Latest / 1 to 100 / E40: Making Money with Memes with Jason Levin

Transcript

E40: Making Money with Memes with Jason Levin · 1 to 100

• 0:00
  Have you seen, on the topic of memes, the Trump
• 0:03
  administration's memes recently? Yeah, of course.
• 0:08
  I mean. They've been doing some like
• 0:09
  notes. Since he got elected it's been 1
• 0:11
  of like the best fucking social media pages of all time.
• 0:15
  Yeah, yeah, that they're in, they're in our deck.
• 0:17
  So let me just tell you that we love them, dude.
• 0:19
  It's they're great. So we're no matter what, we're
• 0:23
  going to have a, a presidential meme Lord or meme Lord that's a,
• 0:26
  a president that's a meme Lord. Next.
• 0:28
  You got Newsome memeing, you got Trump memeing, you got Vance
• 0:31
  memeing. Everybody's memeing.
• 0:32
  There's no future where government leaders aren't
• 0:35
  memeing. That's the future.
• 0:37
  We're building at least 2. Nice.
• 0:39
  Is this, is this, is this the the mission it starts with like
• 0:42
  just marketing or whatever, but really it's about like global
• 0:45
  domination all. Right, I'd say memetic warfare
• 0:48
  man is spreading ideas. Memes are the most information
• 0:51
  dense form of communication. That's, that's not a quote for
• 0:53
  me, that's an Elon quote. And memes are the smallest unit
• 0:57
  of communication, right? And that's the inventor of the
• 1:01
  word meme, right? And so if you have an idea that
• 1:03
  you want to put, you make it as simple as possible.
• 1:05
  And like you think about it from a marketing perspective, it's
• 1:08
  the same thing as 1940s posters, right?
• 1:10
  You just hang around and now you just hang them on the Internet.
• 1:12
  What is it? It's just image text and that's
• 1:15
  it. And it's just funny, right?
• 1:17
  That's what a meme is, you know, whether it's corporations,
• 1:20
  public companies using our software, startups, government
• 1:23
  advisors, whatever it might be, you know, we, we want to help
• 1:27
  spread good ideas and give people the tools to spread their
• 1:31
  ideas, speak fluently on the Internet.
• 1:34
  So, you know, we, we dip our toes in all, all facets of that.
• 1:39
  Everybody has a voice on the Internet in some capacity for
• 1:42
  whatever idea you're fighting for selling or whatever it might
• 1:44
  be, right? So, so yeah, we're down for it
• 1:47
  all, man. And I think what's cool about
• 1:49
  the Internet, social media, town square in general is like it's
• 1:52
  all a marketplace for ideas. So generally the best ideas end
• 1:55
  up winning anyways, or at least the most capital efficient
• 1:59
  ideas. And so, you know, we'll give our
• 2:02
  tools and whoever's got the best ideas can win, you know?
• 2:05
  Right. Unless.
• 2:07
  Unless the platform prefers certain types of content, right?
• 2:12
  Yeah. I mean, we're not a platform,
• 2:14
  we're a tool. You know, I mean, like, you
• 2:16
  know, I'm sure you've heard about how in China works and how
• 2:21
  I guess Twitter used to work, right?
• 2:23
  Yeah, I mean, that's why I think it's so important.
• 2:27
  What Elon's doing is removing the censorship because it's it's
• 2:30
  like all the restrictions on capitalism or businesses in
• 2:35
  general. The more you're you add that,
• 2:37
  like the worse people perform, the more there's lies and
• 2:40
  doublespeak. And I think memes are, you know,
• 2:43
  hidden truths, like in images. You think about like my best
• 2:47
  comparison when I'm selling meme marketing to, you know,
• 2:50
  businesses, public companies is right.
• 2:52
  Like everybody here has probably watched some Seinfeld, right?
• 2:55
  He never says anything dirty. Have you ever noticed that?
• 2:58
  Nothing dirty, no politics. All he does is just observe,
• 3:02
  right? And it's just observing
• 3:04
  situations, right? That's all you got to do is just
• 3:07
  observe. So I think like when you're able
• 3:11
  to observe those truths and then share that, that's what scares
• 3:14
  certain figures, right? That's what scares the Tim
• 3:18
  Waltz's. That's what scares the UK
• 3:20
  government is when people are making observations and making
• 3:23
  them in a very viral funny way to do that.
• 3:26
  But this is the SAS operators podcast, not the government
• 3:29
  operators podcast. That's at three different so you
• 3:31
  know, texting with my boys or whatever.
• 3:34
  Should we talk sass a little bit or what are we?
• 3:35
  What are we doing? You know what, you know what the
• 3:37
  general, I think like Taylor put this idea in my head and now I
• 3:42
  feel now I really feel this way about this podcast, which is
• 3:45
  like we just jump on and we just like literally learn primarily
• 3:51
  from the guest and then a little bit from each other too.
• 3:55
  And that's that's basically what we do.
• 3:57
  So. Yeah.
• 3:58
  Can I, can I actually pull on the threat of censorship a
• 4:01
  little bit more? Hit it.
• 4:02
  Yeah, let's do it. I'm curious what you think is
• 4:05
  like. Is there a limit to non
• 4:08
  censorship? I don't know.
• 4:10
  I don't know, man. I'm Jewish and so there's been a
• 4:13
  lot of anti-Semitic stuff. But I don't know, I kind of, I
• 4:20
  think people should be allowed to say what they want.
• 4:22
  And you know, you fuck around, find out sometimes bad things
• 4:27
  happen. And in both capacities, I think
• 4:31
  the leaders trying to stop people from from protesting or I
• 4:35
  just think it's weakness. And you know, the more you try
• 4:39
  to do that, the worse it is for people in general.
• 4:41
  And, and the more, you know, anybody tries to censor people,
• 4:45
  it backfires, especially in today's world where, you know,
• 4:49
  you think about like TV in the 60s, right?
• 4:51
  There are three channels and you just listen to whatever the TV
• 4:54
  channel say. That's not it anymore.
• 4:56
  That's not how the world works. We're all citizen journalists,
• 4:59
  right? This is a modern TV station,
• 5:01
  right? And all of us have, you know, my
• 5:03
  Twitter gets more views and than a lot of TV stations, right?
• 5:07
  And early smaller ones. And you know, it's like you
• 5:11
  can't really hide stuff anymore. It's like the same reason why
• 5:14
  there's not as many bank robberies, which is like kind of
• 5:16
  sad because they're cool, but like, you know, like, like
• 5:19
  there's just not as many because it's a lot harder to like, you
• 5:22
  know, rob banks and shit because there's just such better
• 5:25
  oversight, right? And technology and like freedom
• 5:28
  in that way. Everybody's filming,
• 5:29
  everybody's, you know, it's a little black Mary, but it also
• 5:31
  does keep us safe. I don't know, I think what I'm
• 5:34
  trying to say here with censorship is like meme Lord is
• 5:37
  the freedom of speech company. We are freedom to post whatever
• 5:40
  the fuck you want, freedom to post from wherever.
• 5:43
  We got a big launch coming out about that soon, wink, wink.
• 5:46
  And you know, basically freedom to make money being yourself and
• 5:51
  get out of corporate America, go start your own thing, build a
• 5:54
  business, start a meme page, make millions, you know,
• 5:57
  whatever it might be. So that's, that's what we're
• 6:00
  about. And I think, yeah, it's, it's,
• 6:04
  it's pretty scary some of the censorship going on right now.
• 6:07
  Like, you know, I, I was supposed to fly over to the UK
• 6:09
  and, you know, my, my friend's family told me not to.
• 6:12
  And, and, you know, I was going to do a whole stunt there and,
• 6:17
  you know, we ended up, ended up axing that.
• 6:20
  So it's definitely a little weird.
• 6:23
  And I think there's a lot of people who want to shut people
• 6:26
  up in different ways. And a lot of it comes from
• 6:29
  foreign adversaries of as well, unfortunately.
• 6:32
  If you look at some of the bots commenting on a lot of people's
• 6:35
  accounts, it's a lot of foreign money going around trying to
• 6:38
  shut people up and censor them in different ways.
• 6:41
  And I also think like we're in a really cool point right now
• 6:45
  where the people in power are getting younger and younger and
• 6:49
  more Internet native. Like JD Vance can post, bro.
• 6:52
  Like say what you want about that man, but he could post
• 6:55
  right? Like, say honestly, Newsom too.
• 6:57
  And like, that's scary because Newsome's like, like Newsome
• 7:00
  scares me. Like even my wife thinks he's
• 7:02
  hot. You know, that's that's
• 7:03
  terrifying. But like, you know, we're we're
• 7:06
  at this point we're like everybody could post and every
• 7:09
  founder or not every founder, but a lot.
