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

Cluely’s Roy Lee has a connection for startup founders: you should beryllium reasoning harder astir however to spell viral.

“Generally, if you’re not successful heavy tech, past you request to low-key heavy absorption connected distribution,” Lee told the assemblage astatine Disrupt 2025.

But helium besides made it wide that not everyone was chopped retired for this benignant of viral marketing.

“If you’re immoderate bully astatine engineering, you’re astir apt not comic and you’re astir apt not going to beryllium a contented creator due to the fact that you don’t person it successful your blood. Realistically, astir of these radical person nary accidental of going viral.”

Cluely’s AI adjunct grew celebrated this April with a viral assertion that its undetectable windows could “help you cheat connected anything” — a assertion that was rapidly disproven erstwhile a drawstring of proctoring services showed they could, successful fact, observe usage of the AI assistant. But successful a substance of months, the institution had raised $15 cardinal from Andressen Horowitz, becoming 1 of the astir disposable products successful the crowded AI adjunct space.

As Lee frames it, it’s portion of his endowment for going viral, which often means making tons of radical precise aggravated astatine him. “I deliberation I’m peculiarly bully astatine framing myself successful a mode that’s controversial,” helium said onstage. “I bash a batch of things that are different. And everything I bash that’s different, I framework it done the filter of my voice. And my dependable is people conscionable precise enraging to a batch of people.”

For Lee, it’s portion of a broader mentation of societal media, successful which attraction is the lone currency.

“Reputation is benignant of a happening of the past,” Lee said. “You tin effort to beryllium the New York Times and defender your ironclad reputation, but realistically you’ve got Sam Altman connected the timeline talking astir blistery guys and you’ve got Elon Musk going batshit crazy.”

“You conscionable person to recognize that the satellite is trending to a antithetic place,” helium continued, “where you person to beryllium extreme, you person to beryllium authentic and you person to beryllium personal.”

It’s hard to accidental however good that strategy is working, though. When asked for Cluely’s gross numbers oregon idiosyncratic numbers, however, Lee demurred.

“What I’ve learned is that you should ne'er stock gross numbers due to the fact that if you’re doing well, cipher volition speech astir however good you’re doing. And if you’re doing poorly, radical volition lone speech astir however poorly you’re doing,” Lee said.“I’ll accidental we’re doing amended than I expected, but it’s not the fastest increasing institution of each time.”