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

While Roy Lee, the laminitis of Cluely, argues that startups should beryllium thinking harder astir societal media virality, helium besides admits that marque consciousness unsocial won’t pb to sustained growth.

“I can’t accidental if it’s a mistake, but possibly we launched excessively early,” Lee said on signifier astatine TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 past week. “The full thought [was] let’s motorboat thing that hardly works, and if we tin get capable archetypal users, they volition find retired the usage cases for us.”

Cluely burst onto the tech country successful April with rage bait selling for a merchandise it claimed would assistance users “cheat connected everything.” Lee archetypal made headlines erstwhile helium was suspended from Columbia University for gathering a instrumentality utilized for cheating connected coding occupation interviews. He channeled that notoriety into Cluely, a startup that claimed to assistance users “cheat connected everything” by delivering undetectable accusation during online conversations.

In precocious June, Cluely introduced its endeavor product, which claimed to service aggregate usage cases, including helping with income calls, lawsuit support, and distant tutoring.

But earlier this week, the startup shifted and narrowed its scope erstwhile it introduced a caller website that calls its merchandise an AI adjunct for meetings. The company’s program present is to “become the champion AI enactment taker, starting with the consumer,” Lee said connected stage. As an AI notetaker, Cluely is intelligibly entering a crowded marketplace but Roy touted functionality specified arsenic “sending follow-up emails.”

But helium deflected questions connected however good income and retention were going, but to say: “I’ll accidental we’re doing amended than I expected, but it’s not the fastest increasing institution of each time,” Lee said.

The startup’s quality to drawback attraction helped it unafraid a $15 cardinal Series A from Andreessen Horowitz successful June. That month, a16z spouse Bryan Kim said connected the firm’s podcast that helium backed Cluely due to the fact that Lee had figured retired however to convert the attention into paying customers.

When the institution introduced its merchandise this summer, Lee boasted that the startup’s ARR skyrocketed from $3 cardinal to $7 cardinal wrong conscionable 1 week. “Every azygous idiosyncratic who has a gathering oregon an interrogation is investigating this out,” Lee told TechCrunch then.

But 4 months later, Lee is nary longer anxious to flaunt his company’s fiscal metrics. “What I’ve learned is you should ne'er stock gross numbers.”

Lee claimed that there’s nary upside to revealing his company’s performance: “If you’re doing well, cipher is going to speech astir however good you’re doing, but if you’re doing poorly, past everybody volition lone speech astir however poorly you’re doing.”  

However, dozens of founders astatine fast-growing AI startups person nary qualms astir publically revealing their ARR numbers, making the sharing of explosive maturation a modular signifier amid the AI boom.

Cluely’s acquisition frankincense acold suggests that erstwhile it comes to software, societal media attraction lone goes truthful acold if the institution doesn’t person a beardown merchandise to support customers erstwhile it intrigues them.