🎯 How to announce your $3M Seed Round in style

$3M Seed Round. $300 Video. 1M+ views.

October 08, 2025

Read time: 3 minutes 31 seconds

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Most founders announce their funding round with a TechCrunch article and a press release no one reads.

When my mate Jason told me he was making a launch video using his “Canva for memes” software, then getting his CTO and entire team to do the same, I thought he'd lost it.

For context: Jason's building Memelord.com.

This breakdown is different.

It's not about a tactic used at a big company. It's about how he re-launched his own startup - and turned his funding announcement into a live demo (with his entire company as the cast).

Over to Jason.

Enjoy.

— Tom

 

How to announce your $3M Seed Round in style

Chess Move

The what: A TLDR explanation of the strategy

I’m the founder of Memelord.com.

We just raised $3M to build a software where marketers can make everything from AI memes to full movies. It’s basically like Adobe on acid or Canva on crack.

But this left me with a problem.

Most people think we’re just for memes.

But memes are just the tip of the spear.

So how do I show the world anyone can make movies on my software?

 

Well, obviously I had to make my own launch video!

Yup, that’s right.

 

Instead of paying $100k to some overpriced LA agency to sit around and drink matchas and get stoned on the beach, I made my own launch video for $300 in AI credits.

 

 

I did everything from designing the characters to the script to animation to edits.

Oh yeah and I did it all my OWN software.

“Oh, but Jason, you’re special” Nope.

 

How do I show people that ANYONE can make movies on memelord.com?

I forced my entire team to make movies for launch from our marketers to the CTO. Yes, seriously, my CTO made a launch video (and it was one of the best).

 

 

Every one on my team made a video in their own style. 1 of my marketers loves dropping memes on LinkedIn so he made a video about blowing up LinkedIn with memes. Another made an unhinged video about health guru Bryan Johnson for his personal account!

The point of this wasn’t just to have more videos for cheaper.

 

I just raised $3M. I could’ve afforded the fancy LA videos! But that’s not how we operate at memelord.com. I’ve been making YouTube videos since I was 12 years old. We are DIY scrappy hustlers. I believe everyone should be involved on launch day, from the marketers to the engineers. It's all your company.

 

I believe anybody can make AI movies on memelord.com.

And by forcing my team to make movies too, it showed this!

And it sure as hell worked!

We’re getting signups non-stop and it’s just the beginning.

If you're a founder, get your whole team involved marketing. It will make the wins all the sweeter too.

💡

Strategy Playbook: Everyone’s a moviemaker

Breakdown

The how: The strategic playbook boiled down to 3x key takeaways

1.  There’s a HUGE difference between AI slop and AI movies

Everyone hates AI slop (the stupid 5 second AI clips of Donald Trump as a cat you see on Facebook). But everyone is fine with AI being used in Hollywood movies and animation (uh do you guys think Avatar was real?).

→ It’s a difference of intentionality and storytelling and craftsmanship. 

Yes, I used AI to create the characters and generate the characters and scenes into videos, but not a single person called it slop because AI was just a tool for telling a beautiful story.

People loved the video:

  • “Jason will without question be the first memelord to hit 1 trillion views,” wrote one founder.

  • “Memelord.com is the new Hollywood,” wrote one marketer.

  • “S-tier video. Memelord to infinity,” wrote a VC.

The story is all that matters.

Want to leverage AI to make videos? Treat it like a Hollywood movie. Write a script you’re proud of, spend time crafting it, and then make art, not slop. Sure it’s easy to make 6-second slop on TikTok or Sora, but I encourage you to dream bigger.

As Spielberg says “pain is temporary, film is forever”.

2. Tell your story as a founder

Why are you doing what you’re doing?

Why is this important to you?

WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

Share your lore!

In the age where it’s easier than ever to build software, it’s harder than ever to stand out. Showing that personal side of you stands out.

→ Tell stories!

I started out the video by Talking about how I quit my job exactly one year ago, then wrote the book, and talked about the challenges of people thinking I was crazy. That was even my voice doing the voice-over.

My start-up is so special to me, and I want other people to feel that too.

Everyone’s story is different, but you can still show your lore (ex. If you run a construction-tech start-up, show pictures of you as a little kid playing with trucks).

Show your backstory!!

3. Always be launching

This is something that I learned while I was Head of Marketing at Product Hunt.

Launch day is just one tiny day. Launch day doesn’t make or break a startup. Plenty of unicorn startups failed on launch day. Plenty of bankrupt startups had great launches.

It’s meaningless, really.

Every day should be launch day. That’s why I find it so stupid and desperate when startups spend $100k on their launch video! It means they clearly don’t have a marketing system after launch.

They’re putting all their eggs in one basket! We’re still getting signups all day because we invested the time to build a marketing system and distribution from X to LinkedIn to newsletters to podcasts to SEO to Instagram to TikTok.

Launch day is just the beginning of a 10+ year marathon so don’t blow it all to look cool!

Rabbit Hole

The where: 3x high-signal resources to learn more

[5 minute read]

See exactly how I made our $300 AI-produced announcement video that went viral with 500k+ views and drove a surge in signups.

Creativity + cost-efficiency > expensive launch productions.

[1 minute read]

Think memes are just silly internet jokes?

Think again.

Memes Make Millions reveals how meme creators like Jack Raines and Charlie Light have built lucrative careers off laughter and viral content.

[6 minute read]

Why being unhinged on LinkedIn is your secret weapon to stand out, make decision makers laugh, and close more sales with memes.

Here’s the full strategy from Memelord.com’s VP of Memes.

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