• 7:12
  There are more and more founders who are 21 to 27 with multi
• 7:15
  $1,000,000 budgets, right? And that's part of the mean Lord
• 7:18
  thesis is we are selling to them.
• 7:21
  You know, I'm texting with CM OS of unicorns and just like I
• 7:25
  would text my friends, right? You know, CM OS of public
• 7:28
  companies and I are just texting because we became boys from
• 7:30
  Twitter or friends. You know, it's like that's it's
• 7:34
  only getting younger and younger.
• 7:35
  We're going to have Aceo that is broccoli haired broad up right
• 7:38
  very soon. Like, you know, in the next
• 7:40
  couple years, there's going to be a lot of a lot of broccoli
• 7:43
  haired CEOs. And so that's that's what MIMO
• 7:46
  is about. And I think I think foreplay,
• 7:49
  you know, just down to the name as well.
• 7:50
  It speaks to the same kind of beliefs that like marketing is
• 7:54
  getting. You know, people are getting
• 7:55
  younger, chiller, the Internet native, like we're not nobody
• 7:59
  says uptight. It's not like the 50s.
• 8:00
  You know, that's just not the world we live in anymore.
• 8:03
  Why did you decide to distribute this thesis through a SaaS
• 8:08
  company versus a media company? Yeah, like.
• 8:11
  SaaS is a lot easier to make $10 million, so yeah, but no is.
• 8:17
  It is it actually? Is it actually easier to make
• 8:20
  money through SaaS than through media?
• 8:22
  I'm actually I'm. It's not obvious to me.
• 8:25
  Yeah, I mean, we're doing pretty solid.
• 8:26
  So I I'd say so, but I started it as media, right?
• 8:31
  So I started my, I don't know if you guys know my full story, but
• 8:34
  I was a freelance marketer, social media marketer for
• 8:36
  founders, VCs. I was the ghost writer behind a
• 8:38
  lot of big accounts on Twitter and LinkedIn.
• 8:41
  And basically I spend that time learning from them and realized
• 8:46
  that they're, you know, I didn't know how to build software.
• 8:49
  I grew up a YouTube kid, Twitter, I've been tweeting
• 8:51
  since I was 11 or 12, tweeting at rappers and Chipotle and
• 8:54
  girls. And I've just always been a
• 8:55
  content guy. And then working with these
• 8:57
  founders, I thought you had to be a genius.
• 8:59
  And it turned out you don't. You just need to like, you know,
• 9:02
  grind on the right thing. And it's a lot more higher
• 9:05
  leverage to build software. And so I made a lot of money
• 9:08
  from the media company angle. But there's comes a certain
• 9:11
  point of, of, of peak that you hit, I think with media
• 9:15
  companies, it's why VCs don't really fund media companies and
• 9:18
  why so many of them fail is because it hits a peak and
• 9:23
  software is the highest leverage.
• 9:25
  You can scale yourself a lot harder.
• 9:26
  So I just put myself in my media.
• 9:28
  I wrote a book called Memes Make Millions in 2023.
• 9:31
  I basically, that was my talk to users moment of talking to all
• 9:35
  these meme page operators, marketers, finding out how they
• 9:38
  make money. I put all that in my software
• 9:40
  and I just started selling that and we grew it really fast.
• 9:44
  And I didn't even know how to code.
• 9:45
  I still don't. I just built it with no code.
• 9:48
  And because I was just pissed off, I was working for all these
• 9:51
  founders and I was like, I could do this.
• 9:53
  Yeah. And so that's, I don't know,
• 9:55
  man, I think software, it's a lot harder to make your first
• 9:58
  dollar, but a lot easier to make your first billion, I would say,
• 10:01
  if that makes sense, or your first hundred million, 10
• 10:04
  million, whatever it might be. Like it's a lot harder to
• 10:06
  actually get the software working and and monetize.
• 10:09
  But now it's not. That's The thing is like now
• 10:14
  with every vibe coding app, like it's not, not as hard as it used
• 10:17
  to be, you know, like it's getting easier and easier every
• 10:20
  single day. And So what stands out is the
• 10:22
  marketing, the brand, the taste around it.
• 10:25
  So I don't know if any marketers are listening to this out there.
• 10:28
  I would encourage you. It's it's our time.
• 10:30
  It's our revolution, man. You know, the nerds are the
• 10:33
  engineers are they're falling. They're, they're angry, you
• 10:36
  know? You hear that, Jeremiah?
• 10:40
  You hear that? I was AI technically started as
• 10:43
  a marketer. Really.
• 10:45
  Yeah, that was my first job out of college.
• 10:47
  Marketing. Yeah.
• 10:48
  No, it's not a subject. Yeah, I mean, I look, everybody
• 10:51
  on my team is forced to both market and engineer in some way.
• 10:55
  All our engineers yap. They yap about their features.
• 10:59
  They all have Twitter followings.
• 11:00
  Everybody on our marketing team vibe codes and builds shit.
• 11:04
  And so we have I've, I've completely forced it from the,
• 11:07
  from the top down is like, if I, if my dumb ass could do it, you
• 11:10
  guys could do it. And so that's, I think we're
• 11:13
  hitting this point of like everybody, you know, both are
• 11:17
  getting easy enough. Like both are getting easier and
• 11:20
  easier. Actually.
• 11:21
  Like marketing is getting easier and easier and so is
• 11:25
  engineering. And So what stands out is taste
• 11:27
  and reps I think, and and hard work.
• 11:32
  That's probably another one of my base beliefs is like in the
• 11:35
  Asia of AI, hard work matters a lot more because like.
• 11:37
  I think so too. I think so too.
• 11:39
  I think that we're going to have like this split in people who
• 11:44
  only consume and people who move forward.
• 11:47
  Right. Yeah, dude, I.
• 11:49
  Disagree that I think hard work's actually like becoming
• 11:53
  less and less important. Tell me why, because I
• 11:56
  completely disagree and I'm happy to discuss.
• 11:58
  Like I think it depends on like how you define hard work.
• 12:00
  But I actually think like right now we're at a time in which
• 12:02
  like you can out leverage hard work very, very quickly.
• 12:06
  And so like there might be a time in which like you need to
• 12:10
  compound hard work on top of like leverage.
• 12:12
  But I often find that like the concept of hard work can
• 12:16
  distract you from leverage. And I was like someone that for
• 12:19
  probably like the first like 5 to 10 years of my career, like
• 12:22
  work seven days a week, like 15 hours a day.
• 12:26
  And I like took pride in like, the concept of like working
• 12:29
  hard, meaning like being in pain while working.
• 12:31
  And that I think what I've realized relatively recently is
• 12:34
  that although that like somehow creates some sort of dopamine
• 12:39
  response in my brain and like making me feel like I'm useful.
• 12:42
  Yeah. It's actually, I think
• 12:45
  distracting from like leveraged work and like potentially that
• 12:48
  is like a also like a, a side effect of potentially like more
• 12:52
  resource or something like that in which I didn't have to begin
• 12:54
  whatever. But I do think that like one of
• 12:57
  my favorite Nick New quotes is that if hard work mattered, the
• 13:00
  donkey would own the farm. And I've been like really like
• 13:03
  trying to like rewire my brain recently to think the most about
• 13:06
  leverage. And like, I think it will become
• 13:08
  clearer than what to work hard on or like where there needs to
• 13:11
  be a lot of like gasoline. But I actually think like the
• 13:15
  idea of hard work. If it feels like that, like
• 13:20
  you're, you're doing something wrong.
• 13:23
  I would completely disagree. I think so.
• 13:26
  I think hard work means different things to different
• 13:29
  people. But like I know a lot of people
• 13:31
  outsource their writing to AI for like 3 years right?
• 13:34
  And a lot of people's writing muscles have atrophied the same
• 13:38
  way at the gym right? And clear writing, it is clear
• 13:41
  thinking, right? I haven't, I've never used
• 13:44
  Chachi PT for writing anything. Blog, tweet, LinkedIn, whatever,
• 13:47
  right? And like, I'm literally, it's
• 13:49
  almost like noticing, like when you get into, you know, I'm at
• 13:52
  my grandparents right now before prepping for the Miami move.
• 13:54
  And there's a lot of people here who are, who are atrophying,
• 13:57
  right? My grandparents still play
• 13:59
  tennis and golf all the time, right?
• 14:01
  And they're vibing. They're 80, they're hanging all
• 14:03
  the time, right? And it's like you're kind of,
• 14:05
  I'm kind of noticing that a lot. That being said, I do think
• 14:09
  we're approaching this really, really cool time where the
• 14:12
  clarity of your thinking matters more and more.
• 14:15
  So exactly what you're saying, Zach, about leverage.
• 14:18
  But I still like, I still think the, the Red Bull coffee
• 14:21
  working, you know, figuring out the agent, right?
