Jason Levin

"How'd you raise $3M for meme app???" I used a tactic I call "The Cool Shit Law" I made up in 2022. The Cool Shit Law took me from broke in New Jersey to penthouses, Thiel parties, and raising $3M. Here's how it works: For 4 years, I made cool shit and reached out to cool people everyday. No expectations. Just saying hi to people I thought were cool. During that time I went from broke freelance writer to founder/VC ghostwriter to watching YouTube and becoming a founder myself. I kept on posting the whole time and people saw my journey. Then in May last year, I decided I was ready to raise. So what did I do? I didn't spray and pray, I reached out to people who I knew already got me. - Our first check came from @cyantist, one of the best angel investors of all time. We got in contact because she liked my silly videos lol. We got on the phone on a Tuesday, I flew out the next Monday and had a check by Thursday. No deck or product demo. Just a conversation. - Another one of our early checks came from @balajis, one of my long-time heroes. I first DM'd Balaji 5 years ago. I'm literally wearing a sweatshirt in my profile picture that says "Balaji was right" that I made myself. (And yes, he was right about Memelord ) - Another early check came from @EricJorgenson. Eric was one of my first Twitter heroes. I read The Almanack of Naval Ravikant and it changed my life and taught me about leverage. I had Eric on my podcast 3 years ago and we stayed in touch. Do cool shit, find cool people who genuinely support you. While I don't how to code, I do know how to make friends on the internet. And I believe in the age of AI, that's far more important. Follow The Cool Shit Law, my friends. It will change your life.

Suffering for your art is the moat. And most kids these days will never feel it. If you’re like me and tortured yourself for your writing pre-ChatGPT, you got out on the last chopper of ‘nam. Literally. Men used to go to war for their writing now they say “hey chat” Writing is pain and suffering and most kids these days will never know the blessing and immense joy of suffering for their writing. The best feeling in the world. In the words of Jensen, I wish you much suffering. Suffering is the moat. Source: I wrote 100+ weeks straight of my blog and wrote a book pre ChatGPT. I still don’t use ChatGPT. I never will. I like to think even when it’s painful torture which it always is. Suffering is the moat.

