Inside the Underground Meme Marketing World: Jason Levin of Memelord
Thrilled to introduce you to Jason Levin, the founder of Memelord, a company helping brands win the war of memes.
Humor can outperform almost every other form of communication.
How startups can compete with billion-dollar brands by being funnier
Quietly building media empires alongside their products.
If you're building a business, selling ideas, or trying to understand how attention actually works on the internet, you'll love Jason.
Links to Platforms:
We discuss:
Memetic warfare in business and politics
Building distribution before you need it
Why funny companies outperform boring ones
The future of AI-generated marketing
Creating media assets around your business
How great founders think like comedians
Quotes from Jason:
“Funny marketing has been around forever.”
“Memes reveal hidden truths.”
“The Midwit Meme changed my behavior immediately.”
“The keyboard is the new battlefield.”
“Who controls the memes controls the universe."
“Nobody’s taking memes seriously enough.”
“If you have an idea that you stand for, somebody needs to do propaganda for it.”
“The more boring the company, the better the memes work.”
“You should be trying to be the most entertaining by any means necessary.”
“If you're not getting hit pieces, you ain't a hit, baby.”
Want to invest in early-stage startups together?
When new technologies meet the market, the world changes for the better. That's why we invest in obsessive geniuses building utopian technologies.
We write small checks to 15-20 very different startups each year. Previous investments include Aalo Atomics, Ouros Energy, Stell Engineering, Airship, Terraform Industries, Longshot, Dirac, Occam (stealth), Atomic Industries. and more.
Our Website has background on the fund, our past deals, and more.
*Startup investing is risky, illiquid, and not for the faint-of-heart. Be warned.
Learn more about Jason Levin:
Additional episodes:
Flywheel Masterclass, Flying Planes, and Building For Creators with Nathan Barry of ConvertKit
The Synthesis of Media and Ecommerce with Kevin Espiritu of Epic Gardening
Episode Transcript:
Eric Jorgenson: I want to start with what is the single most effective meme you've ever seen in your life? What meme did the most good or the most damage?
Jason Levin: I think it's a bell curve meme, the midwit meme, everybody knows where it's an IQ graph. And for me, I think I first saw it in 2021, 2022, and it was the Notion versus Notes app one. And I was like Notion heavy and basically realized, I was like, oh, I am Notionsturbating or whatever the word might be of like it's not real work, like the real work is done in the Notes app. And like that, I got to be honest, that one took me a little bit to digest. And that's like the power of a meme, is like it changes your mind of like, wow, like I really could just be Notes app maxing in a notebook right now. Why do I have mini inline databases for tweets that I'm bookmarking, like some kind of second brain guy. I don't know.
Eric Jorgenson: So that one just like immediately changed your behavior?
Jason Levin: Yeah, that one pretty much immediately changed it, and like that was the beauty of that meme is like I've remixed that now so many times that I think like it's so helpful where I made one that went pretty viral of like on the right side and left side of the IQ, it's just make more money, and in the center, it's like no, I need the perfect budgeting app. It's like I like have never used a budgeting app. And like, if you're an entrepreneur, like it's probably not the best use of your time. You should probably just like figure out how to make more money and not like use a personal budgeting app to save $12 on Starbucks. Just like, I don't know, sell another ad spot in your podcast. I don't know. Maybe that's controversial. But like, I think 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.
Eric Jorgenson: I think there's like a deep human truth in the midwit curve, the midwit meme. It's the one... it's so long-lived, you see it pulled up and reapplied so many times. And I feel like what's so interesting about that Notion story is that it's not like- it's not like the Notes app set out to do a campaign against Notion or anything. 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, like no persuasion necessary.
Jason Levin: That's the power of memetic warfare, what we call, and why so many businesses use us is because memes reveal hidden truths, and they can make people realize different things, the same way good a joke at a comedy show can make you realize something about yourself or about your family or whatever it might be. Like it hits you really hard. I was just going through another one of my bell curve 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 really hard to make up for it. And in the middle, it's talking... let me try to find this one. I don't need to work hard. I'm too smart for hard work. I will get by with no work, just like school. And like, I tweeted that like three years ago, two years ago. And now we have Andreesen talking about this stuff. And it's like, it's just so true. Like, so many of my friends or like people from high school, like they just like got by because they were good at school. And like, that actually is like not, as you know, that's just not like how the real world works. Like you can actually be kind of an idiot sometimes or like not the highest IQ, 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 to just realize like, hey, I don't need to like be a genius. I just need to work hard.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I think it's like the way to read the midwit 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. It's like the secret horseshoe theory of like embrace just the stupid, simple thing that works, and that's actually like the path to the Jedi outcome.