• 14:24
  So like something me and my team are are thinking a lot about is
• 14:28
  you know, I was on the way home from Indian food last night and
• 14:31
  I was just messaging in slack cursor, right coding up
• 14:35
  something new right like that's the future is like 50 of those
• 14:38
  right of like agents right running all the time and I'm
• 14:41
  just kicking back chilling right, But like it's still kind
• 14:45
  of hard to like like it still requires work like it's.
• 14:48
  Still no I I by no means. I'm saying that figure out, you
• 14:52
  know. Yeah, by no means am I saying
• 14:53
  that you should like shouldn't be working.
• 14:55
  I just think that defining success on a day-to-day basis as
• 15:00
  I worked hard isn't a good input at like in which I think I used
• 15:04
  to believe that like a lot a lot more And I think you get a lot
• 15:08
  farther. Like I, I think the incremental
• 15:11
  extra 3 hours is losing some of its value, especially when
• 15:15
  you're saying the thing about like clear thinking in in no way
• 15:18
  do I think that you should just like veg out in front of like
• 15:22
  and consume things. Like in no way am I saying that
• 15:25
  that's what should replace like work.
• 15:26
  Yeah. But yeah, becoming sharper and
• 15:29
  like getting more context and, and things like that.
• 15:32
  I think there was more space for it now that the clicking and
• 15:34
  dragging has been more replaced than it.
• 15:39
  Was Yeah, I agree with Zach, for what little is worth, mostly
• 15:43
  because if you just look at amongst my most successful peers
• 15:49
  and just generally the people who I admire the most, the way I
• 15:53
  spend see them spending their time has much more to do with
• 15:57
  getting more context and exposure to more ideas in order
• 16:00
  to refine what is the one thing that actually matters the most.
• 16:03
  That if I hit that, I will unlock like a massive upside
• 16:08
  opportunity because because the doing has become so fast.
• 16:14
  Now that's not to say that you don't have to iterate and like
• 16:16
  once once you're in the doing machine, you got to do the
• 16:19
  Duane. But I I see way more.
• 16:23
  Yeah, high couldn't quote high leverage activity, right?
• 16:25
  Yeah, I would describe this podcast as high leverage.
• 16:28
  Do you think we're going to see a massive influx of only Fans
• 16:32
  girls entering the tech market because they're getting
• 16:36
  replicated by AI? They're able to do more
• 16:39
  complicated, difficult things. They have an entrepreneurial
• 16:42
  spirit. Yeah.
• 16:43
  I think that like breaking down like what hard work is like
• 16:48
  symbol grounding. It might help because I think
• 16:52
  that we're going to see people who just consume and then people
• 16:56
  who use information and execution, right.
• 16:59
  And what you're what you're talking about here, Rashad, is
• 17:01
  people information gathering so that they can execute very well.
• 17:05
  It's kind of like that silly, you know, work smarter, not
• 17:10
  harder thing, right To to work more efficiently.
• 17:13
  But the person who works efficiently but doesn't actually
• 17:16
  work, doesn't put in the time. Sure that maybe they can get
• 17:20
  like a day's work and done in an hour and then go chill on the
• 17:22
  beach. But the the person who gets a
• 17:25
  day's work done in an hour and does that 9 hours a day is gonna
• 17:29
  at work, right. So I don't know, I think I think
• 17:32
  we might be competing with some Only Fans girls in the future.
• 17:35
  I would probably say so as well. Also, women buy spend a lot more
• 17:39
  money and so, you know, if I was an only fans girl and wanted to
• 17:43
  start marketing some software to women, I think that's not a bad
• 17:46
  idea. But yeah, I definitely agree.
• 17:48
  I like I'm a huge like barbell theory guy.
• 17:50
  Like if you guys know about that, where it's like two sides
• 17:53
  of the thing, right? Like, like for everything in my
• 17:55
  life, I swear to God, like I need to write a piece on this.
• 17:57
  And maybe this will be my my post Sunday because I've been
• 17:59
  brainstorming on it. But like, like, I'm either
• 18:02
  completely locked, the fucking Celsius is steeping writing, or
• 18:05
  I'm like out in nature, like in the woods vibing like a fucking
• 18:09
  hippie or like I'm totally like, you know, locked and grinding or
• 18:13
  I'm just reading or, you know, you know, like, like there's so
• 18:16
  many options of this. Like you're either like totally
• 18:18
  locked in or you're just, you know, totally free thinking.
• 18:21
  And I think like, it's that combination that matters more
• 18:24
  and more. Like my favorite example to
• 18:26
  bring up is like, you know, when you're on a plane and your Wi-Fi
• 18:29
  is like in between going out and you know how miserable you feel,
• 18:32
  like when you're just like, like trying to get it, it's like,
• 18:35
  that's the worst time ever. Like that's the in between.
• 18:38
  You know, like I hate when I'm watching a movie with people and
• 18:41
  they're checking their phone. It's like, go enjoy the movie,
• 18:43
  bro. Like you're either locked into a
• 18:45
  movie or you're like, not. And I think, I think everybody's
• 18:49
  hitting that where you're either deeply, deeply relaxed or you're
• 18:51
  working your ass off. And like, like, I think you have
• 18:56
  to be like either one of those when you're in the middle.
• 18:59
  That's the hell. But yeah, I Rishabh, I
• 19:01
  definitely agree with that. I think we're we're hitting this
• 19:03
  point where it's like so much is about what what you should work
• 19:07
  hard on. And you know, we're we're
• 19:09
  experiencing that a lot right now with with me Lord of like,
• 19:12
  hey, guys, we like, you know, kind of hustled this and we kind
• 19:16
  of didn't set up post hoc correctly.
• 19:17
  Maybe we should fix that. You know, it's like we should
• 19:19
  probably have our data analytics, right?
• 19:21
  And it's like we're making a lot of but like we actually probably
• 19:25
  should set that up correctly, right?
• 19:26
  But it's like, sorry, I was, I was in the middle of fundraising
• 19:29
  and didn't have time to do that right and stuff, you know, it's
• 19:33
  it's like. Fundraising is a good thing to
• 19:36
  spend time on. Dude, so fundraising is that was
• 19:38
  my counter example in my head too is like you can't just not
• 19:42
  work like fundraising. Like I slept about two hours a
• 19:44
  night for like 3 weeks straight and it was it was 100% worth it.
• 19:47
  You do what you got to do. Like there's no, you know, I
• 19:49
  have a lot of friends and a lot of people in my life.
• 19:52
  I'm sure you guys know these types who constantly ask you,
• 19:55
  hey, should I do this? Should I do this?
• 19:56
  Like there is no like, like you can't do that with fundraising.
• 20:00
  You can't ask everybody. Like you have to just not sleep
• 20:03
  and respond to emails and jump on calls and jump on the flight.
• 20:07
  Like you have to do what you got to do for that.
• 20:09
  And like I think the the work ethic can't be.
• 20:14
  You can't out leverage that. Like there is no, there's also
• 20:17
  no out leveraging. I think a lot of people are
• 20:19
  trying to outsmart everything with AI.
• 20:21
  It's like some things you just got to do.
• 20:23
  And I think that's the arbitrage.
• 20:24
  Like this type of shit is an arbitrage against AI influencers
• 20:28
  hosting events and parties in New York that people have the
• 20:30
  time of their life at and get laid.
• 20:32
  Great arbitrage against AI, right?
• 20:35
  You know, like we're we're hosting a lot of live events,
• 20:37
  like, you know, like that kind of stuff is more and more
• 20:41
  important, you know, in the age. But do both, right?
• 20:44
  Like do the automated meme accounts do the automated AI
• 20:47
  shit, but also do that like I think it's one or the other.
• 20:50
  I don't know. That's probably my thesis for
• 20:52
  this year is just barbell theory to the extreme.
• 20:55
  I don't know. Hey, Jason, I was going to ask
• 20:57
  you said something about feeling like SAS you can like it's
• 21:00
  easier to scale if you, if you're comfortable sharing,
• 21:03
  roughly what scale are you at right now and what makes you say
• 21:07
  that you feel like it's easy to scale and where do you think
• 21:09
  you're going to hit your like first plateau that you're going
• 21:13
  to have to breakthrough? Yeah, yeah.
• 21:15
  So between our SAS and our services, we're doing a solid
• 21:19
  over, over a mill year and we've been, we've been fine with that
• 21:22
  and, and growing pretty fast on that.
• 21:25
  So we, we do both SAS and services and product size
• 21:28
  services there. And I think it's like I'm, we
• 21:32
  haven't even hit close to plateau with that.