You're probably wondering how I ended up here I'm the founder of memelord.com and I'm known as the "unhinged marketing guy". So all I'm saying is this is NOT gonna be your normal boring marketing predictions. Here's my 2026 marketing trends predictions on: gambling, degeneracy, vibe coding, patriotism, Timothee Chalamet, memes, guns, movies, and sex (read until end for Sydney Sweeney ads): # #1: Rise of the “Marketing Engineer” No-code → $100k ARR → $3M Seed Round I built memelord.com to $100K ARR and then raised $3M all without knowing how to code. Let me say this first before you do: I am NOT unique!! I think we'll see a lot more people like me in 2026: marketers who have good taste and distribution hacking together software. With AI and vibe coding tools getting better every day, marketers are able to ship their ideas they usually would’ve needed engineers for. Every marketer on my team is vibe coding tools and prototypes. At this point, it's a requirement for being on my marketing team. Marketers ship. No excuses. If my dumb ass can do it, so can you. Teams will get smaller as expectations rise of each individual employee. While I still don't know how to actually code, I spent this Christmas drinking coffee and learning Cursor and even CTO said I’m cooking: Got Cursor and also a new suit for Christmas Expect to see a lot more crazy marketers like me making software and raising money this year. # #2: Resurgence of Movie Marketing Everybody knows that movie theaters have been falling due to streaming. But this year, I think we'll see a resurgence in movie marketing in 2 big ways: ## Timotheé Chalamet is going 10,000% hard Between his "I want to be one of the greats" speech and his legendary Marty Supreme marketing run, actors are feeling inspired and envious of Chalamet. This is good for movie lovers. I expect actors to start trying harder in their movies and marketing like madmen just to keep up with Chalamet. It's like Roger Bannister breaking the 4-minute mile barrier. Nobody knew an actor could market and perform like this. Now that we know it, it sets the pace for everybody else. Competition is good for movies just like it is for business And before you go saying, "Oh, Timothee Chalamet can't save Hollywood," let me remind you, he is Lisan al-Gaib…. ## Letterboxd is on the rise. What is LetterBoxd? It's a movie review site mixed with a social network. And here is their organic traffic over the last 5 years.... Letterboxd organic growth via AHREFS Why is Letterboxd growing? Here's the weird true answer. Writing movie reviews is the flex for over-educated under-fulfilled people In today's world where people's attention spans suck and everyone is doomscrolling slop, people are seeing the act of watching movies and writing reviews about them as a form of fulfilling "deep work". Before TikTok, sitting around and watching movies was lazy for stoners. Now it's a form of deep work and practiced focus. Letterboxed is a hedge against brainrot and degeneracy. Have we fallen off as a society? Absolutely man. But hopefully we get some good movies from this. # #3: “Shorting degeneracy” → $$$ The existence of long degeneracy implies the existence of short degeneracy. An essay recently went viral on Twitter about being “long on degeneracy”. The idea: We have a gambling epidemic in America on the rise. Screen time addiction is through the roof. And oh yeah, AI girlfriends are here. While many entrepreneurs are building in the long degeneracy space, I think we'll see billions of dollars created in the “short degeneracy” space. For every problem degeneracy creates, there is a solution to be made. I expect a lot of funding in these categories this year and apps by solo hackers who are fucking around solving their own problems. # #4: Pro-Americana Branding is in Last July 4th, I boycotted the energy drink Celsius to change their name to Fahrenheit because "America fuck yeah" Boycott Celsius 2025 I think we're going to see a lot more Pro-Americana branding like this this year. Being a patriot is officially cool again (it always was). But now it's safe. Brands are already leaning more into Americana. With the 2026 Olympics coming up, Ralph Lauren already dropped their collection. I'm seeing it around New York, people wearing Ralph Lauren Americana proudly that they wouldn't a decade ago. Ralph Lauren 2026 Olympics If you believe that fashion is at the forefront of culture like I do, then expect other brands to follow like lemmings. Speaking of lemmings... # #5: Next president is a memelord At first, it was just Trump and the right posting memes. But Gavin Newsom and the Democrats are learning…. I'm not going to say I fucking called it, but I fucking called it. Here's an article about me in Slate from August referring to Gavin Newsom's memeing. via Slate Newsom is leaning into being self-deprecating and unhinged humor. Self-deprecating humor from a handsome motherfucker never fails His team must have hired some memelords because they are posting some unhinged shit on the cusp of the internet. Newsom hates Trump so much yet he wants to be him so bad. He'll never be as funny, but he can be crueler and hotter. In fact, the scariest part about Newsom to me is that he's so goddamn hot. My wife knows Newsom is evil, but even she thinks he's hot. For fuck's sake, I even think he's hot. It's terrifying. And speaking of sex appeal.... # #6.9: A lot more sex ads Good genes. Okay, now the moment you've all been waiting for. Throughout the entire history of marketing, sex was a huge part of it. It's literally called "sexvertising". Sex sells. Everyone knows this. And then America got extremely politically correct and suddenly it was fat non-binary people on billboards for a weird 3 years. Well, it turns out fat non-binary people don't sell hot girl's lingerie very well. And now everyone's on Ozempic and skinny and feeling sexy. Add in the fact that the political climate is leaning towards based anti-cancel-culture and what happens? You get boobs back in ads. Hell yeah, brother. American Eagle woke up to this and hired Sydney Sweeney. And instead of caving like a little bitch to every critique, the brand and Sweeney doubled down. More sex ads in 2026. memelord.com, bangers only # The 2026 Meta: The most entertaining thing is the most likely. The world trends towards entertaining. When Elon tweeted this, most people thought it was a joke. But he wasn't joking. The rise of gambling. The rise of presidents posting memes. More sex. Etc. The most entertaining thing is the most likely. If you want your brand to be the most likely to win, then you have to be the most entertaining. It is the beginning of the age of memetic warfare, and that is why we are building memelord.com. Wait wtf is Memelord???? "Canva of memes"? You mean "Canva on crack"? Memelord.com is "Google Trends for memes" mixed with "Canva on crack". If you want to stay up to date with marketing trends, join the 1000s of CMOs and social media managers at public companies and unicorns using memelord.com. Happy New Year Cheers to many new memes. Jason "The Memelord" Levin

Was listening to a famous tech podcast Not gonna name names but someone big here I’m 45 minutes deep Interviewer asks “What are you reading?” Interviewee says “I don’t have time to read books” Well I just wasted 45 minutes of my life Immediately turn off podcast and lose respect for interviewee I don’t have time to take advice from people who don’t have time to read books These are the same type of people who will talk about “the importance of storytelling in Silicon Valley” and they haven’t read fiction in a decade Fake smart idiots.