Cluely’s Roy Lee on the ragebait strategy for startup marketing

Cluely’s Roy Lee has a message for startup founders: you have to be considering more durable about go viral.

“Usually, in case you’re not in deep tech, then you could low-key deep deal with distribution,” Lee advised the gang at Disrupt 2025.

However he additionally made it clear that not everybody was lower out for this type of viral advertising.

“In the event you’re any good at engineering, you’re most likely not humorous and also you’re most likely not going to be a content material creator since you don’t have it in your blood. Realistically, most of those individuals don’t have any probability of going viral.”

Cluely’s AI assistant grew well-known this April with a viral declare that its undetectable home windows may “enable you cheat on something” — a declare that was shortly disproven when a string of proctoring services confirmed they may, in truth, detect use of the AI assistant. However in a matter of months, the corporate had raised $15 million from Andressen Horowitz, turning into one of the vital seen merchandise within the crowded AI assistant area.

As Lee frames it, it’s a part of his expertise for going viral, which frequently means making a number of individuals very indignant at him. “I believe I’m notably good at framing myself in a means that’s controversial,” he stated onstage. “I do quite a lot of issues which are completely different. And every little thing I try this’s completely different, I body it by the filter of my voice. And my voice is of course simply very enraging to lots of people.”

For Lee, it’s a part of a broader principle of social media, wherein consideration is the one forex.

“Fame is type of a factor of the previous,” Lee stated. “You’ll be able to attempt to be the New York Instances and guard your ironclad fame, however realistically you’ve received Sam Altman on the timeline speaking about scorching guys and also you’ve received Elon Musk going batshit loopy.”

“You simply have to understand that the world is trending to a unique place,” he continued, “the place it’s important to be excessive, it’s important to be genuine and it’s important to be private.”

It’s laborious to say how properly that technique is working, although. When requested for Cluely’s income numbers or person numbers, nonetheless, Lee demurred.

“What I’ve discovered is that it is best to by no means share income numbers as a result of in case you’re doing properly, no one will speak about how properly you’re doing. And in case you’re doing poorly, individuals will solely speak about how poorly you’re doing,” Lee stated.“I’ll say we’re doing higher than I anticipated, but it surely’s not the quickest rising firm of all time.”