FOUNDER MODE

I’m officially a founder.

On Sunday, I flew down to Austin for the Product Hunt team offsite for the week. On Wednesday, I quit my job, switched hotels, launched Memelord Technologies, went viral, and got 100s of new customers. THIS WAS NOT MY PLAN. But when life gives you pigs, you make BBQ, right?

I’m going to give you a day-by-day play-by-play breakdown of the craziest week of my life. See, I didn’t just quit my job and launch a SaaS. I had sushi with 3 dudes who sold a company for $100M to Elon. I ate ribs with my publishers. I had coffee with ex-Secret-Service who now works with a billionaire VC. It’s been an insane week and I’m gonna give you the whole story.

But before we get into the drama, let me tell you a bit about Memelord Technologies, my SaaS for meme marketing.

Feature #1: Meme Alerts 🚨 (we use AI/humans to surface new viral memes and send you a daily email)

Feature #2: Editor (think Dingboard, BUT with saved projects and assets. PLUS we pre-load the new viral memes daily from Meme Alerts for quick posting.

The price: $6.9/month.

I published Memes Make Millions 1 year ago.

Since then, the meme marketing trend has only increased.

I predict that as Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha are growing from interns to becoming CMOs/founders, we'll see more and more companies embracing meme marketing and humor-based marketing.

There's been a lot of meme editors and a lot of marketing SaaS, but no software suite built for meme marketers—until now.

OK ONTO THE DRAMA.

Monday 9/23/24

All is good. We have an off-day on Monday so I see some friends. An internet famous podcaster. Ex-Secret-Service who now does special projects for a billionaire. Eat BBQ with a friend who runs a massive meme page. Go viral for a post about MKBHD’s stupid wallpaper app. Just a normal day in my life.

Tuesday 9/24/24

Tuesday again is quite normal. Product Hunt team meeting stuff. Write at coffee shop with some friends. Record a quick podcast. Eat and watch a movie with team. All is fine.

Wednesday 9/25/24

On Wednesday morning, I get partnered with the CTO for a “feedback session”. 

This is when all hell breaks loose on my week.

For context, I had been proposing new features for 6+ months but nothing would ever get shipped—cool stuff like a Stripe integration to track your launch-by-launch metrics, a dashboard to track your launch social media metrics, a way to give you a weekly download of upvoters' names to add into your sales funnel, etc. All of my ideas would've helped our community of thousands of founders, but nothing would ever get done. I even learned Figma because our designer wouldn’t work on it. For 6+ months, I told our CEO multiple times I didn’t think the CTO was the right person for the job. There was no vision and even worse execution. He literally said the words to me “I have no product vision” and “we have no deadlines”. Every idea would get “investigated” or “explored” then left for dead while the CTO went rock climbing in Europe (yes, seriously). This is all while 1000s of real hardworking indie hackers and startup founders around the world are relying on Product Hunt to help them make money. It felt like I was the only one who got how important our job was. I was trying my ass off as hard as I could from the media side to help our users: retweeting their launches, jumping on the phone, helping them fix stuff at 2 AM, and even signing up for products. But you can’t do everything from Twitter alone.

So finally during this feedback session, I tell the CTO that I wish we shipped more cool features and the fact we’ve shipped basically nothing in 9 months made me feel hopeless and like we’re fucked as a company and I wish we just did simple quick landing pages for new features like Pieter Levels and he says “who?”. I swear to God. I ask him if he’s joking and he’s not. He asks me “who?” again. I couldn’t believe it. It’s fine if you readers don’t know who that is, but Pieter Levels is literally the most famous person to launch on Product Hunt ever and the guy everyone in our community looks up to. He’s launched 100+ solo SaaS over a decade, makes a few million a year, and is extremely internet-famous (500k+ followers, on Lex Fridman Show, etc.)—yet Product Hunt’s CTO didn’t even know who he was. Levels is a legend in this world and it was like something snapped in me and I realized I was wasting my time. I was done. Within 20 minutes of the conversation, I packed my bags, called an Uber, and was at a new hotel. Then I called the CEO, told him I quit and to “find a CTO who knows who Pieter Levels is”, and then tweeted this 30 seconds later without thinking much about it.

The tweet starts picking up traction. People think I’m joking. Others realize I’m serious because I remove Product Hunt from my bio. People start asking me what my next move is, so I say fuck it I’m gonna officially launch my new software I’ve been working on. I was planning on launching it in 2 weeks while staying at Product Hunt and had a whole cool launch thing planned, but the momentum was hot and momentum is the best drug in the world. The app was ready, all I needed to was harness my inner Pieter Levels and SHIP IT. I drink some cold brew (the 2nd best drug in the world), locked in for 30 minutes to write a launch tweet, and press send.

The Stripe notifications start happening in seconds. My phone won’t stop buzzing.