Jason Levin: Yeah, yeah. And that's why we made him our logo. The hooded Wojack 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 memes make millions. Like I was the guy on the left until suddenly, like we actually raised millions, and now like that's what we do. It's like, you just like force of will of nature is like, whatever... you have to get through that midwit Valley the same. It's like the cringe Valley of [?]. Like you have to like get out of it as soon as possible, but like the only way out is through.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So you said a few things that I think are interesting. Like Naval just did a podcast about sales and the title of it was Sell the Truth. And it's like, there is no amount of salesmanship that in the long run will sell a lie. And so, your job is just to like figure out a truth and state it clearly, and that is effective sales and persuasion.
Jason Levin: Am I allowed to share my screen here real quick?
Eric Jorgenson: 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 or what to Google.
Jason Levin: Okay. All right. Just in my Twitter highlight section, I have one that just says, I won't worry about it, but whatever marketing genius switched bots to AI agents, and it's just a dude like stacking up cash. It's like it’s just true. And memes reveal hidden truths. They're just like jokes. And that's why they're so powerful. And that's why people are scared of them. And people on both sides of the aisle are scared of them and why there actually is this thing called memetic warfare that research papers have been written about and proposals and books and billions of dollars spent in both sides and both in enterprise and politics and everything in between, is because like, if you can influence people's ideas and perception, that's actually worth a lot of money. The best way to do that is a quick hidden joke. Going into Elon real quick, Elon, one of his quotes about memes is, memes are the most information-dense form of communication. You think about selling as fast as possible, you want a poster. You do it great with the book. It's no different than World War II posters 50 years ago. It’s no different than surrealist art. It's just image and text and it has all this context here. If you could reveal a truth about the world, about your product, about like the problems of your customer and what they feel every day, you could actually make somebody like wake up and change their behavior.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I think this company is a really interesting one because like all great companies are an outgrowth of a unique person who just goes about being themselves. To your point about school, like 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, we get a lot of like hard tech and deep tech entrepreneurs, we get authors on this podcast, but like you're something else entirely.
Jason Levin: 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. We know what your brand is- we could predict the memes before they're even made. 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 who I am, I'm an internet kid through and through. I started posting YouTube videos when I was 10 years old. I learned Photoshop, sold 50 grand worth of stickers when I was in high school, just cooking up Grateful Dead stickers. At school, I was that kid freelancing for frats and sororities, cooking up merch. And really like it all came down to like... I was a graphic design kid. Like I was literally face swapping myself into like silly images when I was 10 years old, and I still do that now. And after college around that time, 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, ghostwriting for founders. So a lot of founders you see on the timeline, I was the guy writing those tweets. And when ChatGPT came out, I was cooked. I knew I was cooked. And fortunately, like more and more of these founders were also realizing like what stands out, what gets attention, and it's 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 going to pay me to do it? And realized like the world was going towards boring. And if you want to stand out, you have to be funny and unhinged. And it's the things that AI can't do. ChatGPT still can't be unhinged. Claude still can't be. But you can be as a human. And so, that's really where it went. I was doing all this marketing for startups. I was head of growth at Product Hunt. I worked with GM.dev. I did a lot of work there. And basically, I just drank a lot of Red Bull and built memelord with no code. And then after that, raised a few million to grow it. 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.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I was signed up for this back when it was like you were just like texting- It was text alerts for like, hey, there's a new trending meme.
Jason Levin: Do you know how expensive texting MMS is? Ridiculously expensive. Yeah, so happy now we've got iOS notifications, which are near free. It's pretty amazing.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that Twilio bill adds up.
Jason Levin: Oh, that Twilio bill was getting bad. I had my rep on speed dial. It was 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. It's Elon, it's Andreessen, it's whoever it might be. 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. I worked with Andrew Cuomo. I got invited to Gracie Mansion to meet Eric Adams. Like, different politicians have hit me up since then. And like different parts of government stuff are... we talk side by side, advocacy groups, all that stuff. And it's like, if you have an idea that you stand for, 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. 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 a lot of what we do for businesses.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, Isabelle Boemeke, I think is how you pronounce her last name, Isodope, 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, 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 you've got to feed the algorithm something that it's going to want to spread. And so, if people are interacting with it and enjoying it, like that's what's going to spread. That's how you earn the right to reach more people. It's like make the education or make the nugget entertaining.
Jason Levin: 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 too, buddy, like Mr. B2B 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. I wrote the book on memes and studied the history of advertising and capitalism. And yeah, let's go...
