Whereas Roy Lee, the founding father of Cluely, argues that startups must be considering tougher 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 perhaps we launched too early,” Lee stated on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 final week. “The entire thought [was] let’s launch one thing that hardly works, and if we are able to get sufficient preliminary customers, they are going to 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 every thing.” Lee first made headlines when he was suspended from Columbia College 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 every thing” by delivering undetectable data throughout on-line conversations.

In late June, Cluely launched its enterprise product, which claimed to serve a number of use circumstances, together with serving to with gross sales calls, buyer assist, 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 could be to “develop into the very best AI be aware taker, beginning with the buyer,” Lee stated on stage. As an AI notetaker, Cluely is clearly getting into a crowded market however Roy touted performance equivalent to “sending follow-up emails.”

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

The startup’s potential to seize consideration helped it safe a $15 million Sequence A from Andreessen Horowitz in June. That month, a16z associate Bryan Kim stated on the agency’s podcast that he backed Cluely as a result of Lee had found out easy methods to convert the eye into paying clients.

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

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

Lee claimed that there’s no upside to revealing his firm’s efficiency: “For those who’re doing nicely, no person goes to speak about how nicely you’re doing, however for those who’re doing poorly, then everyone will solely speak about 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 normal follow amid the AI increase.

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