I can’t look away from phone. 100s of comments rooting me on. Comments from assholes criticizing me. Non-stop Stripe notifications, calls from friends, txts, DMs. Insanity. I put phone down. My friend Jameson comes over to my hotel, we sit by the pool, eat tacos, and talk about memes, startups, and going out on our own (Jameson runs a marketing agency for startups). Those few hours were a much needed respite before back to find. Anytime I check my phone, shit is buzzing. I’m up until 4 AM in the hotel room responding to messages and replies and making sure everyone is onboarded and no problems. And eating flamin hot cheetos. Can’t forget about those.

Thursday 9/26/24

Wake up at 9 and head over to coffee shop to meet up with Jameson again. 50 more signups while I’m sleeping. Phone keeps buzzing, I’m ignoring most friends and family at this point. I’m barely awake. I’m not thinking straight. Drink more cold brew.

Start making tweaks to app. Remember folks I wasn’t going to launch for 2 weeks so there’s still shit that isn’t done. Like I didn’t have the ability to change font styles or colors or bold or italic. It’s an MVP. Oh yeah and since I was expecting like 20 people to be using it max, I didn’t set up a paid API for an email provider so people start getting an error message. I’m freaking out. People need to get a magic link via email to sign on. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to disappoint the people who just paid me. So I get on the phone with a friend who helped me figure this shit out in 10 minutes. We get it fixed. Jameson snaps a picture, I post the tweet.

Shit is going absolutely insane. I have an automation set up so whenever I get a Stripe subscription, my team gets an alert in our Slack. We’re fucking going nuts.

Around 2, Jameson and I jump in an Uber over to Alex Cohen’s office. You’ve definitely seen his dank memes blowing up the internet. Alex has been on Memelord Technologies since day 1 so I show him the newest updates. He cooks up some dank memes. I drink Red Bull. Alex shows me demo for the new health-tech startup he’s building he raised millions for. I tell Alex about the time in college when I got chlamydia. Then I try to fall asleep on the couch. Can’t sleep. Too many notifications.

So like I said Jameson runs a marketing agency. His partner in the business is Chris Bakke, the co-founder of Laskie (acquired by X for $100M+). He’s the guy who drove $3M in SaaS sales from memes. Now he’s helping a bunch of YC companies do the same. Jameson and Chris are hosting a founder/VC sushi dinner and we all head over. Alex is playing Mac Miller in the ride. We get there. 11 people. Backroom. Insane sushi and wagyu and lobster. Tell story of last 24 hours. Hear about insane stories of selling company to Elon and what it’s like working with him. Talk about memes.

Chris’s co-founder/CTO of Laskie, Daniel O’Shea, is sitting across from me and we start chatting super heavy about startups and memes and fitness and somehow he mentions he plays disc golf. And readers you may not know this about me, but during COVID before I moved to NYC, I was in college living in an empty town with a bunch of friends and we all became obsessed with disc golf. Like super obsessed. Something like 1 game/day for like 6 months. I tell Daniel this and he can’t believe it. It’s kinda a rare sport and most people look down upon it compared to regular golf. Well, given we’re both recently unemployed (Daniel sold his startup and I just quit my job 24 hours before), Daniel invites me to play disc golf next day. OH HELL YEAH.

Friday 9/27/24

Wake up at 9. Check Stripe. Signups. Drink cold brew.

Take Uber to meet Daniel to play disc golf. We talk startup ideas for 3 hours. I throw a good game. I don’t take a picture. Living in the moment. Happy. Daniel drops me off at hotel. I add new features to Memelord Technologies. Font styles, bold, italic. Ship it.

Call Uber to spa. Get 1 hour Swedish massage. Back and neck hurt from hunched over laptop til 4 AM. Fuck it we ball.

Call Uber to steakhouse for dinner with publishers Ellen and Sam.

First time meeting IRL. So much fun. Talk about the insane week, discuss sales increase of Memes Make Millions, discuss Memelord Technologies, talk about AI, show them some of the crazy marketing shit I’ve been cooking up, more.

Hop in Uber. Head back to hotel. Add new paste-from-clipboard function for faster meme-making. Ship it. Keep making improvements until 10:30.

Start writing this blog at 10:30 PM. Sleep at 12 AM.

Saturday 9/28/24

Downstairs to coffee shop. Double fist yerba mate and cold brew. Add new section with 100s of classic memes and hack away at the search bar. Figure it out after a bunch of tries. Celebrate. Goodbye Imgflip!

I am literally this meme.

Go to sushi. Eat at sushi bar solo. Bring journal. Turn phone off. Journal about life. Come up with cool new feature ideas. Life good. Come back home, fall asleep absolutely exhausted from the craziest week of my life.

Founder Mode

Staying up til 4 AM grinding and eating flaming hot cheetos. Shipping features while in Ubers. Being so tired you can’t sleep. Not making excuses because you know there’s people depending on you. This is founder mode motherfuckers and I love every second.

Tech Memes of the Week

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Head of Growth @ Product Hunt, Author of Memes Make Millions