Eric Jorgenson: ...This is high up there of like books I wish I published that somebody else actually published.
Jason Levin: Well, the next one we should discuss because- we should definitely discuss that but off air. Yeah, yeah... funny marketing has been around forever. It's probably the oldest form of marketing besides sex. And like 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 unhinged or racist. Like, no, like we work with the most boring B2B billion dollar companies and find things that are funny, that there's no racism, there's no unhingedness, there's no sexism. 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. Like, it doesn't have to be unhinged. Like, there's a lot of funny things that aren't unhinged.
Eric Jorgenson: I know some of this is probably sensitive, but are there people that you can talk about having worked with?
Jason Levin: We can't talk about a lot. By request, we're happy to, but I'll say a lot of like B2B SaaS unicorns, stuff like that. And then we have a lot of brands on our site too. But like, yeah... our bread and butter is actually the B2B, and the boring-er 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, nobody's reading your white paper except for 12 dudes in a shack. You want attention? There's so much arbitrage to make it funny. And that's why I'm very excited about the boring-er the better, man. Give me a data center company. Give me a... I don't know. I was listening to a podcast with the Koch brothers. Give me a chemical plant or an agriculture tech company, and let me try to make that funny. Because it's really easy to make, I don't know, like some consumer like brand funny. That's just easy... Yeah, it's just easy. 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.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, and I think, to your point, 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 so many people who sort of like dumb down their brand and make it so plain and vanilla because trust is what matters, but also like you build that bond with people 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... counter position to the entire rest of the industry when you start to like make fun of the boring people.
Jason Levin: 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 none of those are good businesses. We don't touch any of that. Like they're just not fundamentally good businesses. Like at the end of the day, like I'm a businessperson 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 at the end of the day. Like I'm going to go off on this, but 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.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. And one of the least explored of those spaces. SEO is slowly dying or quickly dying, depending on your category and how often your customers use LLMs. Some of the stuff gets saturated so quickly. The ad platforms are just going to crank up ads until they make most of the marginal dollars. But funny is interesting because it's so uniquely human. It's so timeless. And it's hard. It's like, I think it's John Cleese 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.
Jason Levin: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. We like wanted to do like data classification and we've like tried it with like, why is this meme funny and like getting really autistic about it. And it's just like this is a waste of time, somewhat. Like, yeah, we're going to like try to do it. But I think it's just like surprise and shock value. A lot of the time, it's hidden truths. 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. 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 model is the funniest? And it's not hard. You just AB test stuff. And we've been doing that internally for a while and building up that data. But like it's... I don't know. I think it's one of those things that's unpredictable, man. I don't know, it's a deep philosophy, I guess.
Eric Jorgenson: How do you handle that? I mean, like your business is interesting because it's part software... I'm subscribed... I'm an investor, but I also just like subscribe as a user. So, I use it to make memes 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?
Jason Levin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have our software that anybody could subscribe to. And that also has an API where you could get access to AI meme gen. And we also now are 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 where anybody can, any business can sign up for an affordable rate. So that'll 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 agentic meme marketing or agentic 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. And the only way to do that at a certain level is scale, or is AI and like to scale that. And that's the power of memes is it sticks out. And so, it's not just one dude yapping. It's humorous, unhinged. It catches the eye. It scroll stops you. And so, like where memelord is going is we are this agentic platform. We are dropping agents all summer long. I'm very excited about it. And there's going to 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, just another, we'll get some more Elon quotes here of like, who controls the memes controls the universe. And then Richard Dawkins, like memes are the smallest unit of cultural transmission. If you want to like break down your business's idea into the simplest unit, like memes are the way to do that, hidden truth. We have like home security businesses using us. We have, like I said, defense companies or public companies and B2B SaaS, everything, authors, record labels, Post Malone's 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. It's just strange. 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 of just like nobody's taking memes seriously enough still, and like I've been preaching this for a while. The world's catching up. It's going to be fun. It's going to be really fun.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. We've been following each other for a very long time, which is how you, I think, hit me up to invest. But you're very reliably at the frontier of the internet, figuring out what's coming, what's just starting to work, which is always a really interesting thing because it's hard to know what to believe, what is going to be- what is going to catch on, like what's just like a flare and what's this new kind of big thing that's going to 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 said there's people running like five accounts or a hundred accounts, like they're owning their own- they're building their own audience on meme pages that are dedicated to what their industry or new specific memes... Talk to me about that.
