Meme marketing examples

Polymarket, Duolingo, beehiiv, Coinbase, and more

Jason Levin
November 17, 2024

Sup nerds,

I love giving away free shit.

This week, I launched a free gallery of 100s of meme marketing examples, started testing out free 3-day trials to Memelord Technologies, and dropped a marketing masterclass with the memelord for a $23B startup all for FREE.

Why????

Because I love giving away free shit!

Explore 100s of meme marketing examples for FREE

Ok of course it’s not that simple.

If you’ve been reading my work long enough, you already know I’m slightly evil. And I encourage you to be too!

Yes I love giving away free shit, but I’m sure as hell hoping someone browses through the meme marketing gallery, says “hmmm I can do this too” and then signs up for my software! I promise there is indeed a method to my madness.

In fancy MBA terms, they call giving away free shit a “loss leader”: giving away a product or service that is not profitable but attracts people of whom some percentage will then pay for something. I prefer to call it “give away free shit” because I’m not an MBA douchebag, but hey whatever floats your boat man.

It’s why software companies give away free trials, authors give away free books, marketers give lead magnets, beauty brands give away free samples, and smart weed dealers smoke you up for free the first time. Giving away free stuff is how you get people in the door. VC-backed startups are famous for giving away free shit because they have millions sitting in the bank and can afford to lead with a loss.

Uber delivered puppies (they also gave rides at a loss for a decade). Tinder hosted massive BANGERS. Jam.dev gives away free pizza to developers. More and more, we’re even seeing software companies build entirely free tools to attract users (“mini tools are 10x more powerful than free trials”). And I think now that building software is getting easier, faster, and cheaper thanks to AI, this is just the beginning of the era of giving away free shit. Even bootstrapped startups are giving away free software! There’s no excuse. $23B meme marketer Tom Orbach told me he thinks 2025 we’ll be seeing startups launching mini games and I think he’s right. We thought 2021 era startups was the land of the free shit, but I think it’s just begun.

The cost and prior knowledge needed to build mini tools and software is going to 0 thanks to AI. I built Memelord Technologies with Red Bull, no-code, and YouTube. My friend Randy is a creator in the digital minimalism space and spun up a screen time calculator with no-code and Claude in like 2 hours as a lead magnet. There’s literally no excuses anymore for not trying to build software. Money is no longer the problem. Skills are no longer the problem. Time, creativity, and distribution are the problems. Free e-books are so 2010s, the 2020s and beyond is free software.

So let me ask you, what free tools can you give away to drive people to your business?

Think about it for a minute.

Then grab a Red Bull. Go to Claude or ChatGPT or a no-code platform and just start building. You can do it. It doesn’t have to be pretty or perfect. It just needs to work and provide value. Ask ChatGPT for help (even the best 10x engineers do this). Watch YouTube. Drink more Red Bull. Stay up late. Build. You can just do things.

Expect more cool free shit coming from me soon.

SaaS. Tools. Maybe even some memelord mini games too….

For now, check out my meme marketing gallery. You You can filter by industry, social media platform, and browse through 100s of meme marketing examples from startups like Polymarket and Beehiiv to goofy brands like Dude Wipes and Scrub Daddy to big public companies like Duolingo and Hubspot.