Sup nerds,

I have a very punchable face.

I know this. My wife tells me this. I can’t change it. I think it’s my constant smirk. I’m just always thinking of funny thoughts so people think I’m laughing at them. I’m usually not. But when I’m on the subway or walking in NYC or whatever, people generally want to punch me in the face. I’ve accepted my fate. I don’t get mad at this.

Wanna know what makes me want to punch others in the face though?

Chargebacks. I don’t get mad at strangers in NYC. I get mad at strangers on the internet taking my money! If you’re a SaaS or e-commerce founder who likes making more money and hates chargebacks, read about Chargeflow ↓

How to piss people off:

This week, my buddy Kevin launched a map for jerking off.

It’s called Goonmaps and you log your masturbation sessions and locations (gooning is internet slang for masturbation). I proudly “logged” one at the Statue of Liberty!!!

Why am I telling you this?

Because Kevin is a college CS student who landed 2 engineering interviews from building a map for jerking off and launching it on Twitter. Sure he offended some prudes in the process. But by being truly himself, he found his people.

It’s the same reason I’ve started every newsletter for 170+ weeks straight with “Sup nerds”. When you exclude the wrong people, you focus 10x on the right people.

If you’re not proud to be a nerd, I don’t want you reading my shit. Sorry, not sorry!

My #1 advice to founder friends: You should probably piss more people off.

My goal is for all my work to be like a strong magnet: repel the wrong people extremely hard, but attract the right people equally as hard. It’s scary at first to exclude people because it means you exclude potential customers, but you’ve gotta remember the internet is really fucking big. Abundance mindset baby!! There’s enough people like you out there. And when you be truly you, you find people like you.

When you try to be a brand for everyone, you end up being a brand where no one is obsessed with you. Think Target. Kohls. BJs. Whatever. Does anyone really give a fuck about Target? Is anyone talking about Kohls or TJ Maxx? No.

Alright, alright, but what does this look like in practice?

How do you purposely exclude people?

Let’s look at some famous brands that are killer at excluding people and then I’ll show you how I do it with all my work.

Hustle Fund

Hustle Fund is a $46M+ VC fund.

I talked with GP Eric Bahn on my podcast all about Hustle Fund’s content strategy. It’s literally all about excluding the wrong people and including the right people.

1. “Hustler”. The word “hustler” has a negative connotation to most people. But to people like me, it’s a compliment! I’m proud to be an internet hustler. I’ve been hustling on the internet since I was a kid. Their fund wants to attract hustlers who will make them billions so why pretend you’re looking for anything else???? They don’t shy away from “hustle” they lean into it (same reason I say cringe is the new cool and you need to embrace the cringe)

2. Brand Voice. Hustle Fund purposely chose a savage Gen-Z very online voice because that’s who they believe is building the future. Smart decision.

3. Nerds. Similar to me, Hustle Fund embraces their nerdiness. They’re proud to be internet nerds and hustlers so much so that they call themselves nerds on their about us section. Why me and Eric get along I guess.

Equinox

Equinox a luxury gym that appeals to luxury customers.

Equinox is expensive as shit and they know it ($300/mo in NYC). You have to work your ass off to just be able to afford to work out at Equinox. So they don’t give a shit if they’re excluding non-luxury customers. Those are anti-target market.

1. Provocative ads. Naked men covered in money. Half-naked women breastfeeding. Sexy girls eating pomegranates. Sex appeal out the wazzzzooooo. Equinox is one of the few brands still nailing sexvertising. You work hard, you look good, you go to Equinox, boom.

2. Class experience (CX). My wife goes to Equinox every morning. During classes, the instructors literally shout shit like “DON’T BE AVERAGE” and “THERE’S A REASON YOU’RE HERE AT 6 AM. YOU’RE BETTER THAN EVERYONE”. Equinox appeals to your ego and makes you feel superior. It’s luxury 101 and it’s a straight-up cult—and I mean this as a compliment because every good marketer knows that the best brands are cults.

Speaking of cults let’s discuss the Memelord Mafia.

Memelord Technologies

I built a software exclusively for meme marketing.

Key word: exclusive.

if you don’t like meme marketing, it’s not the software for you. Go use some boring marketing software instead. I don’t give a shit man. There’s enough goofball marketers like me out there who use my software to keep my lights on! I don’t need everyone, I’m not VC-backed, I just need my meme marketers!

So how did I exclude my anti-target-market?