Jason Levin: Yeah, yeah. So like, for example, say you're an HR unicorn and nobody wants to follow your main page because you're in 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. And then you're plugging the link underneath. This is all hypothetical, of course. And you're driving demos and inbound sales, but you actually own the 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. And as we know, being online, we're in this weird circle where all these launch videos are going viral because people are paying people. Well, what if you own that distribution? And we're seeing this again and again. And so like, OpenAI buying TBPN, 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? Like Record Label bought the Daquan meme page and that asset for 85 million dollars because it helped them reach artists cheaper than buying Pitchfork or Rolling Stone. It gets the same audience and bigger for cheaper. So that's like 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 if you look at Twitter, LinkedIn lunatics, that's us. ChatGPT lunatics, that's us. Techbro memes, that's us. On Instagram, we own Riches, the Instagram handle Riches, R-I-C-H-E-S. We own Lunchroom, which is our fake news page. Both of those are fake news pages that we plug memelord in. So like, 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- or every artist fan page is run by the record label, especially in the beginning, they all astroturf 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 as SpaceX goes public and these other companies start actually 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.
Eric Jorgenson: Meaning the meme itself is like a humanoid robot?
Jason Levin: Just like meme pages about robots and clankers. Because like, they're about to finally commercialize. And so, like right now, we have a bunch of pages around CPG or about software. But like, we're about to find- Like, hard tech is about to go from spending hundreds of millions to billions on CapEx to finally spending on marketing. And personally, I want to be like in the best position possible in the world to like take that capital and put it in my pocket and grow their brand and my company at the same time. Like, I think we're going to see a massive spend in robot and hardware marketing over the next five, ten years that like has never been done before.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I think the early adopters and in particular hard tech right now is also super prime for humor as a distribution channel. I feel like the companies that are succeeding are building, they're like doing incredible like humor driven aura farming all over. This is super interesting, though, because I feel like a lot of people- this is this 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.
Jason Levin: Oh, absolutely, man. And the people on Twitter where you see paid partnership, that's the obvious ones. Like the unobvious ones is like the dudes like me who have 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. Or like anonymous accounts that are actually yours. So like one of our investors has like a very popular anonymous account, like multiple of our investors. Like, that's like the calculated moves that like the big boys are playing. Like all the YC guys, like sorry guys, but like they're all just fucking shilling to the same agency spending like 50 grand for a launch video to retweet it, and it's all the same agency. I know because they pitch 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 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.
Eric Jorgenson: And it takes more than one big day.
Jason Levin: No. Oh my God, dude, it's crazy. Everybody's spending on their launch video what I spend in like three months. Like it's crazy. Like 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 like, it's really sad, like me and my team were talking about, oh, we should start like a page of people who had beautiful launch videos and then went bankrupt in under two years. Like it would just be like so many.
Eric Jorgenson: Highly correlated.
Jason Levin: Highly correlated. It is, I hate to say it, 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 a lack of a product. And like, I think that bubble is going to pop very, very quickly. Or hopefully, hopefully soon.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that is super interesting. And I mean, I'm thinking about this as like an artist or an author too. You're like, oh, if I'm comparing three record labels or three publishers or whatever... every author's biggest fear is like- there's two big fears. 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 squirrelly, difficult problem that money can't necessarily solve and grit can't necessarily solve. And so going to 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 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 master is all over the place.
Jason Levin: A hundred percent, man. It's nothing new. I mean, like I learned from the goats before me of like the Ryan Holidays of the world. Like, people know him for stoicism, but like that's not Ryan Holiday. Like Ryan Holiday was the dirtiest marketer alive. And we saw that this week with his little blow up a couple of weeks ago, but like you know Ryan's background, he was a PR hacker for American Apparel and like the dirtiest marketer, calling fake- starting fake billboards, prank calling journalists. Like, this is nothing new. And it's also like hundreds of years old, like the father of PR, Eddie Bernays, like in the forties, fifties or sixties was like starting these fake protests and stuff like that, which coincidentally I will, hey, let's go. Let's go.
Eric Jorgenson: Edward Bernays underrated. Good call out.
Jason Levin: One of the Gs, man. I'll be taking a play out of his book this summer. Did you know it's only like 10 grand to host a protest? 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 people like, I don't know, you could spend that on a mid tier influencer in LA who doesn't respond. And 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, is just like be the scrappiest marketer alive. And like I would 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. So, we put up stickers that says, hey, is your dog peeing? Sign up here to get memes. 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. And we saw signups come from that for like $20 of stickers. And then I did like these like viral stunts in New York doing that. And it's like, I don't know. I really- the amount of like time that you put in thinking about your hardware and building your robots, like think about the marketing as technical and like sneaky and clever and exciting too, because like somebody else is thinking way harder about it or pay somebody to outsource your thinking. But I don't know. There's just 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. don't know. I hate seeing people just waste money. Maybe it's the Jewishness.
