Sup memelords,

What’s your first reaction when you hear about SOC 2 compliance?

Throwing up in your mouth?

Yeah me too.

SOC-2 is unsexy unless you get a little SOC-Tuah with some of your cybersecurity. And I don’t think that’d be too compliant…

I mean how about ISO 27001, HIPAA, or God forgive me, GDPR???

My reaction was that this space is boring enough to make me flaccid for two months straight. The marketing around this stuff has to be so painfully boring. I always imagined it feels like selling a piece of rock.

Yet this man proved me wrong.

Lewis Carhart is the CEO and co-founder of Comp AI, an AI compliance platform. He’s also an early power user of memelord.com.

With a meme-making brain and unhinged vibe marketing, he and his team somehow made Comp AI the only funny compliance company in the world.

All thanks to the power of memes and satire.

Their brand’s satire account drove millions in sales and is followed by billionaires like Palmer Luckey and Marc Andreessen.

And oh yeah, their number one salesperson got interviewed for a viral stunt by CNN, People Magazine, and Australia’s biggest morning show.

Shameless plug.

If you’re a boring b2b SaaS and want help standing out like CompAI, I have good news.

The writer behind CompAI’s viral satire account just joined Memelord.

We are getting 10s of millions of views running satire accounts for unicorns in the most boring industries possible (HR, IT, Law, and more).

If you’re a B2B SaaS and want to see our Satire-as-a-Service deck, reply to this email.

Ok let’s chat with Lewis.

We talked about:

• How to do unhinged marketing in a boring ass space.

• The story of the viral wedding suit.

• The automation he used to do marketing attribution during sales call.

• The birth of Henrick Johanssen the VC parody account.

• How you can follow the same marketing playbook.

Lewis: How are you enjoying Northern England?

Jovian: It’s so fucking cold man. I'm from South East Asia, I cannot handle this cold. It’s pitch black by 3:30pm, like, what? Jesus Christ. Anyways let’s get to it. Have you ever done meme marketing stuff before you started Comp AI?

I actually started following Jason a while ago. It was definitely before Comp AI and that opened my eyes a bit to meme marketing.

I've always been someone who likes shit posting. I enjoy memes. I think it's a good way of getting to know or building an audience. 

And then the space we’re working in right now, the compliance space is like, super fucking boring.

Everyone else in the space is very conservative and not interesting. So I felt like, if we did something that is completely different to everyone else, like memes or trying to make a cool story around the industry and product, it would make us stand out more. 

And I think that's, yeah, it's been like that so far.

Yeah, it’s literally the least interesting thing in the world for some people: compliance. Did you already have this realization from day one? That this is a boring ass space and you guys have to be funny?

I think it was more along the way. It became more obvious to me that we need to be funny, and it was just my kind of style of marketing anyway. I enjoy that side of it. 

My co founders, not so much. They're much more serious.

Sometimes we argue on some of the brand and social stuff. I'm often just go like “Guys, just trust me on this one”

I've always tried to push for more memes and funny marketing stuff, and just be like, let's just see what happens.

There's got to be a good balance because obviously, we work in a high trust environment, right? People have to trust us to deliver things so they can show that they are trusted. So we can't take it too extreme. 

But I think there really is a good balance to be found somewhere along athere.

When you have a silly marketing idea, how do you pitch your co-founders? I feel like a lot of marketers or startup founders have this problem: They have an unhinged creative marketing idea, but they don’t know how to sell it to the team.

You just have to try it and see if it works or not.

When we were first starting the company, I ended up buying the moon in Pieter Levels vibe-coded game, you remember that?

Oh yeah I remember that!

That was one of the earliest things that I spent some of our VC money on. So we raised a 400k angel check from OSS Capital, and I remember spending 5k on getting the Comp AI moon.

People were like, it's unhinged, it's stupid. It's not gonna work. You can't attribute sales to it. But deadass. We had our first ever customers mention it. They actually mentioned the moon.