• 21:34
  I haven't spent a dollar on paid ads and that's why we're getting
• 21:36
  post talk set off. So I've got you know, I raised 3
• 21:39
  mil and I've got about 2.72 point 6 in the bank account and
• 21:43
  so I'm chilling. So the only thing that's
• 21:46
  stopping me right now from signing up for foreplay Max is
• 21:49
  that my post hog is not set up correctly.
• 21:51
  So I can't track my Facebook ads so.
• 21:53
  We don't track our Facebook ads properly to get there.
• 21:55
  Fuck. All right, I'm good.
• 21:57
  I'm good. I was.
• 22:02
  Actually. Responsible for growth.
• 22:04
  So now here we're going to listen to the one-on-one.
• 22:07
  Well, OK, one one, I just signed up for you guys and I played
• 22:10
  around with that. And so after this call, I'm
• 22:12
  actually gonna like just like launch like 10 ads that I made
• 22:14
  on on meme Lord so. That's nice.
• 22:17
  Hell yeah, dude, Hell yes. But one thing that you said that
• 22:20
  I wanted to touch on, you're like, oh, we never set up our
• 22:23
  post hoc events correctly. And now it feels like something
• 22:26
  that we should do. I think it, I think, I think you
• 22:28
  probably shouldn't like I think that the yeah, I mean like the
• 22:32
  the problem has become glaringly obvious when you should sort of
• 22:35
  like do them with a lot of the stuff.
• 22:37
  And like to be fair, we're actually going through like a
• 22:38
  post dog implementation right now and like we have never had
• 22:42
  proper event tracking ever. Yeah, it's it's all dude, it's a
• 22:47
  it's a post hog. I don't know, I look, I didn't
• 22:50
  need it when I raised. I just show them MRRI show them,
• 22:52
  you know, what people say and love it.
• 22:55
  And but it does help to to really, I think to get to the
• 22:59
  next level. And we're about to, you know, I
• 23:01
  could keep it here and you know, we're launching iOS very soon
• 23:04
  and that's going to be really important.
• 23:05
  And so, you know, that I, I don't know, we, we already paid,
• 23:11
  paid the postal consultant. So don't tell me that, Zach,
• 23:13
  you're going to break my heart. Yeah, but I, I think it, I
• 23:17
  think, you know, Nikita has a great tweet about it is like, if
• 23:19
  you want to know what people are doing on your platform, you have
• 23:21
  to track fucking everything. And, you know, right now it's
• 23:24
  great to have MRR and, and DAU and, and, and all that stuff.
• 23:28
  But like, I want to know, you know, what AI buttons are they
• 23:31
  pressing? I want to know, you know, dude,
• 23:33
  for some reason we're going fucking viral in Turkey.
• 23:36
  I have no idea why but like I want to know how how Turkish
• 23:39
  people are converting and using my software.
• 23:42
  Like, I don't know, I think. Doing it with the lira, that's
• 23:45
  it. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 23:46
  And so I don't know, I think the plateau of a media company is
• 23:53
  different. That's all I'm gonna say on that
• 23:55
  one is like I I was doing ghostwriting hit like, you know,
• 23:58
  this, I guess this agency, but like I was doing like 50 KA
• 24:01
  month solo as a ghostwriter and you know, that was good.
• 24:05
  But I was on my honeymoon getting texts from founders who
• 24:07
  are going bankrupt, you know, bugging me about their fucking
• 24:10
  tweets. I was like, dude, your company's
• 24:12
  going to zero and like here I am like on my honeymoon.
• 24:14
  It's like there's a there's a Max on that stuff.
• 24:17
  There's a Max on a newsletter business, you know, like, you
• 24:20
  know, I love Austin Reef. He's he's one of my investors,
• 24:23
  but there is a Max. There's a reason, you know,
• 24:25
  that's just the truth of it is like that's SAS.
• 24:29
  There is a reason why every there's no not as many public
• 24:32
  media companies and it's. Public, well, it's very easy to
• 24:35
  see, like how if you want to take the media company route and
• 24:38
  get really, really big, you just look at history to see how they
• 24:40
  got really, really big. All of them just did it through
• 24:42
  acquisition. So it's like it's just like a
• 24:44
  different thing. Like can you scale 1 media thing
• 24:47
  infinitely forever? Like the answer is no.
• 24:49
  But if you just look at like every other media company, like
• 24:53
  just fucking watch Succession, they just they do it through
• 24:56
  acquisition versus like with SAS, you can kind of scale a
• 25:00
  thing and build new products under one thing in perpetuity
• 25:03
  forever. Look at Salesforce.
• 25:05
  So like it's just like two different approaches to scale
• 25:11
  and like one of them is like capital intensive in one way,
• 25:14
  one of the capital intensive in another way.
• 25:17
  Well, acquisitions a lot more capital intensive than
• 25:19
  engineering. But it happens at different
• 25:22
  phases, right? So like you have it, your
• 25:24
  capital at the beginning is way, way higher risk than than the
• 25:27
  capital at acquisition, like. And so it's everything is priced
• 25:30
  into the market. I mean, yeah, you could make a
• 25:32
  media. I've never wanted to make a
• 25:34
  really big media. It seems like hell on earth,
• 25:36
  Right. Yeah.
• 25:37
  No, it's everybody you know, everybody I talk to.
• 25:39
  It's it does not seem fun. But look, what's nice about
• 25:42
  software is like, and, and my software specifically and all of
• 25:45
  our softwares here is like you can just launch a media company
• 25:48
  as part of your software. Like meme Lord's actual full,
• 25:51
  you know, full name is meme Lord movies corporation.
• 25:54
  Like that is where our investors wired $3,000,000 is because they
• 25:57
  know like part of our long haul plan is to launch movies on meme
• 26:01
  Lord and launch shows. So like we're going to do that
• 26:04
  and like, but we need 10s of millions of users to watch that
• 26:07
  shit first. So, and you look at Stripe like
• 26:11
  strike press, right? I asked John about that John
• 26:13
  collision when I met him in Stripe, I was like, why did you
• 26:15
  guys do that? He's like for fun.
• 26:17
  Like, you know, it's like because it's cool and like
• 26:19
  there's a chance that these books will end up in people's
• 26:21
  houses. You know, it's like every
• 26:23
  software company can launch media now.
• 26:25
  Like, I don't know, I think like.
• 26:27
  You guys hear about how Jack Dorsey bought title?
• 26:30
  Yeah, no, wait, what do you mean?
• 26:32
  Like what was the story? He was on a boat, he was drunk
• 26:35
  and he was partying. He was like, let's buy title.
• 26:37
  Fucking go, dude. I've been thinking a lot about
• 26:38
  Jack Dorsey. He like liked a couple of my
• 26:40
  tweets this week and I don't know, I think I want to be more
• 26:43
  like Jack Dorsey than Elon. I think that's that's where I've
• 26:46
  like my head's at these days. It's.
• 26:47
  Like growing the beard, dude. Dude, I can't grow a beard, but
• 26:50
  I'm a I'm a go to Costa Rica for sure.
• 26:54
  But how are you guys thinking about, you know, like kind of
• 26:58
  state of advertising AIUGC I'm just curious, like what you guys
• 27:03
  are seeing in in your space? Like all I see is that shit on
• 27:06
  Twitter and I'm like, there's a bubble man.
• 27:08
  But like at the same time, I know some of it works.
• 27:10
  Like I I'd love to hear. I feel like I'm doing a lot of
• 27:14
  yapping and I know I'm the guest, but I I have a lot of
• 27:16
  learning to do about this shit that I just don't know about
• 27:18
  either. Like I said, never spend a
• 27:19
  dollar on paid ads. So please I.
• 27:21
  Mean advertising formats is very fluid and it will be fluid
• 27:24
  forever. Yeah, yeah.
• 27:26
  And and like everything isn't the silver bullet, right?
• 27:30
  Like it all comes down to like what's resonating with people.
• 27:33
  And like, I think that's like probably like a bit of a hat nod
• 27:36
  to like what you guys are doing, which like the current meme
• 27:40
  aesthetic will not be the meme aesthetic in the future.
• 27:44
  And like in the same way that the advertising aesthetic will
• 27:47
  not be the advertising aesthetic in the future.
• 27:49
  And it just gets wider and wider and wider.
• 27:52
  Like it never gets replaced. It only is additive over time,
• 27:55
  forever and ever and ever. And like, there's more formats,
• 27:58
  more styles, because like, human taste and attention evolve.
• 28:04
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it doesn't add if an ad is
• 28:06
  really good or a piece of AI UGC.
• 28:09
  If it's really, really good, does it become a meme, right?
• 28:12
  Does it like meet the definition and the criteria of a meme?