Eric Jorgenson: What's that old saying? Like first time founders focus on the product, second time founders focus on distribution.
Jason Levin: Yeah, I mean, I think it's super important. It's probably true for authors too. Like there's probably a lot of authors, and I don't know if this is true with your story, like has this changed at all, like marketing the Almanac of Naval versus Balaji versus Elon now?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I mean, Elon... I've definitely shifted more, like I've got less time and more money. So I've got like- and I run more experiments. And like, I just 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... get the kindling to go so that the word of mouth carries on. And so, actually, I mean, memelord comes in for me where once I resolved- I was like, okay, all the greats- You can't launch once. 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 a pleasant experience. And so, I started using memelord 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 say very clearly like this celebrity is... this image is fabricated. Don't let it influence your opinion of the product. Like, there's just so much, there's so much more you can do when you're, as you point out, just like a little creative.
Jason Levin: 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. I had this tweet go 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'm a big sushi bar kind of guy, just solo. Like, stop inviting me to dinners. Like, I don't want to go to Dorsia, dude. Like, I'm done. Like, I could afford a dinner. And like, they're all just copying each other. It's like this memetic mind virus started by like this founder dinner series in New York that's put on by a bank. And now every fricking, every company hosts 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 reels on April fools. And that was three grand, probably what you'd spend at Dorsia, but like it went viral and people loved it. During Halloween 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. I hosted Startups VC and ping pong where just 200 people in New York came through and played ping pong. Like, it's just like... It just drives me nuts. Like, I feel really bad. Like, I literally... I've had to tell people like, stop inviting me to dinner. Just like cut it out. I don't know. Maybe I will regret this when I'm eating alone in my mansion one day. But like, at least I'll be like having some peace and quiet. 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 hate it. Like, 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.
Eric Jorgenson: Dude, I was expecting you to rant way before 40 minutes. So I feel like you held it together for a long time. That's good.
Jason Levin: Yeah, I held that one in, but I could rant some more. So just on the topic of SF, I think both of us, we have chosen not to live in the mind virus bubble. And I think it helps a lot. I don't know about you, but not living in the hive mind, it helps living outside of that. And I think that is why everybody is copy pasting 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. Like, you're just doing your own thing. Like, in SF, who knows, maybe you're starting like an AI writing startup, which is like totally against your philosophy, like same as me, where you want to have fun writing or whatever. Or maybe... it's just like, get out of the mind virus. Like, stop hosting dinners. I'm back to that. It's just like, I don't know, I have this like... I just have this thesis, like this isn't me, but like this is another Elon quote of like the most entertaining outcome is the most likely. If you really take that into like belief, if you want your business to be the most likely, then it should be the most entertaining. 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. Post Malone get the tattoos on your face. 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. And so that could mean being super unhinged. It could 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... Being entertaining in some aspect and embracing that makes you more likely to succeed. And that's like just my thesis for how I see the world is like people want to be entertained, like entertain them, give the people what they fucking want.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I think Mr. Beast is maybe the best example of this, and 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 like 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 two, he's also going to be an unbelievable entrepreneur. And we're going to go from Warren Buffett to Elon Musk to Mr. Beast in terms of the generational striations of their generation's iconic entrepreneur. And Mr. Beast takes this to heart deeply. 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.
Jason Levin: A hundred percent. And like, again, Jake Paul as well. The other day I was like watching 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 Anduril 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. And like, you got to respect that. And like, I don't know, I wrote this in my book, was like this is not like new, like comedians getting rich. Like Seinfeld's a billionaire. Larry David's a billionaire. Like, Kevin Hart's very, very wealthy. Like plenty of these guys are rich. We just like now live in the best time to monetize your 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, it's nothing new. It's just like, again, it's just a lever to get on your real product, your real attention, your real ideas. And I think like in VC and founders, like we're all in the business of ideas here. And like, if you want your idea to win, again, it should be the most entertaining version of that at least.
Eric Jorgenson: Can we go back to this protest? You're throwing a protest in France for 10 grand. I feel like we kind of glossed over that and I need to know everything.
Jason Levin: Yeah, so we're going to be in Nice and Cannes for my team retreat and then the marketing festival, trying to wheel and deal, get some clients.
Eric Jorgenson: Is that Cannes Lion, or is that a different thing?
