammers, but I will accept those for sure. Just just like a framed wall of death threats at the media office. Yeah, I got to do that. First dollar ever made right there and then like first death threat and first hit piece, I think is like a very, very good wall to have. Yeah, that's the goal. That's good lore. It sounds like an icon in the making, dude. I'm very excited. I feel like this is optimistically, like talking to a young, a very young like David Oglevy. I appreciate that. I appreciate it. That's what's going to define this generations, advertising and attention and communication. Like, you know, all the, the greats of the previous generation, like, wrote direct response letters or made TV commercials. And I think the, the great like, advertising and communicators of this generation are going to be on social and you're one of the most like unique and powerful kind of voices in this. I'm excited to see what happens and I'm grateful for the tools that you make because I use them all this time. Hell yeah, brother. Hell yeah. The world is run by mean lords and it's just beginning and so thank you so much for having me. Of course. Good joke and a comedy show can make you realize something about yourself or about family or whatever it might be. Like, it hits you really hard. I just have the thesis like, you know, this isn't me, but like this is another Elon quote, right? Like, it doesn't have to be that extreme, but if the most entertaining outcome is the most likely, then you should be trying to be the most entertaining by any means necessary, right? The smartest people on the internet are posting. It's Elon, it's Andreessen, politicians on both sides. No, actually Gavin Newsom is posting memes in sort of the Democrats. Nobody's taking memes seriously enough still. The world's catching up. It's gonna be fun. (silence) What I always tell people is memes won't save your business. If you have a bad business, like you're fucked anyways, like you're just not gonna make money. Like that sucks. Like, memes could get you attention on your good business, but like, that's why you saw so many brands like 2021, like the crypto scams. Like, like none of those are good businesses. Like they're just not fundamentally good businesses. Like, I don't know, I think like, there hasn't been somebody who takes funny marketing as seriously as it should. It's just a lever to pull like SEO, paid ads, serious blogs, podcasts, all levers. We just wanna be the best funny marketing lever in the world, best it. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] One of our investors has a very popular anonymous account, like multiple of our investors, right? That's the calculated moves that the big boys are playing. Like all the YC guys, like Tsar guys, but they're all just fucking shilling to the same agency, spending like 50 grand for a launch video to retweet it. That doesn't actually get taken seriously and you're going to burn all your capital. So yeah. >> Yeah, and it takes more than one big day. >> One launch, what are you doing? >> Dude, no, my God, dude, it's crazy. Everybody's spending on their launch video, what I spend in like three months. It's crazy, dude, always be launching. Every day is launch day. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]