1. Profanity. To get more users, I built a free meme png maker. Because the tool takes the background off memes, I thought it’d be funny if it had John Cena with his clothes off. If you think this is profane or unprofessional, you’re right! That’s the point! If that makes you laugh, you sign up. If you’re offended, you leave the page (which is good because the meme templates only get more profane and after you sign up this is a meme app not a lame payroll SaaS 😂).

2. Pricing. Again, I purposely did memey pricing so it would push out anyone without a sense of humor. $6.9/month and $69/year. Oh yeah and above the annual plan, it says “Fuck it, we ball”. People love it, they tweet about it all the time. How often do you see software that says “Fuck it, we ball”?

3. Windows 95 Retro Design. My designer friends told me to try to make it look modern to show it’s the “marketing of the future”. While I love them and think they’re brilliant, I told them in a polite way to fuck off. I loved my retro Windows 95 design and it’s unique, stands out, and it’s nostalgic as fuck. I get messages like this everyday. You don’t get messages like that with a template.

Memes-as-a-Service

When I launched my Memes-as-a-Service offer, I made a few controversial decisons:

1. Pricing. Charge $420.69/month for 1 meme/day or $699/month for 3 memes/day because it’s hilarious. If you don’t find it funny, then you’re not going to like our memes and you’re not going to be a good customer. There’s enough people who know it’s a good price!

2. No calls, just memes. Because I was going for quantity here, I knew I wouldn’t have time for calls. So I said specifically in my launch post. “No calls, just memes.” I knew this was risky, but we’ve onboarded 40+ brands and me and my team have avoided dozens of hours on the phone. I’ve had a few people try to demand calls. I say no. They either sign up or they don’t. Fine by me. By doing this, I focus on the right people like one badass founder who signed up and paid $420.69 while he was out hunting coyotes instead of people who want to waste my time and move slow. If you’re a badass founder, sign up here for 3 memes/day or 1 meme/day and you’ll get an automated Loom in 10 min. Remember: No calls, just memes 😉 

3. No edits. The biggest problem with running an agency is when you deliver work and a client demands an edit and it’s back-and-forth all day. You waste so much time and it’s a pain-in-the-ass. So I said, look my team will not be doing edits, but since I built the meme software, you can actually just go in there and edit the memes yourself. We deliver the memes to your dashboard in an editable format kinda like a Photoshop PSD so you can switch around words if need be.

Elon Email

Elon Email hit 700+ signups in 4 days (and is now well over 1,000).

I purposely excluded people in every single way:

1. Associating with Elon. I know a lot of people hate Elon, but I don't care. IDGAF! Losers call me cringe. IDGAF. They're not my customers. The greatest entrepreneurs in the world respect Elon Musk. That’s the only people I give a fuck about. The internet is so big there's enough people who love Elon and his work ethic who will love what I built. 1k+ people signed up in less than a week. The people who don't respect Elon's work ethic are not my customers so I'm fine excluding them! Go use an AI girlfriend idc.

2. Design. Like Memelord Technologies, I made my design super opinionated and a real designer’s worst nightmare. I designed the website in super simple html format like the famous Elon email with basic white, red, and blue design and fonts. The people who have seen the famous email call it "genius" and "hilarious", but the people who don't call it "stupid" and "basic". I don't care about the later group. They're not going to sign up or buy my software.

3. Prompt Engineering. I prompted the AI Elon to be savage and ruthless instead of the typical lame nice friendly impotent ChatGPT AI. I call people "losers" who want a nice, friendly AI. I tell them to go jerk off to their AI girlfriend. I'm focusing on entrepreneurs and hustlers like me who want to be pushed harder. I believe prompt design and prompt engineering is increasingly becoming a more important part of product design (why I invested in PromptLayer).

Making Elon Email grindsetty actually led to a super heartwarming interaction on LinkedIn. A woman called me toxic, I explained “this app is not for you, I built an app for my fellow grindset bros”, she said ok have fun and meant it! If you explain it nicely, people generally get the product isn’t for them. Don’t be afraid to say that.

A ton of people said “why don’t you do a nice AI?” or “why don’t you do a different famous person?”. Uh well that would be a different fucking product then lol.

Focus on your people.

Don’t betray yourself. Don’t betray your product. Don’t betray your vision. There’s enough people out there on the internet who will get it. Your friends and family might not. But you’ll find your people as long as you stay loyal to your creative vision.

Memes of the Week

ME AND THE MEMELORD MAFIA BE BLOWIN UP! Thank you Memelord Technologies.

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Founder of Memelord Technologies, Author of Memes Make Millions