Jason Levin: Yeah, it's like the Cannes Lion, but the marketing side, not like the cool movie stuff. We are too cancelable for that. And there's companies, I'll 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. And like, I mean, you look at Columbia in 2024, that was all actors. They're all paid actors. It's all whoever. Like whatever side you're on, it's both sides. Most protests are astroturfed. And then, similar to a business, then people start talking and coming. But most of it is astroturfed. And I was like, oh, I've been wanting to do this forever, like host a protest. Last summer, I did a viral boycott of the energy drink Celsius to change their name to Fahrenheit, but I didn't get a chance to really do a protest. And 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. We'll see what happens, but it's going to be fun, man. 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 try shit. I'm going to film it. I'm going to post it, leverage. Like the Naval idea, all that stuff, leverage is like now I actually have all these meme pages I can just post this on. I was scared to do this stuff before because I didn't have the leverage or distribution. Now I have this, it's like, why don't I just drop a few 100 bucks on a video or drop $1,000 trying this. It's like, wow, I could really try some stuff. I think that's super exciting and there's a lot more exciting things than dinner. So back to dinner.
Eric Jorgenson: When your experiments are cheap and the upside is really high, you can run a lot of them and they start to pay for themselves and you keep on with it.
Jason Levin: So wait, back to books real quick. I'm curious, like you've a hundred percent found like word of mouth? Cause that's the same with software, a hundred percent. Like the best is just, there's something about it, word of mouth, man. Just trust.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, it is the- I mean, if you just think about your own behavior as a person, like how often do you click through an ad 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 a one impression sort of conversion is super rare. And if I think about books, it's not the 20 bucks, it's the five hours or ten hours to read the book. And so I have to hear about a book three or four times before I'm like, okay, yes, I should read it. I trust the sources. I'll put it on my wishlist or I'll buy it. And then it sits on my nightstand for another couple more nights before I'm like, all right, 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 can't spend five bucks on an ad to make $3. Shit doesn't work.
Jason Levin: No, it just doesn't work unless you're selling a course on the backend or something.
Eric Jorgenson: Which a lot of people are selling courses or consulting or services or whatever. Nothing wrong with that... But yeah, 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. 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 their newsletter? Do they share it on social? Do they gift it to their family or whatever?
Jason Levin: Yeah, is it shareable? Is it memetic? Is it self-recommending? And I think the things a lot of these, the hard tech, a lot of these serious companies do miss sometimes is the importance of narrative, of alliteration, of metaphor. Like my book, Memes Make Millions, MMM, this is like... I still use it all the time. That alliteration, the metaphors of memelord, and like you'll see the jester. Now we have our AI model called jester. It all goes back to that same, that kingdom empire stuff. Keyboard is the new battlefield, the camo, like build worlds. I don't know if you know Nathan Ball. I think you guys are both awesome. He's an investor too, longtime friend. And like, he wrote a newsletter about world building that was super influential on me. And just like, 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 Palantirs, the Andurils, the Rainmakers, I think, is a great example, they have these heroes, like a hero's journey, literally. The founder, 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, not just the logos, but literal symbols and characters. 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 hire an ad agency later. But like, even if you're the most autistic engineer, hard tech guy alive, like take that time to like build your world of creativity, and like stick with it. Because like, it pays off. Like, there's no world where I could have outsourced memelord to somebody else. Like, it just wouldn't work. And a lot of these guys are big sci-fi nerds. You think about Elon and all these people, like build that world that you want to see. I think that that would be my personal advice around that.
Eric Jorgenson: You went 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 that 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 practitioner to like, oh shit, this is like a movement and a company. And like that was you like planting your flag in this idea and like taking it to a different level. I'm curious like how that process was? Cause we talked a bunch kind of like through those six, nine months or whatever.