The moon itself in the game wasn't going to bring anyone, but tweeting about it, making a meme around and keep telling people about “Hey I bought the moon in Pieter levels game for five grand.”

That's kind of like a meme in itself. You’re turning a situation into a bit of a meme.

That got us a lot of traction. I had like 250K views in total on X in one from buying that, right? It also got me like another 2000 followers in like a week. 

It worked, and we built up this waitlist for Comp AI., and that's eventually how we got to success with everything.

The easiest way of figuring out if something is working for you is to literally just do it. See what works, see what doesn't, and then figure it out as you go,

Let’s talk about the viral NASCAR-style wedding suit by your employee Dagobert. It was insanely viral. How did it happen?

It actually started as kind of a meme also.

Everyone on X knew Dagobert. He was an indie hacker and had built an audience over the years. Everyone was meme-ing on him because he wasn't shipping. He was never launching the thing he made.

And when he finally launched the product, I knew it was going viral because there was already attention around it.

So the first idea was to sponsor LaunchDay. I think I paid him like 500 bucks to be the first official sponsor.

Because we were a sponsor, Dagobert did a one-hour interview with us for the website to talk about Comp AI.

A week or two passed and he messaged me saying, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about what we talked about. I think I could sell what you’re selling.” 

I didn’t think much of it. I was a bit dubious.

At the same time, he started selling logo spots on his wedding suit. Ironically, I didn’t buy a spot. I thought it was a dumb idea. I remember him asking if I wanted a spot and I was like, “Yeah, maybe not.”

He eventually reached out again saying, “Look, I sold all the spots. I really think I could sell SOC2 compliance if you give me a chance.”

I said, “You know what, fuck it. Let’s just try it.”  - 

I had zero expectations. He becomes our first sales hire and closes over 100k in sales. I was like, “Shit. He can actually sell.” That’s when I gave him a job. 

He eventually added Comp AI to the back of his suit for free because he was excited to promote us. He’s doing huge numbers now. He’s actually in New York with me right now.

The suit went insanely viral. CNN covered it, People Magazine covered it. Did it actually bring in sales?

Yeah. We use an AI note-taker that joins every sales call. If someone mentions something like our X parody account (which we’ll talk later) or Dago’s suit, it gets attributed.

If they mention one of our billboards, it picks that up too. After the call it creates a deal in HubSpot and adds notes and attribution points based on the conversation.

The media attention pays off. I can’t give a specific number, but it definitely got deals over the line.

That's smart automation right there.

Yeah. In sales calls we can run reports against all the “hard to track” stuff like the suit.

Some people might forget they saw it, but the brand visibility is there. Even though our initial thought these campaigns are more about branding than direct sales, people have mentioned it on calls.

Any numbers you can share?

I can’t share a specific number, but let’s just say this: if I knew the result would be this good, I would’ve bought every spot on the suit. I would’ve covered it entirely in Comp AI.

I love unhinged ideas. This is the one I passed on. I didn’t think it would work. My expectations were like, “Maybe we’ll get a video out of it.” And that was it.

But the aftermath was crazy. He was literally in the office speaking to the biggest morning TV show in Australia. We had to connect to an Australian VPN just to watch it live.

We got backlinks from Business Insider, which I’m excited about. Helps SEO and brand awareness. It exceeded my expectations. I've told others I feel like an idiot for not buying a spot. It was a cool idea.

Let’s talk about the parody account Henrick Johansson, the European VC who keeps blabbering about compliance. It’s so funny. How did this idea come about?

There’s this guy called Charlie. If you’ve ever seen the Chase Passive Income account…

Yes, I know Charlie. We’re actually homies and I interviewed him for Memelord Magazine.

Oh brilliant. So Charlie made a post on X saying, “Hey, I will make an account for a brand.” I saw it. I didn’t even tell my co-founders. I DM’d him like, “Let’s try it.”

He sent a Stripe link. I paid. I invited him to our Slack. We chatted about ideas for a couple of days. Everyone hates Europe, and I’m from Europe, so I find it funny. I agree with a lot of the jokes.

