Greg Isenberg

CEO of Late Checkout, a holding company for community-based businesses

I'm the CEO/Co-Founder of Late Checkout, a holding company with a portfolio of internet businesses. 

Previously, I was the Head of Product Strategy at WeWork, an Advisor at TikTok and an Advisor at Reddit. I was the Founder/CEO of Islands, a messaging/community app that was acquired by WeWork.  I was the Founder/CEO of 5by, a leading video discovery app which got acquired by StumbleUpon.  I helped build one of the internet's most popular financial education communities Wall Street Survivor (acquired). 

I've helped build communities and technology products for brands like Microsoft, FedEX, NASCAR, TechCrunch and Wordpress. 

I've been featured on places like Vanity Fair, Forbes, Mashable, Fortune Magazine, L.A Times and have won Webby Awards.

I share my thoughts on Twitter @gregisenberg (say hello).

LINKS to some of my companies in my holdco🔗

gregisenberg.com (my guides, podcast, sign up to my weekly newsletter for updates)
latecheckout.agency (product design agency that works with executives from Dropbox to Nike to Shopify)
boringmarketing.com (agency to get you ranked on google)
boringads.com (agency that creates profitable ad campaigns)

CEO & Co-Founder 

Late Checkout is a holding company that builds, acquires and incubates cash-flowing businesses that are powered by internet audiences and communities.

Learn more about our businesses at https://latecheckout.studio and work with us.

Apple JUST quietly announced something that’s a lot BIGGER than it looks: "the Mini Apps Partner Program"

Apple is admitting that the future of software is embedded, lightweight, vertical mini-apps distributed inside bigger app

For founders who want to make $$ building apps:

1. Apple just legitimized the “superapp” model for the West.

China has WeChat mini-programs. India has PhonePe Switch. The West has… nothing. Apple just opened the door. You can now run HTML/JS mini-apps inside a native host and earn 85% on qualifying purchases. That’s Apple-sanctioned platform piggybacking.

2. Distribution arbitrage becomes real again.

You don’t need to convince users to download your app. Just partner with a host app and drop in a mini-app. This is a cheat code for early traction. Think: travel apps hosting niche tools, fitness apps hosting mini workouts, marketplaces hosting micro-utilities.

3. Apple is creating a new economy layer: “embedded SaaS.”

Imagine: CRM mini-apps inside vertical tools. Math solver mini-apps inside education apps. Calendar mini-apps inside productivity apps. The TAM for tools that don’t need standalone installs just went vertical.

4. Developers get an 85% revenue share.

This is Apple basically saying: “We want this ecosystem to grow, and we’re willing to cut our take rate.” When Apple lowers its cut, I pay attention because they see a platform shift coming.

5. AI makes this 10× more important.

LLM-powered micro-apps (calculators, planners, agents, coaches, niche utilities) are tiny by design. They’re perfect mini-apps. Apple just created infrastructure for AI-native micro utilities to live inside bigger apps with built-in commerce.

6. Host apps become new “distribution landlords.”

If you own an app with traffic, you become a platform. You can host mini-apps, take a cut, and build a developer ecosystem around you.

 It’s a new monetization model for existing apps with audiences.

7. This unlocks a wave of second-order opportunities.

- Agencies helping apps become mini-app hosts
- Mini-app dev shops
- “Shopify for mini-apps” toolkits
- Mini-app marketplaces
- Analytics for mini-app performance
- Discovery engines for mini-apps
- For more startup ideas/trends... sign up to https://ideabrowser.com 

TLDR;

Apple just turned every high-traffic app into a potential superapp and every indie developer into a potential platform partner.

The App Store is becoming modular, composable, and layered. The next decade of consumer apps will look less like standalone products and more like ecosystems stitched together with mini-apps.

This is quietly one of the biggest distribution unlocks in years.

CEO of Late Checkout, a portfolio of internet companies

2026 AI predictions

1. SaaS and agents merge completely in 2026. Every SaaS product becomes an agent platform, and every agent platform builds SaaS features. The ones that don't adapt die or get bought for pennies. 

2.  Google continues to crush in 2026. OpenAI feels the heat. Doubles down into becoming a social company, lots of features that you'd think a Meta would create

3. Infinite-context entertainment kills pilot season. Netflix lets you continue cancelled shows just for yourself. AI generates new episodes of The Office or Friends dynamically based on your mood.

4. Micro-companies explode in volume and weirdness. Tiny AI-augmented businesses serving tiny online tribes become a real career path.

