{"id":304433,"date":"2025-11-21T03:27:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T03:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/304433\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T03:27:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T03:27:13","slug":"san-franciscos-most-controversial-startup-is-moving-to-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/304433\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco\u2019s most controversial startup is moving to New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cluely is trying to offload all three floors of its SoMa frat-pad headquarters on Bryant Street (opens in new tab)<\/a>, a mere six months after moving in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The startup plans to relocate to New York, Cluely CEO Roy Lee confirmed to The Standard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lee said the company is moving out because it\u2019s illegal for them to live and work in the building, which is zoned as office space.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWork-live\u2026is extremely important to the company,\u201d Lee said. \u201cNew York is a stronger location for consumer startups and content creation, which are both vital to the company.\u201d Lee said there is currently no timeline for the startup\u2019s move.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When The Standard visited the Cluely office in July, six employees lived in the building, while nearly a dozen others, as well as content creators, were being put up across the street. The Standard\u2019s story<\/a>, which includes photos of the space, was submitted as evidence in a complaint to the San Francisco Planning Commission alleging Cluely employees were illegally living in the building. The complaint (opens in new tab)<\/a> is currently under review.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TheThe complaint to the Planning Comission cited \u201copen mattresses under stairs.\u201d | Source: Frank Zhou\/The Standard<\/p>\n

The move comes weeks after Lee acknowledged that viral hype might not be enough to build his \u201ccheat on everything\u201d AI app that provides undetectable real-time analysis, questions, and notes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t say if it\u2019s a mistake, but maybe we launched too early,\u201d he said last month at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. \u201cThe whole idea [was], let\u2019s launch something that barely works, and if we can get enough initial users, they will become the power users; they will find out the use cases for us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Listen toThe Standard Podcasts<\/p>\n

Life in Seven SongsTuesday, Sept. 24<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Lee declined to answer questions about the company\u2019s metrics during the event at Moscone West, despite boasting about the numbers this summer. \u201cI\u2019ll say we\u2019re doing better than I expected, but it\u2019s not the fastest growing company of all time,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lee also admitted at Disrupt that growth has been slower than he hoped: \u201cA lot of the reason for lower product velocity right now is because we\u2019re suffering from a lot of tech debt from a quick launch.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The company is struggling to find product market fit, according to a source familiar with internal operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNot sure what metrics people are using to determine a lack of product market fit, but people online will say anything,\u201d Lee said in a text message to The Standard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last month, Cluely repositioned itself as an AI assistant for meetings that can handle tasks like sending follow-up emails. It joins a competitive field of AI meeting tools, including ChatGPT, Granola, and Otter.ai (opens in new tab)<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lee explained that he pivoted Cluely into a notetaker because it\u2019s one of the only consumer AI tools he\u2019s seen to be valuable to consumers. He said the company\u2019s future depends on how quickly AI models improve.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the models plateau here, then we become the best AI notetaker \u2026 and if the models get ridiculously better, then you saw the video yourself,\u201d he said, referencing Cluely\u2019s April launch video showing Lee using the technology in his glasses to lie about his age, job, and interests while on a blind date. The video, which ends with the woman storming out of the restaurant in anger, has more than 13 million views on X (opens in new tab)<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lee said in June (opens in new tab)<\/a> that Cluely\u2019s goal was to be on every person\u2019s computer within a year and to reach $100 million in annual recurring revenue faster than any company in history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cluely raised $15 million from Andreessen Horowitz this year, just two months after its $5.3 million seed round. In July, Lee told The Standard that Cluely had $7 million in annual recurring revenue; 100,000 users, concentrated in the U.S.; and had some profitable weeks.<\/p>\n

\"AnCluely transformed the three-story into an AI startup office and content creation hub.\u200b | Source: Frank Zhou\/The Standard<\/p>\n

The original incarnation of the startup was at Columbia University, where Lee and cofounder Neel Shanmugam built an AI tool to help students cheat on coding interviews. Both dropped out of school after facing disciplinary action and moved to San Francisco to build Cluely.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The startup rose to prominence for its focus on social media virality. In July, the office seemed more like a Los Angeles creator mansion than a Silicon Valley hacker house: Engineers were outnumbered by influencers who spent all day creating content to pump up Cluely downloads.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are the kings of distribution and the kings of virality,\u201d Lee said at the time.<\/a> \u201cNever, ever before in the history of humanity has it been possible to pick up a camera, talk for five seconds, and reach 100 million people. We\u2019re using that to build a generational company.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cluely is trying to offload all three floors of its SoMa frat-pad headquarters on Bryant Street (opens in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,3195,1283,122894,1166,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-304433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-chatgpt","12":"tag-openai","13":"tag-soma","14":"tag-startups","15":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}