• 28:15
  Because like in my mind, I know that there's like probably a
• 28:17
  very official definition of a meme, but it's like something
• 28:20
  that's very shareable. It's something that gets the
• 28:22
  point across like instantly. It's something that when people
• 28:24
  look at it, they, I guess they're somebody who's like
• 28:27
  aligned with whatever the messages of the meme, they're
• 28:30
  like, they instantly recognize it as true and reflecting things
• 28:34
  that they feel right. So if you, I don't know, if you
• 28:36
  take it to the extreme, you have a really, really good ad.
• 28:38
  Is it a meme? Yeah, I mean, I've never thought
• 28:41
  about that, but I like it. Definitely.
• 28:42
  I mean, like you think about like some of like the subway ads
• 28:45
  and shit, like as a kid and like weird ads like the all the
• 28:48
  Super. Yeah, definitely.
• 28:50
  I like that. Or like the Sidney Sweeney bath
• 28:51
  soap. Yeah.
• 28:53
  Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's.
• 28:54
  There's an ad that becomes a meme.
• 28:56
  That's that's definitely the goal, I would say of an ad is
• 28:59
  for it to be turned into a meme and why so many like people are
• 29:03
  turning themselves into memes in different ways from, you know,
• 29:07
  it started out me just face swapping myself on the silly
• 29:09
  shit and now our users posted and you look at any, you know,
• 29:13
  politician creator to some degree, the the Jake Paul
• 29:17
  memefying himself and Sora. Everybody wants to turn
• 29:20
  themselves into a meme in some aspect.
• 29:23
  Vance or Newsome who like that one surprised me like he's a
• 29:27
  very like, you know, stick up his ass kind of guy.
• 29:30
  And I was like pretty surprised that that he was able to joke
• 29:34
  around with himself and and post funny memes.
• 29:36
  Yeah. I mean, you want to be
• 29:38
  shareable, right? Like that is like kind of a good
• 29:43
  thing. There's a good book that I would
• 29:45
  recommend. It's like it's called Anti meme
• 29:48
  actually. And so it's the exact opposite.
• 29:50
  And it's by something Asperoff, if you guys are dealing in, he's
• 29:56
  AVC at founders phone, his wife, Nadi Asperoff wrote it.
• 29:59
  And the idea is like an auntie meme is like something top
• 30:02
  secret that you shouldn't share that like you don't want to be
• 30:05
  shared. Like, I don't know, I find that
• 30:07
  kind of fascinating of like are there any like things like that
• 30:10
  in marketing, advertising, secret groups, you know, stuff
• 30:14
  like that. Like you want to be an auntie
• 30:16
  meme, like you don't want us to be shared.
• 30:18
  I don't know. I wonder if there's something
• 30:19
  around that, but I don't know. I mean, most of the time the
• 30:23
  only things that people don't want to be shared is like their
• 30:27
  like their company's strategy. Past that, I think most people
• 30:30
  want everything to be shared. Like they want their product to
• 30:32
  be shared. They want their go to market to
• 30:35
  be shared. They want like they want
• 30:36
  everything to be shared. The only I can't think of
• 30:39
  anything that I've heard anyone keep dear outside of their their
• 30:44
  product strategy. Well, I think it just comes down
• 30:46
  to individual like, like company affairs, even though it was a
• 30:50
  great theme, on an individual level wasn't the best thing.
• 30:55
  What was that guy's company at the fucking Coldplay concerts
• 30:58
  like? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:00
  Astronaut, astronomer, astronomer, astronomer.
• 31:02
  Like Grey? Meme grey meme but like,
• 31:05
  probably wouldn't but dude. Everybody knew what Apache
• 31:09
  Airflow? Sorry, knew the words Apache
• 31:11
  Airflow. Because of that, I still don't
• 31:13
  even know what the fuck Apache Airflow is.
• 31:15
  Dude, I have no. Idea I went to my Co founder and
• 31:17
  I'm like do we use Apache airflow because I was like I
• 31:20
  don't know what the fuck this thing.
• 31:23
  Is your point is that that wasn't good for the individual
• 31:27
  but was still good for the company, right?
• 31:29
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think there's good memes
• 31:32
  and bad memes both like of your brand and also like there are so
• 31:38
  many memes about whatever it is PayPal like I I don't know, I'm
• 31:42
  trying to think of like really bad UX software like, you know,
• 31:45
  there's. Like anything that's negative
• 31:47
  about your company other than price.
• 31:49
  Like, I actually think price memes that are negative about
• 31:51
  your company are probably not good.
• 31:54
  Like, generally, like, I don't think that really matters.
• 31:56
  I don't think people, like, look at memes as a way of just like,
• 31:59
  thinking like value and stuff like that.
• 32:01
  And if anything, you're like, what?
• 32:01
  Why does this cost so much? Like, I actually think the why
• 32:04
  does this cost so much? Thought process in the human
• 32:06
  brain is like, very, very powerful.
• 32:09
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 32:10
  Especially when you're trying to sell the companies with or
• 32:12
  people with, like, lots of resources, like, like as a
• 32:15
  luxury brand. Like the best feeling you could
• 32:17
  have is why does this cost so much?
• 32:19
  The worst feeling you could have is why is this so cheap?
• 32:22
  Yeah. So I think it really depends on
• 32:25
  like the positioning. But I think, yeah, like any sort
• 32:28
  of meme about your product outside of like the quality of
• 32:33
  the actual product, it's probably really great.
• 32:35
  Yeah, I I was working with the e-commerce founder buddy who
• 32:39
  like he noticed when his meme, you know, product was getting
• 32:42
  dropped in memes like it was driving sales and it was like,
• 32:45
  how do we amplify that? So introducing him to different
• 32:48
  meme pages in his area and just surreptitiously placing it in
• 32:51
  like the tech pro starter packs, you know, those kind of memes.
• 32:55
  And it doesn't have to be crazy. It doesn't have to be super
• 32:58
  obvious, but memifying your own product is is super powerful
• 33:02
  with that. Like our old pricing law, like
• 33:05
  it became a meme where people would post it because it was
• 33:07
  called like a micro penis plan. It was 6.9 a month, like stuff
• 33:12
  like that. The little things where you
• 33:14
  could share it. It had an eggplant and
• 33:16
  everything. And, you know, I think we're
• 33:18
  hitting this point of like, software as content, software as
• 33:21
  memes. Like my, I started this YouTube
• 33:24
  series last year called Silly Valley Ventures, where every
• 33:26
  week we'd build a stupid startup.
• 33:28
  So we built Duolingo only for cursing, called duofucko.com.
• 33:31
  We build a dating app with only one man on it and unlimited like
• 33:35
  we are. Yeah.
• 33:36
  We build, you know how like some bars in New York have like have
• 33:39
  couches. We built an app to find all the
• 33:42
  bars that have couches like we were hitting this point.
• 33:44
  Where I would download that fucking app.
• 33:46
  That is my. That is literally like, where do
• 33:50
  you want to go? I'm like, I want to go to a
• 33:52
  place with a fucking couch. So I I went to Brooklyn and and
• 33:55
  found those and we raided them. And I think we're hitting this
• 33:57
  point where like, you know, like you said, I I agree.
• 34:00
  Everybody wants everything to be shareable for the most part.
• 34:03
  That's why, you know, like if you can make your make it
• 34:06
  delightful and weird, like I think, yeah, we're we're you
• 34:10
  know, if you if you you can make people say what the fuck and
• 34:12
  share it such and it's showing true for Instagram content to
• 34:15
  like the reels that I've noticed it of mine popped off the most
• 34:19
  was ones that have the most shares.
• 34:20
  Like, you know, I'm sure you guys have seen the same and
• 34:22
  like, you know, we're living in the shareability world.
• 34:26
  Like is your shit shareable? Is it me mobile?
• 34:28
  Is it, you know, does it make you want to share it with your
• 34:30
  friends? You know, I don't know.
• 34:33
  Jason, I'm curious what the like, what is the thing that
• 34:37
  surprised you most about starting?
• 34:38
  Like you were working with all of these SAS founders and you
• 34:41
  probably had some point of view about their life or what the
• 34:44
  fuck they were doing or and then you started doing it.
• 34:47
  What was the thing that surprised you on the upside and
• 34:49
  what surprised you on the downside?
• 34:52
  I always saw that like founders were jacked and healthy because
• 34:55
  they were just like superhuman. And now I'm like in really good
• 34:59
  shape and it's just because I'm stressed out all the time and I
• 35:02
  need to like box and punch things.
• 35:04
  I think that's been the biggest surprise, honestly.
• 35:07
  Like I, I just was like, these guys are Greek gods and it's
• 35:09
  like, oh, they're just really stressed out and like want to
• 35:12
  cry. And so they work out a lot.
• 35:14
  All right. And besides that, I would say,
• 35:16
  like, again, like I thought these guys were geniuses or like
• 35:20
  founders in general. Like I thought, you know, I
• 35:22
  wrote this in a piece a while back.