So the idea is unhinged but on-brand. A VC who is super slow and obsessed with compliance. It grew from there.

Charlie told me he’s done accounts for different brands but has never seen one blow up this fast. It’s now followed by Marc Andreessen, Vitalik Buterin, Palmer Luckey. The biggest accounts in tech now follow Henrick Johansson.

It got about 25 million impressions in the first month. Now it’s at 25k followers.

How did you decide the angle? It fits the product perfectly.

Charlie did most of it. We talked a bit. I said it needs to be somewhat related to compliance, and he ran with it.

A week later he said, “Here’s the account. Can you give him a Comp AI badge?” And that was it. Henrick Johansson was born.

He already had the profile picture and everything. He knows exactly how to hit the tone to get reactions. People love it. It went from zero to 4k followers in a week.

The funny thing is he didn’t even know I was European because we only chatted on Slack.

When the account blew up, I said, “You know I'm from the UK, right?” He laughed and said, “No way. You’re doing first-hand research into Henrick himself.”

It worked so well that we just doubled down on it.

A week ago, a new coworking space opened in New York. They invited founders to check out the space. We heard about it, so we sponsored the bar and we made everything Henrick Johansson-themed.

Me and my co-founders love Old Fashioneds, so instead of calling it an Old Fashioned, we called it a “Henrick Johansson” because he’s old-fashioned.

We want people to literally say, “Should we go for a Henrick Johansson after work?” and everyone knows what it means.

I couldn’t go because I was in SF, but the team did. They set up a banner with Henrick’s face. There were QR code menus themed around him.

Surprisingly, so many people recognized him from X. People we’ve never met. Folks from big tech companies. Everyone was asking about Henrick.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this happened in SF, but in New York? I didn’t expect anyone to know this random parody account. So cool.

It seems like there’s a theme here. You do one or two unhinged meme things, like the wedding suit or the Henrick Johansson account, then expand them into posts, memes, videos, offline events.

Yes. We see what works and capitalize on it.

If the Henrick account didn’t take off, we’d have left it. But once we saw it blowing up, we said, “Okay, we have to double down.”

Another idea I’m thinking about is to get billboards in SF with Henrick’s face in Comp AI green saying something like, “I Only Trust SOC2 reports from Comp AI.” Every bus, every billboard.

Like when you drive into the city, everyone will know Henrick Johansson because they saw him on X.

Many startups and marketers, especially those in boring or safe industries, maybe even SMBs, are scared of doing out-of-the-box meme stuff. What advice would you give them?

I would say it’s not that deep.

You're probably going to offend some people by making memes or funny stuff. Some people won’t buy your product because of your marketing style.

But you can’t please everyone.

A lot of people will love it. Most people won’t be offended. They’ll find it hilarious. People like to buy from brands they connect with.

If a sales prospect said, “I didn’t buy because of Henrick Johansson,” they probably wouldn’t have become a customer anyway.

We have tons of European customers. Not a single one has said, “Henrick Johansson is offensive to Europeans.” They love it.

I've had so many messages from people saying they love Henrick Johansson — and they’re customers.

We’re in a compliance space where trust is everything, and this proves our approach actually builds trust.

It works. People understand it. Tech founders get it. That’s our ICP.

So my advice is: go for it. Don’t be scared of shitposting or meme marketing. People will enjoy it.

People like brands that make them laugh, that interest them, and that connect with them.

That’s a perfect place to end this interview. Thank you so much for your time dude!

Thanks for having me.

That’s the story of Lewis and Comp AI.

If you want to follow what crazy marketing they are up to now, you can follow Lewis on X.

Want to get up your startup SOC 2 compliant? Hit up Comp AI.

Want to try out funny marketing with memes? Try out Memelord.com.

If you like this piece, I’d love to hear from you!

Follow me @jovvvian or hit me up on LinkedIn if you’re nasty.

Thanks for reading memelords.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jovian “The Child Labor” Gautama

VP of Memes at Memelord.com