Last summer, Cluely co-founder and CEO Roy Lee shared with TechCrunch that the company had reached seven million dollars in annual recurring revenue. On Thursday, Lee admitted on X that this number was a lie. He wrote that this was the only blatantly dishonest thing he had said publicly online and offered a formal retraction.
However, his post on X also misrepresents how the interview came about. Lee claimed he received a random cold call from someone asking about numbers and told her false information, not expecting an article. In reality, the call occurred because Cluely’s public relations representative had emailed TechCrunch and offered to arrange an interview with Lee. The PR person sent an email to TechCrunch reporter Marina Temkin, proposing a conversation. Temkin agreed, and the representative provided Lee’s contact information, confirming he was expecting the call. After a few attempts, Lee answered and gave the interview as planned.
TechCrunch was interested in Cluely because, during the summer of 2025, the company was a viral phenomenon. It was known as a “cheat-on-everything” startup that allowed users to secretly look up answers during video calls without detection. The company was founded after Lee published a viral post on X stating he had been suspended by Columbia University for developing a tool to cheat on software engineering job interviews. The co-founders raised millions in seed funding to commercialize that tool, positioning it as a way to secretly find answers during online interviews. For a time, Cluely seemed so successful that it prompted the emergence of a counter-industry of detection tools designed to catch its users.
In June of that year, Cluely raised a substantial Series A round. The company had become adept at creating provocative, viral content using stunts and outrageous claims to stay in the headlines and attract users. This strategy was widely discussed. Lee even spoke about the effectiveness of these rage-bait marketing tactics for gaining early customers at a TechCrunch event in October. During that appearance, he declined to share updated revenue numbers and advised that one should never share revenue figures, noting that marketing alone cannot build a sustainable business when a product is still in flux.
Cluely has since rebranded as an AI-powered meeting note-taker. But in admitting to the lie and posting numbers from his Stripe account, Lee appears to have forgotten his own advice.