I went viral with a silly startup

Sup nerds,

My name is Heshie Brody and I discovered Jason’s book Memes Make Millions in June and gained 2,000 followers and almost 15 million impressions since.

Last week, I took another scheme out of Jason’s playbook and launched a silly software and went viral with a few hours of work and zero dollars out of pocket.

I’m gonna explain how I did it.

But first a quick note from our SaaS friends at Chargeflow.

Ok wanna know how I went viral with a silly startup?

See, my dad was very big on motivational speakers and marketing, and one of his favorites was a direct mail copywriter named Dan Kennedy. Kennedy was a preacher of the copywriting giants like Ogilvy, Gary Halbert, John Carlton but my favorite quote from him was “If you can’t make money without money you won’t with money either”.

These words stuck with me and have taught me that true skills are ones that money can’t buy. And one of those skills are how to get eyeballs (on the internet).

And the way to get eyeballs on the internet is not by spending 7 million dollars on a super bowl ad… It is by “Building An Audience” and being “Unforgettable”. (if your initial instinct was a super bowl ad please unfollow me on 𝕏 right now…)

Part 1…

Building an audience

Like I said, I discovered Memes make Millions in June and gained 2,000 followers and almost 15 million impressions since. This meant I wasn’t launching to no one.

The strategy?

Combining memes with value posts. You see, as a Software Engineer I knew If I ever wanted to do my own thing and break free from the 9 to 5 I had to build an audience.

And you build an audience by doing the following:

1. Deciding who you want those people to be

2. Posting content those people are interested in, this should be a combo of memes and stuff you genuinely find interesting and you’re excited to share

3. And, finally engage with those people (aka reply guying)

The first couple of months were the hardest, I felt like I was posting into the void. But once I discovered the secret of reply guying (step 3), it finally unlocked 𝕏 for me and got me the audience I wanted. You see by genuinely replying to people and making them laugh or engaging them in conversation you pique their interest and they begin to follow you. Try it, you’ll see it works

By doing this everyday, I found my community of like-minded people (it’s the same thing Jason and Greg Isenberg talk about with the ACP Funnel). Fast forward 6 months, I now have the following/audience and I was ready to actually launch a product.

Onto part 2…

Be Unforgettable

So much marketing is forgettable. So many people are forgettable. And the reason for this is simple: being like everyone else is boring.

And “boring” gets forgotten.

Make someone feel seen = They’ll remember you kindly

Make someone upset = They’ll remember you as an asshole

Make someone laugh = They’ll remember you forever

Do you get it now??

The secret to the internet is making people feel things.

And memes are the fastest way to achieve this.

Now, onto my free viral SaaS…

How my satirical (not fake) SaaS instantly went viral

Last week I launched a Craigslist like site but for VC subsidized dead startups to list their used macbooks and Herman Miller Aeron’s.

I got the idea after seeing a post from Alex Cohen (@anothercohen) looking to buy a used office phonebooth. This got me thinking, that since 90% of startups fail there was probably a need for a niche second hand startup marketplace catered to tech startups.

I went ahead and built it in less then 2 hours with Cursor (blew my mind honestly).

The announcement went viral with 67k impressions, 74 comments and 376 likes and almost 3,500 websites visits on day 1 (𝕏 post link)

The best part? It cost me absolutely nothing.

Yes, VcSubsidized dot com had zero upfront cost.

How did I do it? I made it memeable!!

I knew if I was going to stand a chance amongst all the noise it had to be:

1. Funny

2. Memorable

3. Instantly resonate with my target market

You see, memes aren’t just about funny captioned photos…

Memes are anything that follow the 3 principles mentioned above.

VcSubsidized was exactly this:

1. It was funny because of the name I chose

2. It was memorable because of the target market is one that’s talked about a lot (dead startups)

3. It instantly resonated with my audience since my following is mostly tech people

Did I mention all the DMs and followers I got???

Right after launching I immediately started getting DM’s from interested buyers and even a PR firm to work together.

Another huge win was getting a reply and a mention from my favorite tech podcast on a Herman Miller Aeron meme that I created to promote VC Subsidized, this was by The Technology Brothers podcast (aka the world's most profitable podcast).

I then capitalized on that meme to promote an actual Aeron listing on my site.

Did I mention memes make millions?

All for 2 hours of Cursor and a 𝕏 post it’s pretty damn good.

And not to forget zero dollars out of pocket!

So, to recap. If you want to stand a chance on the Internet…

Build an audience. Don’t be boring. Make people feel things. Become the meme.

Heshie Brody, Memelord & Aspiring non 9 to 5’er

Follow me for dank tech memes and occasional engineering insights @heshiebee

Memes of the Week

I built a face swapper into Memelord Technologies and went mega viral.

And my users started cookin

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Founder of Memelord Technologies, Author of Memes Make Millions