Cluely Raises $15 Million From a16z | Roy Lee, Founder & CEO

Roy Lee, Founder & CEO of Cluely, announces their $15M from Andreessen Horowitz to build what they call the most viral AI startup in the world. In this deep dive, we break down their product, business model, fundraising strategy, controversial stunt marketing playbook, and what it means to scale with creator-led growth. With over $20M in total funding, Cluely is building real-time, undetectable screen overlays, Cluely is rethinking how AI should show up in your workflow, and they’re doing it profitably. Cluely last announced their $5.3M Seed round in April 2025, co-led by Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures. Whether you think they’re brilliant or reckless, this is one of the most fascinating startup stories in tech right now. Try Cluely: https://cluely.com/ Molly on X: https://x.com/MollySOSheaRoy on X: https://x.com/im_roy_lee Brought to you by: Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, and travel. As a Sourcery listener, you can unlock up to $500 toward Brex travel or $300 in cash back, plus exclusive perks to help you move even faster: https://brex.com/sourcery Kalshi—The largest prediction market and the only legal platform in the US where people can trade directly on the outcomes of future events: https://kalshi.com/sourcery Fourthwall—The #1 way to sell merch online — Fourthwall is the easiest way to launch a fully branded merch store—used by big brands like MKBHD, Acquired, & even the Smithsonian. 100+ products. No upfront cost. Visit Fourthwall to start today: https://fourthwall.com/Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc/TIMESTAMPS:00:00 - Roy Lee, Cluely 00:35 - $15M Led by a16z 02:21 - Cluely’s Viral Mega Launch 03:07 - Fundraising Strategies & Founder Mindset 04:51 - From Columbia to Silicon Valley 08:17 - Cluely: Product Overview & Vision 16:39 - Business Model & Profitability 21:10 - Stunt Marketing & Virality 26:48 - Idol: Elon Musk's Freedom & Success 27:05 - Controversies 27:46 - Criticism28:09 - Will Roy Go To Jail? 29:54 - Selling to Enterprise 32:20 - Importance of Viral Content 33:58 - Team Dynamics & 50 Interns 36:03 - Managing Stunts & Culture 46:36 - Leadership Challenges & Personal Reflections 51:09 - Kalshi Predictions & Future Outlook#podcast #investing #technology #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup #siliconvalley #Cluely #SeriesA #a16z #AmbientAI #FounderLed #CreatorLedGrowth #ViralMarketing #UndetectableAI #EscapeVelocity #ConquerorOfTheUniverse #RoyLee

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Molly O'Shea?

  Roy Lee, welcome to Sorcery. I just want to congratulate you on this big funding announcement.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Right now, revenue timelines are so compressed. If you don't believe that you yourself can get to 100 mil ARR in the next year, don't have to do it. Ever worried about like, oh, the next round? Think about your current company, you need more money right now. Like, bro, these rounds are closing in like hours. Virality, really important, but it means nothing if you can't do it consistently. There is no work-life balance. Your entire life is gluey and your entire work is gluey.

• 0:24Molly O'Shea?

  Roller coaster of an answer, but we love that. Founder mode.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Me versus Elon versus Sam. And we're all going to be competing for the title of conquer of the universe.

• 0:33Molly O'Shea?

  So Roy, we're here for some big news.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:37Molly O'Shea?

  You just raised a big next round.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did.

• 0:43Molly O'Shea?

  Who did you raise from and how much is it?

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Uh, we did 50 mil led by Andreessen. The big round.

• 0:51Molly O'Shea?

  How did you get to work with them, the bosses?

• 0:54Speaker 01

  In California and like within a week or two, the guys pulled up the office at one o'clock. Uh, and they just kept it and they do not have the money.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  They're all fixing the money and it just happened. I think of yeah, being of like sort of the way that you had to. The only way you will get some out of this and all somebody right now is by grant.

• 1:14Molly O'Shea?

