Sup memelords,

I just raised $3M and I don't sleep much these days.

But I never really did.

Even as a kid, I was up late nights grinding not being able to sleep.

In middle school, I’d stay up late learning graphic design. In high school, I turned those late nights into $50,000 selling stickers on the internet. In college, I’d stay up late nights working on my music blog and building shopify stores. Then I built Memelord with nothing but Red Bull and a dream so big I couldn’t fall asleep.

Insomnia is my competitive advantage.

Insomnia is the moat.

Insomnia makes billions.

I say this as a former Oura-ring-wearing sleep-nerd who literally wrote a weekly blog about wellness-tech. Some things are indeed worth losing sleep over. If you want to live your dreams during the day, you need to sacrifice them at night.

This post is not health advice. It’s probably closer to financial advice tbh, but it’s definitely not that either (talk to my lawyers). This post will go against everything that the sleep-obsessed Silicon Valley internet is telling you to do right now.

My beliefs are unusual and scientifically unhealthy, but I’m 28 and just raised $3M for a meme editor and live in a 2-floor penthouse in New York, so maybe there’s a method to my madness (key word: maybe). Or maybe I’m just a madman? Who knows?

The memelord’s 12 beliefs on sleep:

1. Do I feel better when I sleep 8+ hours? Yes, but the goal of my life is not to feel good all the time. Let’s get this out of the way. Obviously I feel better when I sleep 8+ hours, I have bigger ambitions than feeling good all the time. If I wanted to feel good all the time, I’d teach yoga (Fun fact: I literally have my yoga teaching license from my hippie college days when I was trying to feel good all the time). After trying to be happy all the time, I realized I’m much more fulfilled working on something important even through the pain rather than trying to feel good all the time. Suffering is the moat.

2. Sleep is like money to be spent. Scared money don’t make no money. Scared of a bad sleep score don’t make no money either. If you want unusually high returns, you need to take high risks and “spend more sleep” on the work leading to those returns. I raised $3M for memelord.com this summer. During week of meetings when $2M got signed and wired, I slept 3 hours/night. Do you think I gave a fuck about my sleep score? I just walked away with $3M in the bank for my business. Who the fuck cares about a sleep score???

   

3. I would never invest in a startup founder with a good sleep score. You want me as an investor and your employees to lose sleep over your company when you’re not losing sleep over your company????? A founder’s lack of sleep is the moat. Every founder I know with a solid sleep score is failing at growing their company because they value growing their sleep score more.

4. Building a startup is more often a byproduct of insomnia that insomnia a byproduct of building a startup. When you’re a naturally anxious, hardworking, curious, ambitious person, you sleep less than the average person, which leads you down internet rabbitholes, learning new skills, and building cool shit. You need to get to the next page. Your curiosity outweighs your desire to sleep. Then often unintentionally, those rabbitholes and late nights and reading weird shit and learning new skills lead you to build a business. Since building a business is stressful and you already don’t sleep much, you naturally stay up late grinding. I believe the people telling you to get a full night sleep usually don’t understand this obsessive curiosity and drive.

5. AI will make us sleep less, not more. People think you can just let AI do all your work and go to bed. But now the opportunity cost of sleep is higher than ever because you can do so much cooler stuff!

6. If you want to get rich, sell sleep products to tech nerds. Who are the most under=slept people on the planet? Tech nerds. Who are early adopters for new technology? Tech nerds. Who has disposable income? Tech nerds. The formula is simple. Wanna get rich? Sell sleep.

7. Oura Rings are helpful for 1 month max. Find out what you’re doing wrong then fix it. Or don’t. But either way shut up and stop complaining.

8. Phone doesn’t enter bedroom. I keep my phone in the other room on airplane mode. Nothing is that urgent. Maybe that will change when I have kids who are older and are out late nights, but right now, there is nothing that urgent. I go on airplane mode every night, journal, and read before bed.

9. If you can’t sleep because you’re so stressed out about work, you should just get back to work. No use lying in bed tossing and turning. Just grind and get to bed when you can. There's probably a reason you can't sleep, and it's because you know there's work to be done.

10. If you can’t sleep but you’re also too tired to work, then do something offline with your hands. Reading. Writing. Make art. I make collages when I can’t sleep. It’s fun and mindless. Sometimes I’ll flip a movie on. But no work. The keyboard class yearns for handywork.

11. “Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation” - Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar. The hardest working people I know are hyper-caffeinated monkeys. 

12. Some things are indeed worth losing sleep over. “Don’t lose sleep over this” is a great expression because most things aren’t worth losing sleep over. But your business? Feeding your family? Protecting the country? Making great art? Making sure your employees get paychecks? Uh yeah that’s worth losing sleep over. And if that’s not worth it to you, then I don’t want to be anywhere near you. You just don’t care enough. I prefer to be around people who sacrifice their nighttime dreams to live them during the day.

We built a free Wojakifier!!

And the memes went craaaazy

Make free Wojak memes here!!

Thanks for reading memelords.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Founder of Memelord.com