Jason Levin: It's been the biggest self-improvement exercise. I think startups are a self-improvement exercise hidden in a quest to make $10 billion. I've gotten in the best shape of my life. I'm trying to focus on my sleep, mentally, improving as a leader, delegation, all these things. You either step up or you step out. And I'm not losing this opportunity, like this is my shot. I'm not a Stanford kid. I'm not like an engineer. Like this is my shot, so like I'm stepping the fuck up, and that's how it's been since day one. And like for me it was very organic. Like I said, like I started memelord as actually just a newsletter of memes, and then I built no code software, and then I built- 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 a hundred K on Thursday. I was like, dope. But like, really it was just like naturally just like doubling down again and again on what I do. And like, that period was crazy, just kept doubling down. And like, eventually you double down so much, like exponentials and you're stacking potato chips, eventually those potato chips hit the moon. And like, what looks like doubling up pennies for three, four years, the pennies get tall. And then you have a lot more pressure on you. Like I feed like eight families 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 just like how seriously we take it and finding the right people. I have to fire people a lot. I have to have these hard conversations. A 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. And like, I want to run a business on truth and like these hard conversations. So, I think like it's been a really- a lot of sacrifice, a lot of not sleeping, a lot of self-improvement and 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 don't know if I shared this in an investor update or a tweet, but like my life's very strange where I'll go from like shaking hands with Alex Karp and like meeting Post Malone's team to like the next day I'm just recording SOPs and like Looms. It's the same with you where one day you're meeting famous people, and the next day you're just recording in a Notion doc. It's all amazing to me. Some days are highs. But it's all a gift. 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 hiring my friends. I'm not making these mistakes that like maybe me at 20 or me straight out of Yale or Harvard would have done. And you see this a lot right now. You see a lot of founders who like they just immediately raise for some idea, and just like, they just blow it. And like, I don't know, if I'm going to blow it, it's going to 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 anyway, 10 grand. So anyways, I guess I was getting kind of deep here, but like I think like one thing that you don't talk about in your book is like, what happens when you fucking get the leverage, bro? Cause like, I got it, and I feel like a dog chasing a car. 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 to waste. But like, it's really hard. I don't know 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.
Eric Jorgenson: 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, it is a very interesting like, oh, this is 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. You're just like constantly kind of climbing stairs and [?] things.
Jason Levin: Yeah... I grew up a video editor. Like I said, I was posting YouTube videos and like I went to video editing camp. Like, that was my dream, was like doing that. And like, probably not the best use of time for me to edit my Instagram videos anymore, and like even though I love it. Like I actually do enjoy the process. It's like, here's a hundred bucks kid, go make a video. And like a lot of things like that, 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. 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 could vibe code stuff, and it's like kind of addicting. 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 could 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.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, actually, I think I'm due to do this, so it's kind of been 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 ten dollars, and then it's every hundred dollars. And your job as a leader of an organization is to set the standard. So yes, you delegate the editing of a video, but you hold the bar for where it should be. You hold the bar for where the product should be. You communicate that to your team and reinforce that, but you should have some leverage in terms of 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 as you become a better delegator and you have a better team and you have these stacks of leverage and the culture becomes more clear, you get more and more leverage out of the time that you spend on any given thing. So it is a very- if you do that every quarter or maybe every month, I don't know how fast things are changing for you, you'll kind of see the levers build, and it sometimes reveals like, oh, I'm falling behind in this one over here, or this is my most obvious next step or just gives you a sense of how far you've come and you can be like, shit, okay, I can take the next step because I just reminded myself that I took the 10 previous steps and they were all okay.
Jason Levin: Yeah, dude, it's funny, I like just had a flashback to I was looking through my old notebooks a few months ago and seeing my like money goals. And it was actually like around when I'm reading Almanac, like 2021, it was like make like five grand a month. Which was like, I wasn't doing that then. And like, wow, it's weird. And the leverage thing, 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 Naval talks about this a lot, just like the protection of time is like the freedom around it. Like I didn't get rich to be on somebody else's schedule. 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 the leverage every day to think about that is, it's intimidating at times. I was very like against the idea of executive coaching. And then, I actually got recommended one from our VC fund and he's been great. And just this kind of like push that like, okay, you know what, your time is super valuable. Just start hiring. You're in the exponential business. Hire. You don't need to do everything yourself, man. You're not 18 anymore. You're not this scrappy kid anymore. I think that's been the biggest personal transformation that I'm sure a lot of founders go through that it's very weird. It's very strange 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, just to talk my own book for a second. They're fast to make. They're cheap. They're inherently viral. They make people laugh. They can be spreading. Whatever it might be, that's the power of it and why we built this business.
Eric Jorgenson: I think you're a- this is such a cool business because- and it's been really fun to like watch you market it, for what it's worth. Like... I know you can't talk about a ton of case studies and stuff, but you can, anybody can watch how you market memelord and how you talk about it and the things that you go through, because this is a, yeah, this is a business that takes courage... and 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 middle fingers up to like do this right.
Jason Levin: Yeah, dude, 100%. Like, 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 faint 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 to tell their story on the internet, too, like the goods and the bads. Share those wins building the software because it gets people invested, really. Like, I've showed how I was building the shitty version of the software. If 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 it doesn't need to be perfect. Share that process, and obviously keep some sauce to yourself. Keep the case studies. If you're building rockets, maybe you don't spread the secret formula. But share those wins. That's what motivates people and gets people invested in your company. The most beautiful thing to me, this is a demonic thing 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 hates me and like will flame on me on Twitter. But like, he's still using my software every day because like it's that good. Like I think, I don't know, man, like product distribution, everything between, you need both, but I'm going on another rant, but here we go.
