Cluely’s Roy Lee hints that viral hype is not enough

Whereas Roy Lee, the founding father of Cluely, argues that startups ought to be thinking harder about social media virality, he additionally admits that model consciousness alone received’t result in sustained development.

“I can’t say if it’s a mistake, however possibly we launched too early,” Lee mentioned on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 final week. “The entire concept [was] let’s launch one thing that hardly works, and if we will get sufficient preliminary customers, they’ll discover out the use circumstances for us.”

Cluely burst onto the tech scene in April with rage bait advertising and marketing for a product it claimed would assist customers “cheat on all the pieces.” Lee first made headlines when he was suspended from Columbia University for constructing a device used for dishonest on coding job interviews. He channeled that notoriety into Cluely, a startup that claimed to assist customers “cheat on all the pieces” by delivering undetectable info throughout on-line conversations.

In late June, Cluely introduced its enterprise product, which claimed to serve a number of use circumstances, together with serving to with gross sales calls, buyer help, and distant tutoring.

However earlier this week, the startup shifted and narrowed its scope when it launched a brand new web site that calls its product an AI assistant for conferences. The corporate’s plan now’s to “grow to be the very best AI word taker, beginning with the buyer,” Lee mentioned on stage. As an AI notetaker, Cluely is clearly coming into a crowded market however Roy touted performance equivalent to “sending follow-up emails.”

However he deflected questions on how effectively gross sales and retention had been going, besides to say: “I’ll say we’re doing higher than I anticipated, however it’s not the quickest rising firm of all time,” Lee mentioned.

The startup’s capacity to seize consideration helped it safe a $15 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz in June. That month, a16z companion Bryan Kim mentioned on the agency’s podcast that he backed Cluely as a result of Lee had found out the best way to convert the attention into paying prospects.

When the corporate launched its product this summer season, Lee boasted that the startup’s ARR skyrocketed from $3 million to $7 million within just one week. “Each single one that has a gathering or an interview is testing this out,” Lee informed TechCrunch then.

However 4 months later, Lee is now not wanting to flaunt his firm’s monetary metrics. “What I’ve realized is it’s best to by no means share income numbers.”

Lee claimed that there’s no upside to revealing his firm’s efficiency: “When you’re doing effectively, no one goes to speak about how effectively you’re doing, however in case you’re doing poorly, then all people will solely discuss how poorly you’re doing.”  

Nevertheless, dozens of founders at fast-growing AI startups don’t have any qualms about publicly revealing their ARR numbers, making the sharing of explosive development a typical observe amid the AI growth.

Cluely’s expertise up to now means that with regards to software program, social media consideration solely goes up to now if the corporate doesn’t have a robust product to maintain prospects as soon as it intrigues them.