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

Cluely’s Roy Lee has a message for startup founders: you should think more about how to go viral.

“In general, if you’re not deep in tech, then you need to focus low-key deep in distribution,” Lee told the crowd at Disrupt 2025.

But it also made it clear that not everyone was cut out for this kind of viral marketing.

“If you’re good at engineering, you’re probably not funny, and you’re probably not going to be a content creator because it’s not in your blood. Realistically, most of these people have no chance of going viral.”

Cluely’s AI assistant gained notoriety in April by claiming that its undetectable windows could “help you cheat on anything” — a claim that was quickly debunked when a number of detection services showed that they could in fact detect the use of the AI ​​assistant. But within months, the company had raised $15 million from Andressen Horowitz, and became one of the most visible products in the crowded AI assistant space.

As Lee frames it, it’s part of his talent to go viral, which often means making a lot of people very angry with him. “I think I’m particularly good at framing myself in a controversial way,” he said on stage. “I do a lot of things that are different. And everything that I do is different, I frame it through the filter of my voice. And my voice is naturally very infuriating to a lot of people.”

For Lee, it’s part of a larger theory of social media, in which attention is the only currency.

“The reputation is kind of a thing of the past,” Lee said. “You can try to be The New York Times and protect your reputation, but realistically you have Sam Altman on the timeline talking about hot guys and you have Elon Musk going crazy.”

“You just have to realize that the world is moving to a different place,” he continued, “where you have to be extreme, you have to be authentic, and you have to be personal.”

However, it’s hard to say how well this strategy works. When asked about Cluely’s revenue or user numbers, however, Lee declined.

“What I learned is that you should never share revenue numbers because if you’re doing well, no one will talk about how well you’re doing. And if you’re not doing well, people will only talk about how bad you’re doing,” Lee said. “I will say we’re doing better than I expected, but it’s not the fastest growing company ever.”