Sup memelords,

2 weeks ago, we launched our iOS app Memelord Mobile.

So far so good.

The signups won’t stop coming in.

This was my first iOS app ever so I’m gonna share some learnings so far below.

Building this app was a true labor of love.

If you download it, you’ll see what I mean.

The attention to detail.

The UX.

The easter eggs.

The App Store screenshots below.

Not gonna lie, we absolutely cooked and I’m proud.

1. Solve your own problems first

This has been my entire philosophy building Memelord from day 1 to our $3M raise.

Built something that solves your own problems first.

Then use the magic of the internet to find people like you.

I wanted to get alerts of the newest trending memes so I wouldn’t have to doomscroll for new memes all the time. And I wanted them to show up on my canvas and have unlimited AI weird tools. Kinda like a mix of Google Alerts for memes and Adobe.

So that’s what I built.

The plan was always to build an iOS app but I didn’t know how and I didn’t have the money, so I started Memelord with a daily newsletter for hot memes for $6.90/month. Then I watched some youtube and drank some red bull and built a no-code meme editor to $100K ARR. Then I raised the $3M and boom now we have the iOS app.

I built exactly what I wanted BY ANY MEMES NECESSARY.

People told me I was crazy, but it turns out I’m not alone. The world is full of crazy memelords who want to make millions being funny on the internet too.

I wake up everyday grateful as fuck I get to build something I love because I didn’t sell out and copy someone else’s vision for a quick buck. In today’s AI age, anyone can build apps now, but can you build ones you love using?????? Can you wake up everyday grateful to work 14 hour days? Are you proud of what you built??? It’s much harder.

I see a lot of people just building lame slop apps or copying other people’s apps that they don’t even want to use just because they can now. It’s lame and lazy. It solves no one’s problems including the creators of the app. Build something you love that solves your problems.. It’s much harder, but you’ll feel much better about yourself.

Now I can get notifications for new hot memes and drop bangers from a boat!

2. Obsess with the craft.

In the age of AI slop, be a software craftsmen.

Sure, AI can vibe code some slop app nowadays in minutes, but real craftsmen don’t want slop. We want art.

My grandpa always told me “measure twice, cut once.” I feel like a lot of people these days ain’t even taking the time to measure bro.

Make art, not slop.

Some specifics of what I mean here:

Good UX design is hard, embrace the pain

Good design is clear thinking.

Clear thinking is hard alone. Clearly thinking about how your app will be used by millions of people of all ages and languages is very hard.

The amount of thought and arguments that goes into where to put a button is like 72 different decisions. If I put this here, is there room for this? Will it be clear for our customers? What is prioritized? What makes us the most money?

UX design is so hard, but the thought exercise of it has been the most fun part of building Memelord so far. It feels like new levels of my brain unlocked. Just a year or two ago, I was writing full-time and now building apps it feels like a brain blast!

Haptics matter way more than you think.

I didn’t even know the word “haptics” until we started building this.

It’s those little vibrations you get when you press buttons.

It’s just a straight hit of dopamine. We filled our onboarding with cool haptics and animations as our icons float around and people love it (too much maybe???)

Onboarding is condensed storytelling.

One of our angel investors loves to say “making money is downstream of storytelling”.

While he’s usually referring to fundraising, an iOS app onboarding is one the most condensed version of this.

Can you tell a story about your app’s features and their outcomes in such a way that people want to sign the fuck up?

The amount of times we designed and redesigned this onboarding is disgusting, but it paid off. I’m proud af.

It's like comedians workshopping a joke for years or a good storyteller who actually cares about what their audience hears and not somebody who just yaps for the sake of yapping at a party.

Put some thought in to tell a good story and people will appreciate it and pay you.

3. Every app you’ve used is made by people no smarter than you (often dumber).

This was something I had to keep saying again and again to my team.

If some dumb 17-year-old kids can launch apps, so can we.

I don’t know how to code. None of my engineers had ever built an iOS app before. My CTO worked in the government this time last year.

But you can just learn things and figure them out.

yeah, there were a lot of challenges, both on the code side and dealing with the annoying app store approval process, but all I kept saying to my team was, "If other people figured it out, so can we? Everything is figure-out-able."

Memelord is officially everywhere now.

All because we just kept going.

It’s just the beginning.

Not a meme but I met one of my heroes Gary Vee

Me

Also me

Thanks for reading memelords.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Founder of Memelord.com