5. Personalized nutrient cocktails created by generative AI replace traditional OTC wellness. 

6. AI agents get their own wallets. Agents transact with each other using crypto for data, API calls, and compute. T

7. The return of the invite-only web. To escape the bot-flooded “dead internet,” the best platforms become gated and reputation-scored. T

8. Search is replaced by answer synthesis. Browsers read 50 sources and give you the conclusion. 

9. Hardware returns with a vengeance. Browser-based AI feels limiting, so AI pins, earbuds, and ambient devices take off. The smartphone’s decline becomes visible.

10. Google, Apple, and OpenAI accidentally build the new internet. Instead of browsing websites, people live inside model environments.

11. Personalized education unbundles the university. 

12. The first agent-driven media companies appear. Daily shows, newsletters, and entire channels run autonomously, with one human editor.

13. Local LLMs become the new privacy shield. A major hack scares the world and everyone shifts to on-device models that never touch the cloud.

14. The rise of analog status. “Analog” becomes the ultimate flex. Film cameras, handwritten notes, and acoustic instruments explode in value

15. Prediction markets replace user research. Companies test product ideas on 10,000 AI personas/know the outcome before writing code.

16. Software becomes disposable. Apps are generated, used for 72 hours, and deleted. 

17. A major university drops its computer science degree. It’s replaced by “agent systems,” “model psychology,” and “human interface architecture.”

18. Infinite apps replace the App Store. Micro-apps are generated inside ChatGPT or Gemini and traditional downloads collapse.

19. The first sovereign AI trade war begins. Nations ban the export of foundation models and treat foreign AI use as espionage.

20. Blue-collar trades become safe havens. Electricians, plumbers, and HVAC techs see wages skyrocket as white-collar automation accelerates.

21. The fastest wealth creation path in 2026 is spotting assets mispriced because people underestimate AI’s speed. 

22. 2026 should be an interesting year for AI. What do you think?

Note: grab a startup idea, a trend, and some prompts from ideabrowser.com and happy building.

dear founders,

build like the clock’s running out. the window is open but it won’t stay. for the first time in history, you have free distribution from social platforms and infinite leverage from AI tools. you can reach millions without permission.

the internet is handing out unfair advantages to anyone bold enough to use them so...

ship before you understand it. launch "ugly". talk to users every day. build what you wish existed. best ideas are the most obvious painful. go niche. no, go superniche. vertical is your moat.

clarity comes from commits. half your roadmap might be ego, delete it. make ugly things until they work. share prototypes that break.

kill what doesn’t grow. use AI as leverage, not decoration. test ten things before breakfast. delete your roadmap. double down on what works. design for clarity, not cleverness. brand before code. write daily. post your lessons.

find your first hundred users manually. distribution is the new product. attention is the new funding. taste is the new code. build small cults. scale later. automate boring things. keep the human parts human. study why things spread. study why things die. 

pricing is positioning. aesthetics are trust. make people feel something. ignore haters. build in weird corners of the internet. break things publicly. pivot loudly. consistency compounds. only raise VC if you dream of going IPO one day. otherwise, cash-flow is your BFF.

your network is distribution. your story is marketing. your design is psychology. ship like it’s day one. iterate like you’re behind. stay obsessed. learn faster. think longer. risk embarrassment. make noise. build the thing that keeps you up at night. money follows obsession. stay in motion. stay loud. stay building. distribution is an art form now.
 
AI makes it easy to make things; the hard part is making things that matter. build like the world’s ending in a year but your idea has to outlive it 

we’re living in a window of maximum leverage and minimum permission

im rooting for you.

best,

greg isenberg

just another founder rooting for you

note: find startup ideas at ideabrowser.com to get your creative juices flowing

We’re about to see the largest boom in micro-companies in history. 

1 person to 10-people businesses that generate real cash, serve tiny but passionate communities, and operate with leverage (organic social, AI etc) that used to require mega teams

Once people realize they can earn a meaningful living by building something tiny and strange that fits a community they actually understand, everything shifts like ambition, lifestyle, career arcs, even how people think about “success.”

Some people will build two or three of these.
Some will build twenty.
Some will build one that accidentally becomes big.

You can literally feel the shift happening.

Just an increasing number of people quietly opting out of the traditional paths and choosing to build a life around small companies that actually work.