• 35:23
  I thought you had to be Zuck to be a founder, right?
• 35:26
  And then you work with people. You're like, I'm the one writing
• 35:29
  their words. Like, what am I missing here?
• 35:32
  Like I'm the one who got them viral.
• 35:34
  I'm the one doing all this. Like, and then, you know, Ariel
• 35:37
  Zuckerberg invested in us. I was like, ah, I guess you
• 35:39
  don't need to be the next Zuck. You know, like you don't have to
• 35:42
  be Zuck. You know, it's like you can do
• 35:44
  it your own way. I think that was a big thing.
• 35:46
  And like, I guess the third was oh, biggest surprise was like I
• 35:51
  was very like anti VC. I was a bootstrapper through and
• 35:54
  through and a lot of people thought I ran VC brags, which I
• 35:57
  don't. It's a it's a buddy of mine.
• 35:59
  But like I was completely wrong about venture capital in
• 36:04
  general. My VCs are dope.
• 36:07
  I love them. They aren't up my ass.
• 36:10
  If anything, they're hard to get a hold of sometimes because
• 36:12
  they're all mysterious and disappear to their own world.
• 36:15
  And I don't know, I was, I worked at product and I was like
• 36:18
  very indie hacker and like I only raise money because I, you
• 36:23
  know, I had a product that was successful that it was indie
• 36:25
  hacking and then it was, you know, I wanted to take to the
• 36:28
  next level. And I think the mistake of
• 36:30
  thinking that all VCs are assholes was probably an
• 36:33
  immature Jason 20s, you know, mistake that that I made.
• 36:37
  And I'm, I'm glad that I learned that that wasn't the truth.
• 36:41
  There's some really cool VCs out there.
• 36:43
  And yeah, if anybody's listening, I would, I would
• 36:46
  recommend like, don't just pitch every VC, like find the ones you
• 36:50
  think are dope. I found our lead check Cyan
• 36:52
  because I listened to her on the Tim Ferriss podcast and I was
• 36:55
  like, I love her. I love her story.
• 36:57
  Like she's been through some shit.
• 36:58
  She reminds me of myself. And and then like, you know, a
• 37:02
  lot of our VCs I had talked to from Twitter for years and
• 37:05
  years, Balaji Srinivasan and we had DM for years.
• 37:08
  And like, like, you know, Sam lesson, we got introduced via
• 37:11
  mutual friends. We had like a, you know, it's
• 37:13
  like a lot of our investors were just my Twitter buddies that,
• 37:17
  you know, I was friends with. And so I don't know, I think
• 37:19
  like it was probably an immature perspective.
• 37:22
  And there's really, you know, they're a lot of them are just
• 37:24
  like 5 years older than you. They already got rich.
• 37:27
  They don't have the time to grind on a founder thing.
• 37:29
  They just want to leverage their money better.
• 37:31
  And so they invest. And that's, it's really that
• 37:33
  it's not that deep, you know, So I don't know, I guess there are
• 37:36
  three main things there, but. Yeah, I mean, we've had a lot of
• 37:40
  discussion about like different way to capitalize the businesses
• 37:43
  here. By the way, I totally agree.
• 37:47
  I think this like idea that VCs are bad or that VC funding means
• 37:51
  you can't get rich, Like there's this insane idea that, oh, if
• 37:55
  you can't sell past this number, then the founder doesn't make
• 37:59
  any money. It's just totally false.
• 38:01
  But the, I mean, I, I, I personally think that people
• 38:06
  should do exactly what you said, which is understand, like what
• 38:10
  the ecosystem looks like, who's out there.
• 38:12
  Cyan is exceptional. And so like, that's awesome for
• 38:17
  you that she, she was in the round.
• 38:20
  I have other friends who have raised from her and they say
• 38:22
  awesome things. But yeah, I, I I totally agree
• 38:26
  with that point of view. Yeah, I think like find people
• 38:30
  who are aligned, don't spray and pray, you know, like they're
• 38:35
  especially if you're working on something weird, you know, like
• 38:37
  we did end up with calls with like some institutional
• 38:40
  investors and like, it was just weird.
• 38:43
  It was like they don't get it and they'll get it once it's
• 38:45
  bigger, they'll jump on, on the growth rounds, whatever.
• 38:48
  But there's a reason why the weirdos are the are the C checks
• 38:52
  and everybody follows them, right.
• 38:53
  Science, arguably the most successful Angel investor of all
• 38:57
  time, right. And was our first check.
• 38:59
  And once you have that and somebody believes in you and
• 39:01
  loves you, like it helps a lot. And so I don't know, I think
• 39:06
  like I'd also challenge any, you know, I think I think a lot of
• 39:11
  people are could build software more than they realize.
• 39:13
  It's back to that before about media and software company was
• 39:17
  it was a limit in my brain too, of like I already learned
• 39:20
  everything I need to do for the most part about media.
• 39:23
  Like I've been making YouTube videos.
• 39:24
  I went to video editing camp. I, you know, had run big
• 39:28
  newsletters. It was like I wanted to learn
• 39:31
  how to build software and like the challenge of it is so much
• 39:34
  fun. It's so hard.
• 39:35
  It was like new pieces of my brain unlocking, you know?
• 39:39
  I love, I love it. Like I actually love it more
• 39:42
  than media stuff. Yeah, and you did it on Max?
• 39:46
  Difficulty, right? I mean maybe not Max difficulty
• 39:49
  coding bubble. I was doing bubble, it was all
• 39:52
  workflows. And like, that's what I mean of
• 39:54
  like, if you don't have the skills to leverage, like I
• 39:57
  didn't know how to code. So all I knew how to do was drag
• 40:00
  and drop work flows. And the only option for that was
• 40:03
  staying up all night drinking Red Bull and doing that.
• 40:05
  And now I have engineers who are doing the work for me and I have
• 40:09
  to step back. It's forcing me to step back.
• 40:11
  And you know, I've been taking off every Saturday for the last
• 40:14
  three months to just journal and and think.
• 40:17
  And that's been huge. But yeah, I don't know.
• 40:21
  It's, it's really fun building software.
• 40:23
  I think like. It's way more fun actually than
• 40:27
  than doing a lot of media stuff. I mean, I, I've been taking a
• 40:31
  step back. I actually, I made a big
• 40:33
  decision to go private on Instagram like a month ago.
• 40:36
  I was like, I don't need to be public.
• 40:38
  I have money. I could pay people to be
• 40:41
  influencers for me. Like why am I spending?
• 40:43
  Why am I doing this? You know, like my Twitter is
• 40:47
  where we, you know, like I could write, you know, it's like I've
• 40:50
  gotten 10s of millions of views on Instagram doing viral shit.
• 40:53
  But like it's not the best use of time anymore for me.
• 40:56
  I have to like be honest with myself about that.
• 40:59
  And that was actually really hard.
• 41:00
  But I don't know you, I look at all the founders I respect.
• 41:04
  You know, you don't see fucking Carp or Elon or Zuck.
• 41:07
  Even Zuck who owns Instagram, he's not making daily yap
• 41:09
  videos. You know, it's like, I don't
• 41:13
  know, I think I think software is really hard and I think a lot
• 41:17
  of people are starting to see that with with some of these,
• 41:19
  you know, influencer founders, I'm not going to name names, but
• 41:23
  they're starting to realize that product is a lot harder than
• 41:25
  just just making viral content. That's actually it's really
• 41:29
  hard. Yeah, you.
• 41:31
  Know what this reminds me of what Jeremiah was going to say
• 41:32
  on like clarity of what to pay attention to.
• 41:36
  I think that even with all of this tech making it so much
• 41:41
  easier to build, I think the majority of people just have no
• 41:44
  idea what to build. They don't have a use case to
• 41:46
  solve for. So they've got this like, I
• 41:49
  don't want to say unlimited, but there's so much capacity,
• 41:53
  there's so much horsepower, and there's no direction.
• 41:57
  Everyone's just building like another habit tracker.
• 41:59
  Yeah, So I was, I couldn't sleep the other night.
• 42:02
  So I was like up till 4:00 AM watching YouTube videos about
• 42:05
  how my refrigerator works. And then I, like, realized that
• 42:08
  I'm too stupid to understand that.
• 42:09
  So then I was like watching HVAC videos.
• 42:12
  And then I I was like, all right, you know, I'm going to
• 42:14
  watch physics for middle school kids because I was a dumbass.
• 42:17
  And so the reason why I'm talking about this speed versus
• 42:20
  velocity. Velocity is speed with
• 42:23
  direction. Yeah.
• 42:24
  And a lot of people have speed and I think right now it's like,
• 42:29
  how's your velocity? How's your direction?
• 42:31
  And that's, that's what we're really working on.
