About this episode
Begun as a meme account in 2017, Litquidity has amassed 1 million social media followers across Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and TikTok, specializing in the dark arts of “dank memes” that poke fun at the weird world of finance. The account, run pseudonymously by a former trader who goes by Lit, has spawned a daily news summary email ( Exec Sum ) with 160,000 subscribers, podcast ( Big Swinging Decks ), investment fund, merch and more, as part of a $2 million business. Some key takeaways: Find underserved audiences. The world is not short on finance news. But what Lit found as a young investment analyst is that little of the coverage captured the experience of being in the (well-compensated) rank and file of finance. “One thing that I felt was lacking was real insider baseball-type humor,” Lit said. “You look at CNBC or Bloomberg, it's probably people who aren't insiders that are reporting on the news or talking about the stock markets.” Memes are top of the funnel. Litquidity began as a meme account, attracting advertisers as its revenue source. But Lit felt that could only go so far – “I don't think they're like the highest value monetization paths to go through because you'll saturate your audience with ads, and people hate ads” – so he spun off Exec Sum, a newsletter that pithily summarizes the days finance and markets news. And more importantly, provides valuable surface area for high-value ads. “I really thought of how can I provide value to my audience in a way that would also make sense monetarily.” Publishing and investing mesh . Like Packy McCormick and Anthony Pompliano , Lit sees the opportunity to use his publishing reach as a way to expand his investmenting by raising a fund. Eventually, he sees Liquidity as more of an investment fund with a publishing arm rather than vice versa. “That's how I want that to be viewed going forward as I continue to build out the credibility and the track record.” Expanding beyond a personal brand is hard . Recently, Litquidity lost its “only employee” – there are a handful of part-timers – when Mark Moran split to focus on an investor relations play, Equity Animal . Expanding a media company tied to a person, even one who uses a pseudonym, is tricky. “One of the things that I found difficult was having the entire brand being ied by my humor and my voice,” he said. “If you start to introduce other creators or elements who don't fit that, then it starts to dilute that brand.”