  We're going to have a lot to talk about in this whole, let's start with this. But I'm, I can't wait to understand the line in which your investors feel comfortable investing in. Company like yours is constantly going after stunts.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think the actual bet is on our ability to contribute, which I think everyone has no doubt in. Um, truly, I think everyone recognizes that I have the ability to get a lot of eyeballs onto truly.com. Uh, the only thing that people are worried about is, uh, can he build enough sauce to like actually build a sustainable company underneath? But if the core bet is that distribution is the most important thing, then obviously like. We're the best distributor in the world right now. Um, at least in the early stage, and I think this is the actual bet that's being made. Distribution is going to end up being more important than anything. Technology can work fast, but if you don't have distribution, you don't have a sustainable business.

• 2:07Molly O'Shea?

  Have you gotten any pushback from the investors on some of your decisions yet?

• 2:12Speaker 01

  I care, but um, generally, they only invested in me because they knew that I would do great shit that a lot of it thinks me. And they believed in the ability for that to convert.

• 2:21Molly O'Shea?

  I think sorcery was the first one to break your viral launch. Um, I saw this trickling throughout media like days after. It's actually insane how slow like legacy media is. It's insane. Um, but right after, the day after I posted in sorcery. Cluey's mega viral launch and it had about seven million views at the time. Since then, I think you've doubled or maybe tripled that.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Something like that, yeah, yeah.

• 2:50Molly O'Shea?

  It's pretty insane.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I was, uh, I was not expecting it to go that viral. I had my hopes for like two to three million impressions. Like, to be honest, like literally like the hour before we launched, we were heavily debating, do we even launch? Should we just push back because we weren't happy with the editing? But um, I think like everything is just a lesson of just like, like, like fuck it, swing, swing big.

• 3:07Molly O'Shea?

  What are your general frameworks for fundraising? How do you think about it?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think um, on the founder front right now. I think if ever you're worried about like a down round or not being able to raise more in the future, like you're ever worried about, oh, I'm not going to raise as much this time. So I can raise more next round like, like I, I, I, I think you're making the wrong decision. Right now, revenue timelines are so compressed. If you don't believe that you yourself can get to a hundred mil ARR in the next year, then you should just, just don't fucking build a company because you don't have the balls to do it. Uh, you need to swing big at every moment, like you don't know where your company is going to be in three months. And if you are like meant to make it and your product is like good, then you will be somewhere crazy in three months. And if you're ever worried about like, oh, the next round, like, bro, like, like, like, think about your current round. Think about your current company, you need more money right now. Just uh, swing big.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  And I think on the investor front, there's nothing that pisses me off more than um, when like some investor wants to talk to me, they send me an email like, yo, like I'm trying to talk. And then they fucking loop in their assistant to schedule some time. Bro, these rounds are closing in like hours. Like it's not, it's not, you don't have two weeks to like schedule some time. If you wanna talk to the hottest guy, or you wanna talk to the hottest startup, then you need to like fucking book time ASAP. And it needs to be you. Like, there's nothing that turns, like, I can, if you've, if you've done this, you're probably not getting any allocation, cuz you've like ticked me off, cuz you've just told me I do not find you important enough. I need my assistant from the fucking Philippines to like schedule a time with you, cuz I don't, I, I, I don't have the, like, you're not high enough on my priority list. Like, okay, bet. Like, like, you're not getting allocation. The round closed two hours ago, and uh,

• 4:33Speaker 01

  yeah, yeah, yeah. I think investors need to move faster. There's some people who have uh expressed discontent at not being able to get into hotter rounds. It's like, bro, you should have moved faster.

• 4:43Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, wow.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  That's my thoughts on fundraising.

• 4:46Molly O'Shea?

  Roller coaster of an answer, but we love that. Founder mode. Uh, in terms of fundraising in general, you started the company at Columbia.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:56Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, so how did you get the idea to come to Silicon Valley and actually pursue this full time?