There’s a whole new generation of founders who are going to buy businesses and turn them into holding companies with software and AI: 

how they’ll do it:

step 1: acquire niche business at an attractive price
step 2: create internet distribution to scale customer base
step 3: build AI-assisted software to increase margins/make product more attractive 
step 4: recycle cash-flow to buy more businesses

HOW TO WIN IN THE AI AGE 

You are competing against people who copy what exists and let AI remake it.

Most design, writing and product work comes from AI copying existing references in generic mode, which is why the internet feels like an endless conveyor belt of bland.

The moment you push past that baseline and force the model to do something uncomfortable, you separate yourself from the entire curve. Giving it original ideas + references outside your niche. 

The people who win are the ones who insist on originality in a world that keeps asking for “good enough.” 

The reason this matters is because default effort produces default outcomes, and default outcomes disappear instantly in a feed that never stops moving. 

I bet these default startups have more and more friction standing out going further as AI makes startup making more like a machine.

People can FEEL the difference between something generated and something directed, between something assembled and something authored. AI will happily produce the average case forever, but it will never choose to take the creative risk that changes how something feels. And that's where the alpha is!!!

Anyone can generate. Almost no one curates, edits, reworks, reshapes, interrogates, or pushes until the thing becomes unmistakably theirs. 

The edge is in the taste you bring to the model, the choices you make that the average user will never even see, and the willingness to throw away nine versions to get to the tenth that feels alive.

In a world where everyone has access to the same tools, the only real advantage is the person who refuses to behave like a default setting.

These 15 techniques pretty much 10x the quality/output of ANYTHING you vibe code with Gemini 3 etc

Memelord Technologies

- building SaaS for meme marketers
- used by 1000s of marketers from beehiiv to hubspot to coinbase and more
- making dank memes

Founder

beehiiv

- Helping beehiiv go viral on socials
- Advising beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk on memetic warfare against competitors
- Flying down to meet Tyler in Medellin, Colombia 1x/quarter to hand-deliver memes in a USB drive
- Lots of boats

Memetic Advisor

Goonmaps

- innovative men's health social network
- tracking the world's goons
- dozens of users worldwide

Chief Executive Officer

Jam.dev

• I help Jam.dev's CEO go viral on Twitter/LinkedIn
• I eat jam.

Content Writer

Cyber Patterns

• I write about marketing hacks
• I make subscriber graph go up and to the right
• I'm building a cult

Writer

in myself

Investor

Product Hunt

• Growing our socials and hosting events in NYC, SF, and more
• Helping our badasss community of makers make more money
• Hunting cool products 😸

Head of Growth

The Defiant

• I partied at crypto conferences
• I interviewed a bunch of nerds
• I wrote articles 3-5x/week for newsletter to 90,000 in crypto

Staff Reporter

American Express

• Engineered data
• Grew my Twitter in free-time and got writing jobs
• I was making more writing than coding so I quit

Data Engineer

I make meme tech for meme marketers 😈 

From 2021-2024, I consulted with startups/VCs to help them go viral and blow up the internet. This means everything from ghostwriting viral posts to making viral memes to doing viral stunts.

Now I built a SaaS called Memelord Technologies that helps marketers do the same! Think KnowYourMeme but we help people make money.

Feature #1: Meme Alerts 🚨 (we use AI/humans to surface new viral memes and send you a daily email)

Feature #2: Editor (think Canva, BUT unhinged and JUST for memes. We pre-load the new viral memes daily from Meme Alerts for quick posting, give you funny stickers, AI tools, and more.)

More about me: 

I'm a college dropout and cold DMed my way into Silicon Valley. For 3 years, I worked as a freelance ghostwriter for founders/VCs and was Head of Growth at Product Hunt. I also wrote a book called Memes Make Millions about the art of meme marketing. I live in NYC with my wife, dog, and imaginary friend Theodore Roosevelt.

Jason Levin ✏️

IT'S BILLY MEMES HERE

LET’S FLASHBACK TO 1999...

When the internet was just for dorks.

When blockbuster was on every corner.

When the clouds were in the sky and software was sold in DVDs.

It was simpler times.

But times haven’t changed that much.

Sure social media might be everywhere.

Everyone posts their life on the internet.

A TV star is a president.

And every girl you had a crush on in high school now is a multi-millionaire OnlyFans model.

But here’s what hasn’t changed:

Funny marketing still works.

Funny marketing worked 300 years ago in newspaper ads.

Funny marketing will work in 500 years in our brain devices.

Memes are just the latest iteration of funny marketing.

Memelord.com isn’t a meme editor.

It’s a funny marketing company.

This was the pitch that landed me $3M for memelord.com and it’s the pitch I’m hitting you with during our Blockbuster Cyber Monday sale.

