Cluely’s Roy Lee Hints That Viral Hype Is Not Enough

While Roy Lee, nan laminitis of Cluely, argues that startups should beryllium thinking harder astir societal media virality, he besides admits that marque consciousness unsocial won’t lead to sustained growth.

“I can’t opportunity if it’s a mistake, but possibly we launched excessively early,” Lee said on shape astatine TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 past week. “The full thought [was] let’s motorboat thing that hardly works, and if we tin get capable first users, they will find retired nan usage cases for us.”

Cluely burst onto nan tech segment successful April pinch rage bait trading for a merchandise it claimed would thief users “cheat connected everything.” Lee first made headlines erstwhile he was suspended from Columbia University for building a instrumentality utilized for cheating connected coding occupation interviews. He channeled that notoriety into Cluely, a startup that claimed to thief users “cheat connected everything” by delivering undetectable accusation during online conversations.

In precocious June, Cluely introduced its endeavor product, which claimed to service aggregate usage cases, including helping pinch income calls, customer support, and distant tutoring.

But earlier this week, nan startup shifted and narrowed its scope erstwhile it introduced a caller website that calls its merchandise an AI adjunct for meetings. The company’s scheme now is to “become nan champion AI statement taker, starting pinch nan consumer,” Lee said connected stage. As an AI notetaker, Cluely is intelligibly entering a crowded marketplace but Roy touted functionality specified arsenic “sending follow-up emails.”

But he deflected questions connected really good income and retention were going, isolated from to say: “I’ll opportunity we’re doing amended than I expected, but it’s not nan fastest increasing institution of each time,” Lee said.

The startup’s expertise to drawback attraction helped it unafraid a $15 cardinal Series A from Andreessen Horowitz successful June. That month, a16z partner Bryan Kim said connected nan firm’s podcast that he backed Cluely because Lee had figured retired really to convert nan attention into paying customers.

When nan institution introduced its merchandise this summer, Lee boasted that nan startup’s ARR skyrocketed from $3 cardinal to $7 cardinal wrong conscionable 1 week. “Every azygous personification who has a gathering aliases an question and reply is testing this out,” Lee told TechCrunch then.

But 4 months later, Lee is nary longer eager to flaunt his company’s financial metrics. “What I’ve learned is you should ne'er stock gross numbers.”

Lee claimed that there’s nary upside to revealing his company’s performance: “If you’re doing well, cipher is going to talk astir really good you’re doing, but if you’re doing poorly, past everybody will only talk astir really poorly you’re doing.”  

However, dozens of founders astatine fast-growing AI startups person nary qualms astir publically revealing their ARR numbers, making nan sharing of explosive maturation a modular believe amid nan AI boom.

Cluely’s acquisition frankincense acold suggests that erstwhile it comes to software, societal media attraction only goes truthful acold if nan institution doesn’t person a beardown merchandise to support customers erstwhile it intrigues them.