Cluely’s Roy Lee On The Ragebait Strategy For Startup Marketing

Cluely’s Roy Lee has a connection for startup founders: you should beryllium reasoning harder astir really to spell viral.

“Generally, if you’re not successful heavy tech, past you request to low-key heavy attraction connected distribution,” Lee told nan crowd astatine Disrupt 2025.

But he besides made it clear that not everyone was trim retired for this benignant of viral marketing.

“If you’re immoderate bully astatine engineering, you’re astir apt not funny and you’re astir apt not going to beryllium a contented creator because you don’t person it successful your blood. Realistically, astir of these group person nary chance of going viral.”

Cluely’s AI adjunct grew celebrated this April pinch a viral declare that its undetectable windows could “help you cheat connected anything” — a declare that was quickly disproven erstwhile a drawstring of proctoring services showed they could, successful fact, observe usage of nan AI assistant. But successful a matter of months, nan institution had raised $15 cardinal from Andressen Horowitz, becoming 1 of nan astir visible products successful nan crowded AI adjunct space.

As Lee frames it, it’s portion of his talent for going viral, which often intends making tons of group very angry astatine him. “I deliberation I’m peculiarly bully astatine framing myself successful a measurement that’s controversial,” he said onstage. “I do a batch of things that are different. And everything I do that’s different, I framework it done nan select of my voice. And my sound is people conscionable very enraging to a batch of people.”

For Lee, it’s portion of a broader mentation of societal media, successful which attraction is nan only currency.

“Reputation is benignant of a point of nan past,” Lee said. “You tin effort to beryllium nan New York Times and defender your ironclad reputation, but realistically you’ve sewage Sam Altman connected nan timeline talking astir basking guys and you’ve sewage Elon Musk going batshit crazy.”

“You conscionable person to recognize that nan world is trending to a different place,” he continued, “where you person to beryllium extreme, you person to beryllium authentic and you person to beryllium personal.”

It’s difficult to opportunity really good that strategy is working, though. When asked for Cluely’s gross numbers aliases personification numbers, however, Lee demurred.

“What I’ve learned is that you should ne'er stock gross numbers because if you’re doing well, cipher will talk astir really good you’re doing. And if you’re doing poorly, group will only talk astir really poorly you’re doing,” Lee said.“I’ll opportunity we’re doing amended than I expected, but it’s not nan fastest increasing institution of each time.”