Roy Lee from Cluely has a message for startup founders. He believes they should be thinking harder about how to go viral. He told the audience at Disrupt 2025 that if a company is not in deep tech, it needs to quietly but intensely focus on distribution.
He also stated that not everyone is suited for viral marketing. Lee suggested that people who are good at engineering are likely not funny and probably will not become content creators because they do not have that innate talent. He said that realistically, most of these individuals have no chance of going viral.
Cluely’s AI assistant became famous this past April with a viral claim that its undetectable windows could help you cheat on anything. This claim was quickly disproven when several proctoring services demonstrated they could, in fact, detect the AI assistant. However, within a few months, the company raised fifteen million dollars from Andreessen Horowitz. This made it one of the most visible products in the crowded AI assistant market.
Lee frames this success as part of his talent for going viral, which often involves making many people very angry at him. He said he is particularly good at framing himself in a controversial way. He explained that he does many things that are different, and he frames all of them through the filter of his own voice. He noted that his voice is naturally very enraging to a lot of people.
For Lee, this is part of a broader theory of social media where attention is the only currency. He said that reputation is a thing of the past. He argued that while you can try to guard an ironclad reputation like the New York Times, the reality is that you have figures like Sam Altman and Elon Musk behaving in highly personal and extreme ways on their timelines.
He continued by saying you have to realize the world is trending to a different place. In this new reality, you have to be extreme, you have to be authentic, and you have to be personal.
It is difficult to say how well this strategy is working for Cluely. When asked for the company’s revenue or user numbers, Lee declined to share them. He explained that you should never share revenue numbers because if you are doing well, no one will talk about how well you are doing. Conversely, if you are doing poorly, people will only talk about how poorly you are doing. He did say the company is doing better than he expected, but he clarified it is not the fastest growing company of all time.