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

Cluely’s Roy Lee has a message for startup founders: try to be pondering tougher about find out how to go viral.

“Typically, in case you’re not in deep tech, then it’s essential to low-key deep give attention to distribution,” Lee informed the group at Disrupt 2025.

However he additionally made it clear that not everybody was reduce out for this sort of viral advertising and marketing.

“When you’re any good at engineering, you’re in all probability not humorous and also you’re in all probability 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 likelihood of going viral.”

Cluely’s AI assistant grew well-known this April with a viral declare that its undetectable home windows might “provide help to cheat on something” — a declare that was rapidly disproven when a string of proctoring providers 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 probably the most seen merchandise within the crowded AI assistant house.

As Lee frames it, it’s a part of his expertise for going viral, which regularly means making numerous individuals very offended at him. “I believe I’m notably good at framing myself in a manner that’s controversial,” he stated onstage. “I do a whole lot of issues which can be totally different. And all the things I do this’s totally different, I body it by means of 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 concept of social media, by which consideration is the one forex.

“Repute is type of a factor of the previous,” Lee stated. “You possibly can attempt to be the New York Occasions 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 appreciate that the world is trending to a distinct place,” he continued, “the place you need to be excessive, you need to be genuine and you need to be private.”

It’s laborious to say how effectively that technique is working, although. When requested for Cluely’s income numbers or consumer numbers, nevertheless, Lee demurred.

“What I’ve discovered is that you must by no means share income numbers as a result of in case you’re doing effectively, no one will speak about how effectively 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.”