• 42:33
  You know, like meme Lord we're we only launched this version of
• 42:36
  the product three months ago. I only started the company 15
• 42:39
  months ago. It's like we're so early, like
• 42:42
  we are so fucking early. We're like, shit is not done.
• 42:47
  Shit is not where I wanted to be.
• 42:48
  Like it stresses me out so much. Like I know it's not perfect.
• 42:53
  I know I know all that, but you know, the only thing we can do
• 42:56
  is keep going forward. Otherwise we'd never launched.
• 42:59
  You know, you just keep on improving, iterating.
• 43:02
  Also, if you're watching this and and you are trying to start
• 43:05
  a SAS, exactly what you said, Jack.
• 43:06
  Find the problem in your own life and solve that.
• 43:09
  Then use the magic of the Internet to find people like
• 43:11
  you. You know, I solved the problem
• 43:13
  in my life, which was I couldn't keep up with trending memes and
• 43:16
  I wanted a meme editor that had everything all in one place.
• 43:19
  So I built that for myself and I built a stupid version meme or
• 43:22
  D1 was a newsletter and a Google Slides actually.
• 43:25
  And people paid for that and loved it.
• 43:27
  And and then I learned how to build the software after people
• 43:30
  paid for it. So I don't know, solving your
• 43:33
  own problem, it also makes you a lot more passionate about it.
• 43:37
  I don't know. I think all the people who are
• 43:39
  like, I'm seeing a lot of dupe for software, you know, cloning
• 43:43
  software, they're fucking losers.
• 43:44
  Like I don't know how to say it. Like you're going to give up
• 43:47
  eventually because you don't love it and you hate it and you
• 43:50
  hate your life. You know, I don't know.
• 43:52
  Dude, can I just say something on that?
• 43:53
  We, we, we have a couple of competitors now that are like
• 43:57
  literal replicas of what we do. I kid you not.
• 44:01
  I saw the founder of one of those companies post on LinkedIn
• 44:06
  almost exactly the same post I had posted three days before.
• 44:09
  And I'm like, man, how do you wake up in the morning and feel
• 44:12
  inspired by doing this? Like that's that's actually the
• 44:16
  more troubling thing. Like there's just no way that's
• 44:18
  sustainable, right? I mean, and you guys have had
• 44:21
  we've talked about this before, foreplay has had some insane
• 44:24
  copycats. Like it's just like literally a
• 44:26
  lift, right? Am I remembering right, Zach?
• 44:28
  Oh. Yeah, I mean, there's like
• 44:33
  there's more probably to have came out and died the night than
• 44:36
  the ones that I'm aware of. Yes yeah, we had we had one kid
• 44:40
  literally copy word for word or pricing.
• 44:43
  I was just like like how do you feel good about yourself?
• 44:46
  Like you got to you got to like you got to look in the mirror
• 44:49
  and be like damn, I'm an idiot. I'm like think for yourself bro,
• 44:55
  like really just like take some time man.
• 44:57
  Grab a note the. Truth is, I feel like all of
• 45:00
  those actions are based on them looking at the in the mirror and
• 45:03
  saying I fucking hate myself. Like, like realistically, right?
• 45:07
  Like it's like that conversations happens before
• 45:09
  doing next. Like, oh, it's like it is just
• 45:12
  like the greatest form of flattery.
• 45:14
  And I feel like bad about it. Like it's like, oh, wow, OK.
• 45:17
  Like, yeah. Like it is like years of
• 45:20
  someone's life. It's like you don't get that
• 45:22
  many of them. No you don't.
• 45:24
  And especially like man, like especially in today's age, what
• 45:28
  you guys are talking about is we have more leverage than ever.
• 45:30
  So if you're working on something you hate, working on
• 45:33
  something that is miserable, like this just sucks.
• 45:36
  Like I just don't I, I feel bad for you.
• 45:38
  Like I don't, I really know what to say.
• 45:40
  It's like maybe that's just like a meaning issue in society is
• 45:45
  like not enough people, you know, feel, feel like they have
• 45:48
  something that means something. I, I don't really know what if,
• 45:51
  if, if that means anything or if we're just in a bubble where
• 45:54
  everybody thinks it's so easy to copycat other people and make
• 45:57
  money. It's one of the two or the both.
• 45:59
  But like, it's not that easy. Like if it was that easy, there
• 46:02
  would have been 100 other meme apps that raised $3,000,000.
• 46:06
  It's, it's not easy. Like it took four years of me
• 46:09
  looking like a retard and you know, and let's blood sweat and
• 46:14
  tears and so, and I'm sure the same as foreplay, you know,
• 46:17
  people probably thought you guys were crazy with it.
• 46:19
  And, and so it's, I don't know, I just don't, I, I, I, I talked
• 46:24
  to this college kid and he kept asking me like, you know, what
• 46:27
  should I do? What should I do?
• 46:28
  I said literally my best advice for you, Stop asking me for
• 46:31
  advice. Please.
• 46:32
  Just like ask yourself, man, please just ask yourself, stop.
• 46:36
  Like just go do it. Like, it's just, man, I don't
• 46:40
  know, I hope, I hope the kids are going to be all right.
• 46:43
  But I think Jack, you're right. It's like most of the kids ain't
• 46:46
  going to be all right. They're going to be consuming,
• 46:48
  you know? But the ones who do it right
• 46:50
  are, they'll be fine. I was trying to think about this
• 46:52
  and I think that like, you know, if you have a problem, like a
• 46:54
  real problem, and if we make it like the simplest problem,
• 46:58
  hunger, you have an obvious direction.
• 47:00
  It's like I need to get to the solution so that I'm no longer
• 47:02
  hungry, right? But if you have no problems,
• 47:05
  right, and you haven't created problems by yourself, for
• 47:07
  yourself by being ambitious, then you've got like, you've got
• 47:10
  to come up with a direction. You've got to find a problem to
• 47:13
  solve. And I think there are a lot of
• 47:14
  people that are like, OK, there's no problem, just I don't
• 47:17
  know, anime and Doritos. Right, Yeah, yeah, I
• 47:22
  unfortunately, yeah. I don't know.
• 47:24
  I think I. Don't think it's unfortunate.
• 47:26
  I feel like sometimes these conversations.
• 47:27
  I think it's incredible. It's like where the fuck they
• 47:29
  want it's grace. Like the reason why people can
• 47:31
  do this and not be working on a farm is because a bunch of other
• 47:34
  people created a bunch of wealth in a country and now they get to
• 47:36
  do that. And that's what they would have
• 47:37
  wanted to do anyway. So like, are these things really
• 47:40
  bad? No, they're fucking great.
• 47:41
  Like like, like the duality of society is incredible.
• 47:46
  And like if everyone was like young hungry, like young dumb
• 47:50
  and full of cum, just fucking coding and making a bunch of
• 47:52
  money, like nobody would be. And so it's just like, it's
• 47:56
  great. Like we need people consuming.
• 47:58
  Otherwise Instagram wouldn't be a fucking massive company and my
• 48:01
  metashares wouldn't be up. Like this is all good.
• 48:06
  This is all good. Like it is great.
• 48:09
  And like people can do whatever the fuck they want with their
• 48:11
  lives. But like, if they're complaining
• 48:12
  that they don't have a bunch of money and they're doing that,
• 48:14
  then whatever, stop. Complaining.
• 48:16
  I like that. I agree.
• 48:18
  What do you guys think of like I'm curious about you know, what
• 48:24
  you guys are seeing with with vibe coding in general or
• 48:26
  anything like that or how you how marketers are doing it.
• 48:29
  You guys seen any cool things lately?
• 48:31
  I actually think some of what we've been talking about is the
• 48:34
  challenge with vibe code, which is you can look at it and have
• 48:37
  an idea of what I want something to be.
• 48:39
  But then when you get into which is good for like prototyping
• 48:42
  something, right? But like even Jason sounds like
• 48:44
  you got to this point, right? Like you get far enough in, but
• 48:47
  you get to a point where if you don't understand how to code and
• 48:50
  you're trying to create something that requires good
• 48:53
  code, you kind of get stuck. And I think that's, that's where
• 48:56
  we are right now with vibe coding.
• 48:58
  I think probably will be for a long time eventually.
• 49:01
  I, I would assume that changes eventually, right?
• 49:03
  But there's always going to be or not maybe not always, but at
• 49:07
  least for a while at some sort of level that you get to where
• 49:09
  you kind of plateau and you need the expert to help unlock that.
• 49:13
  So I think that's what I'm seeing right now with vibe
• 49:15
  coding. So.
• 49:16
  I just finished building something that's really big, as
• 49:20
  in, it's a very big project, and a lot of it started in Sheets,
• 49:24
  like in Google Sheets. For more complicated
• 49:27
  explanations of the things that I wanted to build.