Eric Jorgenson: That is hilarious. Yeah, you got a ton of hit pieces for a while. And I liked that you just took pride in them.
Jason Levin: Dude, if you're not getting hit pieces, you ain't a hit baby. No, for real, for real. I always dreamed of being at Rolling Stone, man. Like I thought I was going to be a Rolling Stone writer, 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 write their own newsletters and beehives and Substacks. 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... how can you take these people seriously is like my belief around this. And like, again, like Augusto... Yeah, Augustus, sorry, Rainmaker, like I saw him last summer and like he's getting all these hit pieces too. And it's like... I mean, what? It's the man in the arena. It's the jokesters. You can't...
Eric Jorgenson: He's getting hit pieces from people with single-digit IQs. It's just insane conspiracy theory shit.
Jason Levin: He can't control the weather and the juice. That would be my response to those people. Immediately, that's where I would go. It's like, pick one, bro. You can't have this kid doing it and the juice. If you're going to be a conspiracy theorist, pick one conspiracy theory.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, no, that's not how they work.
Jason Levin: Dude, a lot of these hardware defense companies, whatever it might be, man, like you're going to get hit pieces and like just know, I say this from like the pit of my heart, 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 sign up for our software every day. Like... If anything, they helped us raise money.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I remember you were in the middle of the fundraise when that happened. And there's a bunch of... I mean, your lineup of investors is unbelievable. For people that have not looked, like Cyan Banister is one of the all-time greats. Balaji was early in. I don't know. You can... 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 memetic infrastructure which is like what controls the software in people's heads.
Jason Levin: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. The way that I always put it is like you see these memes everywhere, like on Instagram, on Twitter, like they're all made on somebody's software. Like a lot are made on ours now. And like, that's the goal. And like, I don't know, man, if you have an idea in the world, like just you should 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.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Pull that meme lever... All right. Oh shit. I forgot to ask you my standard, my most important question. Do you have like five more minutes?
Jason Levin: Dude, I'm chilling. I'm good for another 10, 20 minutes.
Eric Jorgenson: Great. My normal opening question and maybe now it's my closing question is who are your heroes?
Jason Levin: Oh, heroes, I’d say like I'm like a very weird mix of like Mac Miller and Peter Thiel. 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 Theil is just like always early on stuff and based as fuck and stands out for these things and is always early. And like, I think I'm this weird mix of just like 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 of mine, Childish Gambino, like started with comedy and then he pivoted that into TV, into movies, into businesses around that. Most of my years are outside of tech for the most part, writers, Kurt Vonnegut was a big one of mine growing up, the beatniks, Kerouac, stuff like that actually was was more of my background. Yeah, and I think like, yeah, I think you could have a lot of heroes.
Eric Jorgenson: For sure, probably should. Like small slices of many people I think is kind of where the most interesting cats end up. And you dropped a bunch of like comedy legends and advertising and like persuasion legends. Like Bernays is... I'm sure Bernays was a huge influence on you. I think he's...
Jason Levin: Yeah, yeah. Dude, absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm reading this book right now, which you’d 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 Nazi women, like blonde women having sex with the opposite sides to try to encourage these soldiers to go home to their wives and give up. Like what? He was running these fake radio stations, him and people speaking in German, and doing 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 I think that's the goal with memelord, for sure.
Eric Jorgenson: Amazing. Where would you send people to follow you, learn more, observe this incredible spectacle in action, subscribe for the topless protest updates?
Jason Levin: Yeah, yeah, subscribe for that. I would check out memelord.com, M-E-M-E-L-O-R-D.com and follow me. I am 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.
Eric Jorgenson: Just like a framed wall of death threats at the memelord office.
Jason Levin: Yeah, I got to do that. First dollar I ever made right there, and then first death threat and first hit piece, I think, is a very good wall to have. That's the goal.
Eric Jorgenson: 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 Ogilvy.
Jason Levin: I appreciate it, man. I appreciate it.
Eric Jorgenson: That's what's going to define this generation's advertising and attention and communication, like all the greats of the previous generation like wrote direct response letters or made TV commercials. And I think the great advertising and communicators of this generation are going to be on social, and you're one of the most like unique and powerful voices in this and I'm excited to see what happens and I'm grateful for the tools that you make because I use them all the time.
Jason Levin: Hell yeah, brother. Hell yeah. The world is run by meme lords and it's just the beginning, man. So thank you so much for having me. Sick.