{"id":117771,"date":"2025-11-06T02:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T02:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/117771\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T02:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T02:04:09","slug":"cluelys-roy-lee-hints-that-viral-hype-is-not-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/117771\/","title":{"rendered":"Cluely’s Roy Lee hints that viral hype is not enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Roy Lee, the founder of Cluely, argues that startups should be thinking harder<\/a> about social media virality, he also admits that brand awareness alone won\u2019t lead to sustained growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t say if it\u2019s a mistake, but maybe we launched too early,\u201d Lee said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025<\/a> last week. \u201cThe whole idea [was] let\u2019s launch something that barely works, and if we can get enough initial users, they will find out the use cases for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cluely burst onto the tech scene in April with rage-bait marketing for a product it claimed would help users \u201ccheat on everything.\u201d Lee first made headlines when he was suspended from Columbia University<\/a> for building a tool used for cheating on coding job interviews. He channeled that notoriety into Cluely, a startup that claimed to help users \u201ccheat on everything\u201d by delivering undetectable information during online conversations.<\/p>\n

In late June, Cluely introduced its enterprise product<\/a>, which claimed to serve multiple use cases, including helping with sales calls, customer support, and remote tutoring.<\/p>\n

But earlier this week, the startup shifted and narrowed its scope when it introduced a new website that calls its product an AI assistant for meetings. The company\u2019s plan now is to \u201cbecome the best AI note taker, starting with the consumer,\u201d Lee said onstage. As an AI notetaker, Cluely is clearly entering a crowded market but Roy touted functionality such as \u201csending follow-up emails.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he deflected questions on how well sales and retention were going, except to say: \u201cI\u2019ll say we\u2019re doing better than I expected, but it\u2019s not the fastest growing company of all time,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n

The startup\u2019s ability to grab attention helped it secure a $15 million Series A<\/a> from Andreessen Horowitz in June. That month, a16z partner Bryan Kim said on the firm\u2019s podcast that he backed Cluely because Lee had figured out how to convert the attention<\/a> into paying customers.<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

When the company introduced its product this summer, Lee boasted that the startup\u2019s ARR skyrocketed from $3 million to $7 million within just one week<\/a>. \u201cEvery single person who has a meeting or an interview is testing this out,\u201d Lee told TechCrunch then.<\/p>\n

But four months later, Lee is no longer eager to flaunt his company\u2019s financial metrics. \u201cWhat I\u2019ve learned is you should never share revenue numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee claimed that there\u2019s no upside to revealing his company\u2019s performance: \u201cIf you\u2019re doing well, nobody is going to talk about how well you\u2019re doing, but if you\u2019re doing poorly, then everybody will only talk about how poorly you\u2019re doing.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

However, dozens of founders at fast-growing AI startups have no qualms about publicly revealing their ARR numbers, making the sharing of explosive growth a standard practice amid the AI boom.<\/p>\n

Cluely\u2019s experience thus far suggests that when it comes to software, social media attention only goes so far if the company doesn\u2019t have a strong product to keep customers once it intrigues them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Roy Lee, the founder of Cluely, argues that startups should be thinking harder about social media virality,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[40959,114,73788,293,85,46,73789,778],"class_list":{"0":"post-117771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-a16z","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-cluely","11":"tag-entrepreneurship","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-roy-lee","15":"tag-techcrunch-disrupt-2025"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}