• 49:30
  I haven't hit a wall at all. I haven't hit a point where I
• 49:34
  did with Gemini. Man, that was a terrible
• 49:36
  experiment. Gemini doesn't work.
• 49:38
  Called 4.5 and called 4.1. Fine, right?
• 49:42
  Opus is. Yeah, I haven't had it, you
• 49:46
  know, run into any bottlenecks and one one part of the product
• 49:51
  uses like Robins, MMM like which is like metas like very robust
• 49:58
  basically it's a very big component of the product and it
• 50:03
  did it like it one shotted it, right.
• 50:06
  So I don't know. The conversation of vibe coding
• 50:10
  needs to have this context, which is the idea of
• 50:13
  commercialization. And it was a lot.
• 50:16
  It was a, it was a lot bigger of a topic probably like 10/15/20,
• 50:21
  five years ago where you'd think about technology and the
• 50:23
  commercialization of technology. And right now people are only
• 50:28
  thinking about technology and they're having zeros like
• 50:31
  thought about commercialization. And so it doesn't fucking matter
• 50:34
  what you can create without the commercialization of the
• 50:37
  technology. It's the only thing that makes
• 50:39
  it sustainable and worth continuing to do.
• 50:41
  And so like, yes, it's all this cool that you can build all this
• 50:45
  type of stuff, but if anything, what's becoming more important
• 50:48
  because it's becoming so much easier is the commercialization
• 50:50
  aspect. And so if anything, that's just
• 50:54
  like, stop thinking about the things or the the roadblocks you
• 50:58
  might hit and try to commercialize the thing that
• 51:00
  you're at right now. And if you cannot commercialize
• 51:02
  it, then you need to approach the problem in a different way
• 51:06
  and like not wait for the future in which all your problems will
• 51:09
  be solved. You need to create value today.
• 51:11
  And so if the thing that you're doing isn't creating value
• 51:13
  today, today it's probably not worth doing.
• 51:15
  There are some examples in which maybe that is not true.
• 51:17
  Like you could think about their Figma story in which they
• 51:19
  focused on technology for a very long time and commercialization
• 51:22
  caught up with them. But I that I would look at that
• 51:25
  as like a lot of luck and timing.
• 51:28
  And so if you want to eliminate the luck and timing side, try to
• 51:32
  commercialize what you have now. If you're if it cannot be
• 51:35
  commercialized, you then need to just look in the world today
• 51:38
  with what we have, how can I create some fucking dollars?
• 51:42
  Yeah, I, I love that. I completely agree.
• 51:44
  I think a lot of people are just building stupid shit with no
• 51:47
  business model. And I was actually talking to a
• 51:49
  buddy about this. Like there's going to be a lot
• 51:50
  of vibe coders who have like no idea how to run a business and
• 51:53
  there's kind of an opportunity there.
• 51:54
  And I was talking to another friend who's like an Excel guy,
• 51:56
  like, you know, finance guy. I was like, there's a lot of
• 51:59
  creatives who are multi, multi millionaires who just have no
• 52:02
  fucking clue how Excel works. Like I have no idea how my
• 52:05
  finance, how Excel works, dude. I haven't worked on it in seven
• 52:09
  years, 10 years since like I dropped out of undergrad
• 52:12
  business program. Like I haven't touched it.
• 52:14
  You know, it's like there are a lot of people like that.
• 52:17
  I think Excel, like I think we're seeing that a lot
• 52:21
  commercialization or there's a lot of people who are building,
• 52:24
  you know, silly side projects, whatever.
• 52:26
  And there's no business model, there's no underlying anything.
• 52:29
  You know, the reason why Meme Lord works is because we have a
• 52:31
  core business offering, which is, you know, the trending memes
• 52:34
  and then we just do a bunch of crazy shit to get you there to
• 52:37
  the trends. And like the canvas that took a
• 52:40
  long time to build that entire editor.
• 52:42
  That was not easy. And it was like, yeah, you could
• 52:45
  vibe code something on Rourke or vibe code and have it out in an
• 52:48
  hour. And it's like, So what?
• 52:50
  Like there's no, there's nothing there, you know, like those are.
• 52:54
  So I don't know if I could share my screen, but if I cannot, I
• 52:56
  could show you guys some cool stuff.
• 52:57
  So like me and my team are, you know, I vibe code all this,
• 53:01
  these silly tools. We, we do a bunch of this where
• 53:03
  like I just spend like a couple of hours late at night, like,
• 53:06
  you know, building these silly tools, right?
• 53:07
  And like this is like worthless if there wasn't an underlying
• 53:10
  business model that was worth millions, right?
• 53:12
  It's just like silly tools otherwise, right?
• 53:14
  Because like now in the age like where anybody could do this,
• 53:17
  right? Like I built this last night
• 53:18
  when I was in the car where it's just, you know, always Sunny
• 53:21
  Generator like this has driven 10s of thousands of views,
• 53:24
  right? Like, and it's only because we
• 53:27
  actually have a real business model and marketing system
• 53:29
  behind it. And I don't know, I see a lot of
• 53:32
  people trying to go viral and whatever it is like the I saw
• 53:36
  the other day, like some AI monk, which was like great.
• 53:38
  But like if you don't have anything valuable to sell with
• 53:41
  it, like you're pointless. Like this guy had, you know, 60
• 53:44
  million views and they all he was doing was selling an ebook.
• 53:47
  It's like like that is the least leverage.
• 53:49
  I mean, maybe not the least leverage, but pretty low
• 53:51
  leverage. You know, it's like, I don't
• 53:54
  know, I think like it's one thing to build a bunch of silly
• 53:57
  stuff, but you got to have a smart business underneath.
• 53:59
  Like I've always lived by the the dumb meme smart threads,
• 54:02
  right? It's the silly memes are the top
• 54:04
  of funnel to get to the smart shit.
• 54:06
  And I think a lot of people are forgetting about the bottom shit
• 54:10
  for a while because they're so excited, which is good.
• 54:12
  It is good, yeah. But I don't know, You got to
• 54:16
  have a real business too. So I don't know.
• 54:18
  I don't know how much time we got left, but I like it.
• 54:21
  I'm thinking about the dude. I love the way your product
• 54:23
  looks. Looks so funny.
• 54:24
  Appreciate. It.
• 54:25
  All of it. Is just.
• 54:26
  It's so consistent. I appreciate it.
• 54:27
  We we're trying to build a world, you know, we, we, we're
• 54:30
  having a lot of fun and you know, we, we, we fired the you
• 54:34
  know, we, we tried hiring a designer like he just does
• 54:38
  dashboards and B to B sass. We're like, we got to have fun
• 54:41
  with it. And, and I don't know, I think
• 54:44
  more people should do that. I would encourage them to do
• 54:46
  that early on, yeah. What's the most amount of money
• 54:50
  a customer can spend with you guys?
• 54:53
  We have customers spending 10s of thousands with us that are
• 54:55
  doing per month for services. So we, we do a lot of meme
• 54:59
  pages. We don't advertise because we're
• 55:01
  at capacity right now actually, but we have, you know, 6 mid 6
• 55:06
  figures and we just actually sent out a contract for 1.2 mil
• 55:09
  for, for a six month contract. And so everybody like this is
• 55:14
  what I'm saying about the silly stuff to get to the smart stuff.
• 55:16
  Like everybody who's like on our free tools ends up in our CRM
• 55:20
  and like we're hitting people up.
• 55:21
  Like, you know, we like there is a smart business model.
• 55:25
  There's a method to our madness where you know, we're working
• 55:28
  with unicorns and public companies on, on smart stuff.
• 55:31
  And I don't know, I right now it's the services is basically
• 55:37
  like a great way to work closely with customers and have no burn
• 55:42
  basically as we, as we build out the product even more.
• 55:45
  So another encouragement to SAS founders is don't be afraid of
• 55:49
  services. Like especially in the age of
• 55:51
  Palantir where they have broken the, the metaphorical barrier.
• 55:56
  VCs understand it. Some won't, some will criticize
• 55:58
  you, but like many are like RBC wrote us a 1.5 mil check was
• 56:02
  like, no, that's proof. Like that is proof that people
• 56:05
  will pay for your shit. You know, it's like, yes, like
• 56:08
  there's proof of that. I don't know.
• 56:10
  So, so yeah, I mean 6-7 figures more in the future if we do it
• 56:14
  right, you know, I don't know. We'll see what happens.
• 56:17
  Maybe. Maybe more.
• 56:19
  Dude, this is exciting. I'm excited to see how this
• 56:21
  thing continues to scale. I got a bounce, but this was
• 56:24
  awesome, man. I really, I really appreciate
• 56:26
  the time. All right, this was this was
• 56:28
  awesome. I'll talk to you guys soon.
• 56:29
  All right.