FOR MONTHLY INSTALLMENTS OF $19.99, YOU TOO CAN OWN MEMELORD.COM

Founder of Memelord Technologies • Raised $3M to make memes • Building tools for meme marketers • Author of “Memes Make Millions”

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Lying to my parents tonight and saying I bought this float.

Wish me luck. 

I think they might believe me. 

They still have no idea what I do even though I just raised $3M.

I am shook

Just got texted a TikTok about Memelord with 18k likes

It was 5 social media marketing tools this person can't live without. 

Completely random. Completely free. 

I wouldn't have even known if one of my friends didn't text me. 

Magical feeling. 

A lot of brands pay for ads like this, but building something marketers love enough to just share it. I couldn't have even dreamed of this. 

Before you go spend on paid ads and influencer marketing and billboards, spend the time building a product people are obsessed with

It pays off big time in pure serendipity and internet magic.

Farting at an old age home is like using ChatGPT on linkedin 

Equally untraceable because everyone is doing it.

You can just add “gooning” as a skill on LinkedIn and people will endorse it. You can just do things guys.

graphical user interface, text, application, chat or text message

BREAKING: STAMPEDES AT MEMELORD.COM'S BLACK FRIDAY SALE

- 3 MARKETERS CONFIRMED DEAD
- MANY MORE Q1 MARKETING BUDGETS MISSING

PEOPLE LINED UP THIS MORNING TO PURCHASE 

DONT GET TRAMPLED 

SIGN UP ONLINE FOR $19.99/MO AT MEMELORD.COM

Note to younger self: 

Those days drawing app designs on the airplane when you were 17 that you didn't know how to build actually paid off. 

It took a while, but that practice in the art of thinking clearly paid off.

You're 28 now. 

You have AI, no-code, and the money to pay engineers to build stuff for you. You have more leverage than you could've ever dreamed (and are adding more everyday between dollars and distribution)

Therefore the clarity of your thoughts is more important than ever.

It turns out those 10 years of learning how to think clearly with no money to spend or employees to leverage actually was a blessing in disguise. You don't waste your time or money on stupid stuff. You're laser-focused. You're clear-headed and grateful.

Pity the founder who has leverage before clarity about what to use it for.

Trust fund kid with a coke addiction.

If you're not sure what company to build, stop asking other people and look inside yourself.

What do you need in the world???

What problems do you face everyday??

Grab a notebook.

Write it down. Really think about it. It can be 1 simple thing (more ideas and features can come later).

Then build it for yourself.

Solve your own problem.

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

There's a lot more people like you out there facing the same problems as you than you realize.

To anyone doubting how big your idea can be, 

Check the number of bookmarks on this TikTok alone.

100,000+ social media managers bookmarking our social media tool.

Memelord was just a silly idea a year ago

Now it's one of "the websites social media managers can't live without"

Take your silly ideas more seriously.

The internet is bigger than you realize.

Goldfish launched the smallest Macy's Day Parade float in history.

It's genius marketing for 3 reasons:

1. When everyone else is trying to be the biggest and fanciest, be the opposite. 

You stand out more. When they zig, you zag.

No one is talking about any of the fancy floats. But the press is covering the Goldfish float because it's different.

It's status arbitrage.

2. You save $$$. 

Floats cost $100k minimum.

Many of the floats include rappers or artists on stage.

Meanwhile Goldfish had their tiny float that probably cost $200 and stood out.

More attention, less money, more ROI.

3. It's weird enough it can get turned into a meme.

Yes, this is a good thing.

Becoming the meme means others can remix you and your brand goes viral for free.

Normal stuff doesn't get turned into memes.

Be weird, be memeable.

Meme marketing wins (that's why I build a software just for meme marketing memelord.com)

I went viral on TikTok without knowing it 

Reminder: Make something people are obsessed with. 

I see a lot of people faking their marketing with:

- AI influencers
- paid UGC fake testimonials 
- Lame billboards 
- paying hot sorority girls (there’s even an agency for this)

But a product that people love will always be the best marketing. 

Take the time to build a product that you love and people are obsessed with, and they’ll naturally talk about it. 

You can’t fake that kinda love.

Investor updates with memes should be normalized:

Investors are busy.

"Memes are the most information-dense form of communication" - Elon  

Also 1 of my investors doesn't know how to read gud (not naming names, you know who u are)

(Yes this was in this month's update 🤑)

Founders should have hobbies outside their startup:

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The Battle

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