Viral Views Don't Pay the Bills. Memes Do.

01 /The Concept

Memelord bills its platform as "the future of memes."

The platform is purpose-built for meme creation, with a full suite of tools: a template search engine pulling from the most popular meme formats, an image editor, a video editor (memes can be animated GIFs or short clips), and a range of other useful features.

The founder describes the core workflow in his posts on X. Every day, the platform scours the internet for memes that went viral today. Users get notified when trending templates surface – and can immediately jump in to create their own version. The result: you can ride a trend 10x faster and multiply your chances of going viral yourself.

Creation tools include face-swap, full scene generation from scratch, and story-driven formats. There's also an AI generator: describe what you want in a prompt, get a fully formed meme back, and then refine it manually in the built-in editor.

The founder has even dubbed his platform the "new Hollywood," because it walks creators through the entire meme-video production arc: idea → script → storyboard → scene list → video → final edit.

Pricing: $42/month for individual creators (10 video memes per month), with a team tier for up to 10 members covering 100 video memes per month.

The founder built the first version of the platform himself using the no-code tool Bubble and grew it to roughly $100K in expected annual revenue – a modest figure on the surface, but enough to attract $3M in initial funding.

So why did investors hand over millions of dollars to a meme-creation platform?

02 /Why It Matters

At first glance, memes seem indistinguishable from the short-form TikTok-style videos flooding every feed. The difference becomes clear once you think about intent. Classic TikTok content is built for laughs or entertainment; memes are built to carry a message. Same format, fundamentally different purpose.

The founder unpacked this in a conversation with a partner at the fund that backed Memelord. A few key points:

Memes control the universe because memes are ideas. Ideas shape thoughts. Thoughts drive actions. Something as small as a meme can influence behavior at scale – which makes it one of the most powerful marketing tools in existence.

Memes vs. propaganda. Propaganda is one-to-many broadcasting – blanketing a large audience from a single source. Memes travel differently: one person shares with many, those many share with even more, and so on. Each person who shares a meme lends it a slice of their own credibility, which increases the trust placed in the message.

Memes vs. traditional marketing. Brands use marketing to make people feel part of a group that shares certain values. People share memes to be recognized as individuals distinct from the group.

The real power of memes lies in infinite remixability: one popular image or clip can spawn unlimited variations. This is what separates memes from art – where everyone strives for something unique. The Memelord founder sees all humans as "remix machines" and argues that no idea is truly original. Memes thrive precisely because they're endlessly remixable, which lets anyone become a creator. He calls them "the gateway drug to making art."

In a separate essay, the founder argues that memes are the highest-leverage marketing tool available. They're cheap to produce and can spread explosively. Once he internalized that, he went deep on turning ordinary memes into a systematic "meme marketing" discipline.

"Even if you offered me $100,000 to make a hockey meme, I couldn't do it – I don't live and breathe hockey. But I live and breathe startups, so I can make startup and investor memes all day long." In other words: good memes only come from deep domain knowledge.

And domain knowledge isn't enough on its own – you also need to understand the pain points. Memes need to be about problems. If you know finance, make memes about the specific ways spreadsheets drive you insane. If you know startups, make memes about the friction between founders and investors. If you're making memes for your brand, zero in on the frustrations your customers actually experience.

A good meme usually mocks someone or something – but you need to be precise about who or what is fair game. If you're making memes for founders, mock investors, not founders. If you're making memes for developers, mock product managers, not the engineers. And so on.

Don't fear being "cringe." Cringe is the new cool – and doing things others are afraid to do is exactly how you capture attention online.

As Paul Graham wrote in an essay back in 2002: "Humor is related to power. Having a sense of humor is a sign of strength – humor is a way of coping with problems, and if you take problems too seriously they can crush you. The ability to not take yourself too seriously is the ultimate mark of confidence." Making memes requires the same disposition: the willingness to joke about your industry, its problems, and yourself.

03 /Opportunities

Short-form video is the dominant format on the internet right now. Every founder is either thinking about how to use it for marketing or is already making content – with, it's fair to say, wildly uneven results. The key metric isn't views – it's conversions.

The main takeaway here is to focus on substance, not format. A genuinely funny TikTok-style clip can pull in views, likes, and followers – but it won't drive purchases, because it didn't communicate anything about you, your startup, or your product.

On the other hand, a polished promotional video praising your product probably won't get many views either – and may not drive sales anyway, because it's too serious.

The real move is to pack two seemingly contradictory things into a short clip or even a static image: levity and a marketing message. That's what a meme – in the sense discussed here – actually is.

So the direction isn't to build yet another meme-creation platform. It's to integrate memes as a serious tool in your startup's marketing strategy.

That's also a perfect prompt for an internal challenge: make a meme about your own product and share it. If it lands, it means you genuinely understand your domain, its problems, and have the confidence to laugh at them.