• 5:02Speaker 01

  It was uh, it was sort of like I burned every other bridge except building a company. Like, it all started with um, me going to Columbia, deciding I'm gonna go build a company. Like, the first day I came there during orientation week, I was asking every smart looking fucker I saw, like, hey, do you wanna build a company with me? Do you wanna build a company with me? And out of maybe like fifty people, there's literally only one person that said yes. And that was Neil, who's my current co-founder. And we started hacking on a bunch of things, and like, just nothing was working. Like, I'm like, I was here at Founders Inc. like, like a couple of months back, and we were working on this um, AI sales agent for, for liquor distributors. And it was like the most bullshit, like YC B two B, talk to your customers idea. Like, it was, it was so stupid. I had nothing to do with it. Um, like, like, yeah, nothing to do with me as a founder. Uh, just wasn't working. And the only thing that ever worked was this really shitty LinkedIn demo we made one day.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Uh, that had six hundred thousand views, and it was for a tool called Interview Coder. And like, the second it went viral, like, it sort of captured my heart. But it was, it was like the most dangerous, like, this is like the cheating tool. We sort of saw the vision for the marketing. We said, we, we knew if we use this for a bunch of Amazon, like, like, Fang interviews and got the offer, then this will go super viral. But we didn't have the balls to do it. Um, until everything stopped working. And at, at a certain point, you know, I'm sitting there with like a two point three GPA, my counselor's on my ass, and I'm like, okay, you know what? Like, like, let's go revisit the one thing that made me excited. That was Interview Coder. So I doubled down. I did all the marketing shit that I planned on doing, and it went super viral. And after a certain point, I mean, I built this cheating tool. I got kicked out of school. Uh, I got blacklisted from Amazon. Like, what can I do but fucking raise a round and go to California?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Like, there's uh, there's, there's, I burned every other bridge except this, and now um, this is like the one, the one path that's left for me.

• 6:33Molly O'Shea?

  The dream.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Bro, it's like the sickest path in the world. Yes, like who doesn't want to be out there building companies? Yeah, I think uh if you're if you're if you're like saving your I don't know like like like saving your time hoping like oh, maybe I'll get acquired. Like maybe I'll go work at big tech one day like bro, just just quit, bro, just quit.

• 6:47Molly O'Shea?

  Were you at all considering working in big tech?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Not for the past, I want to say maybe like year and a half.

• 6:54Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, and you're how old now?

• 6:55Speaker 01

  I'm twenty one.

• 6:56Molly O'Shea?

  You're twenty, okay.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Like twenty one and nine months. So I have like three months left before I'm the same age as the more core guys.

• 7:02Molly O'Shea?

  So you're not twenty one?

• 7:04Speaker 01

  I am twenty one, twenty one and nine.

• 7:05Molly O'Shea?

  And nine months.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  And nine months.

• 7:07Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, okay, okay, I got it. Do you feel pressure in this cohort of like young founders that are unlocking like AI growth? Like, what is the scenario there? Because like even in your fundraising, um in your fundraising experience, you're you're talking like, you know, I've got so much demand, like, why aren't people responding faster? Like, what like what is the actual experience on the ground as like one of these really young AI companies?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  I mean, of course, like I look at the cursor guys like Michael, like damn, this guy's killing it. I look at them are core guys. Brendan is killing it and um it I'm extremely competitive. It's the reason why I'm building companies. And when I see them, my age, just a little bit older than me, and they're doing like bigger things than me, it just uh like gets that dog in me riled up. I I need to see myself at the top. My ultimate dream, and I I I think this is almost inevitably going to happen, is uh all companies will converge into one, two, maybe three super companies and end of the line in maybe fifty years, it'll be me versus Elon versus Sam. And we're all going to be competing for the title of a conqueror of the universe. And um if I if I get there, like it starts with me beating all the other kids by age. So um of course, of course, I feel competitive.

• 8:16Molly O'Shea?

