Some startups build products. Cluely, the AI cheating assistant platform builds narratives. When the entire ‘Soham Saga’ was unfolding over the moonlighting issue, the startup seized the opportunity. It released a video saying Parekh had used their tool to crack multiple interviews, even as the latter claimed not to have used it.
Notably, Cluely is known for building products that help users cheat during high-stakes situations such as job interviews, exams, sales calls, and meetings.
In an exclusive interview with AIM on Monday, Chungin Roy Lee, founder, revealed that Cluely’s marketing and distribution strategy is different from its counterparts.
The company hires influencers because Lee believes the nature of attention has fundamentally changed. “Marketing and growth and distribution look very different today than they looked 10 years ago,” he said, adding that the way to attract a million viewers these days isn’t by buying a Super Bowl ad, but instead, by hiring an influencer who is currently trending on the algorithm.
For Lee, traditional channels like television, podcasts, and even YouTube are no longer effective. “People don’t watch TV. People don’t watch YouTube. People don’t listen to podcasts. What they do is scroll on Instagram, TikTok, and even Twitter,” he said. “You want influencers who are tapped into these algorithms because this is where all of people’s attention is going.”
In a recent podcast, Roy described his deep understanding of virality and content distribution across TikTok, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) as his superpower. He believes that most tech people underestimate how algorithmic virality works outside of LinkedIn and X. The term he uses for this kind of marketing is called Rizz marketing.
What is Cluely?
While at Columbia University, Lee and Neel Shanmugam built Interview Coder, a tool that helped engineers cheat in job interviews by giving AI-powered answers in real-time. Lee was suspended after a post about it went viral on X. That controversy ultimately led to their side project becoming a full-time startup.
The company has raised substantial funding. $5.3 million in seed funding from Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures, followed by a $15 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
Lee told AIM that Cluely is often branded as a ‘cheating app,’ but the company is choosing to wear the title like a badge. He explained that the perception is part of the plan.
“It is inevitable that when you see someone use Cluely in an interview, a sales call, a meeting, anything, and they use AI in a way that nobody else knows they’re using AI, someone is going to think that it’s cheating,” Lee said.
He acknowledged that some people might find it strange to advertise a product as a cheating tool in the coming months. However, he believes that people will eventually recognise that the “cheating tool” label is simply a marketing stunt.
“People who redefine the word cheating. This is a historic change in humanity. And it becomes a lot cooler what we do,” Lee said.
He explained that when they avoid using the word cheating and instead describe Cluely as offering “invisible AI assistance during meetings,” people tend to assume the company is dishonest. “Then people think this company is slimy, they lie, and they’re not honest with the users, which is li bad,” he said.
According to him, what sets Cluely apart is its extreme transparency in the public eye. “We are extremely honest about everything,” he added.
How Cluely Works
Lee didn’t reveal every technical detail, but he shared the key challenge Cluely solves. “The main work is in context stitching, pulling information from the screen, audio, and prompts and putting them together for the model to understand.”
He revealed that the company uses the ChatGPT model under the hood, but its real moat lies in how to feed the model the right context.
Speaking about the company culture, Lee shared that his employees have more fun than those at any other company in the world.
Lee believes that most roles in a startup are unnecessary. In his view, all a company really needs are engineers and influencers. Everything else, he said, is either bloat or easily outsourced.
“I don’t think it’s actually real or necessary,” Lee said, referring to the role of product managers. Cluely keeps its team lean and focused, with every employee having a critical function. “The people that don’t have critical functions, all of that gets outsourced,” he added.
Business Model and Customers
Cluely charges consumers $20 per month or $100 per year. While it has prosumer users, often leveraging the tool in meetings and sales calls, the majority of its revenue comes from large enterprise contracts.
“Most of our revenue comes from enterprise directly, rather than consumers,” Lee said, noting that enterprise deals are typically priced per seat per month and billed annually.
Lee sees no limit to where Cluely can be applied next. The startup is already experimenting with various verticals where real-time AI support can make a difference. “The idea space of real-time AI augmenting humans is literally infinite,” he said, pointing to education, healthcare, customer service, and creative industries as examples.
“Every single industry in the world where you need information is an industry where AI can help and where specifically Cluely can help.”
The Five-Year Vision
In Lee’s vision, Cluely will soon be the default interface for interacting with AI, one that overtakes conventional tools like ChatGPT.
“Nobody’s going to use ChatGPT.com in five years,” he said. “Everyone is going to be on Cluely. And this is the way people will digest information from AI. And if it’s not directly Cluely, then it will be some other interface that looks like Cluely.”
The company expects to hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue within its first year. Lee believes that consumer adoption will reinforce enterprise usage and vice versa, creating a self-reinforcing flywheel. “We will be the dominant AI provider for both consumer and enterprise,” he said. “And this will all happen in five years.”
Global Expansion and a Bet on Risk
Cluely is already in conversations to expand to the Middle East and plans to scale globally. “We aim to be global. And the sooner we can be global, the better,” Lee said, hinting that an India office could be on the horizon within a year.
Reflecting on his own journey, dropping out of Columbia University and starting Cluely at 21, Lee offered advice to young founders. “You should take more risk. The upside of risk is much, much higher than you think. And the potential downside of risk is way, way smaller than you think.”
For those just starting out or looking to learn AI, his advice is straightforward: build something. “The best way to learn is by building. The best way to improve mentally is by acting physically,” he said.
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