  Right. And going back into Cluely, like I want to go deep. Uh I really want to understand the product and what you're building. So could you just share what Cluely is?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, Clouie is a desktop app that shows up as a translucent screen overlay. It sees your screen and it hears your audio, so it's given a lot more context than, say, chatgpt.com. It's it's built on the thesis that um, the models will get multimodal one day. And uh, when you have superintelligence and you're trapped inside a chatbot, it's fundamentally extremely limiting. How many times a day do you screenshot something, paste it in chatgpt and then ask about it? Like, a lot, so much to the point where you shouldn't actually have to do that. Like, like, the chatbot is obviously the wrong interface. What is the correct interface? I think Apple is exploring, like, every, every single smart glass company, Apple, like, they're exploring the idea of AI integrated in your life. And what this looks like for them is like liquid glass, like a translucent overlay.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  I think everybody's approaching this um, and understands that this is the UX of the future. It's just a land grab to see who can uh, capture it first.

• 9:15Molly O'Shea?

  But why is that the UX of the future?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the, the, you don't want a separate app because AI should not feel like a, like a separate window. It's not a separate window, it should feel like a seamless integration into everything you're doing. Um, it should feel like an overlay. Uh, it should, it should, it should work. You shouldn't have to go to your workflow, go to another AI app and then go back to your workflow. This is the exact problem that Curseur solved and uh, they ended up making like fucking billions and billions of dollars. Like uh, what you want to do is you want to have AI integrated inside your workflow, not just one workflow, but every workflow. And it is inevitable that the models will get intelligent enough to do this. When they do, like, like, what does it actually look like to have a seamless integrated AI? I think right now we're the closest UX out there.

• 9:56Molly O'Shea?

  When you first launched, you launched as cheat on everything. Is the language still the same for that?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, this is the ultimate cheating tool. Like, this is a significant productivity unlocked to the point where it feels like cheating. And still, we are the tool that lets you use AI without anybody else knowing. We're still invisible to screen, screen share. We still have all our undetectability features and um, this is like a, this is a societal change that we're, that we're promoting here.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Everyone is going to feel like people using AI are cheating. Like already, teachers are out there saying like, yo, you can't use AI on your essays. You can't use AI on your assignments. They think it's cheating because it's uh in in reality like leverages you to do so much more than what you previously could. And as a result, every assignment, exam, quiz, uh, structure is pretty much outdated. And as a result, oh, let's just ban it because it's cheating. Like, **** bro, like, like, obviously, this is in the future. We all need to get like, get with the time and embrace it. And I think cheat on everything is like a, it's it's sort of a marketing stunt, but it's sort of real. This is how the world is gonna look at it. And if it's inevitable, they will see us as a cheating tool. Until they don't, then we should just fucking embrace it and and use use it for the marketing benefits that it provides.

• 11:01Molly O'Shea?

  What are the most popular use cases?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, obviously, a lot of people are using this in interviews, but the actual ability to.

• 11:07Molly O'Shea?

  Are you using it right now?

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Me? Why? I I I'm I'm here in person with you, so it's I don't have a computer. But if I did, yes, I'd be using it right now. The the the key thing that this lets you do, that pretty much no other tool in the market lets you do, is have AI running an interview or or a meeting and command enter, and it'll just feed you information that you it thinks you should know. The the the core technology is pretty akin to just give it the transcript of the meeting and ask have AI ask and ask it like, what is the person, what is the information that this person needs at this time? And this is something that pretty much no other tool in the market lets you do. So if you're if I'm in a if if I'm doing a sales call with you, I'm trying to sell a product, you ask me something and I'm a non-technical sales rep, so I have no idea what the fuck a rate limit is, just command enter and it'll just tell me what tell tell me every technical concept term that I need to know.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  If you're ever asking me a question, let's say, let's say I was was virtual and I did have my computer open. Every single question you ask me, I just command enter and it just tell me what to say.

• 12:02Molly O'Shea?

  The design is actually quite good.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 12:04Molly O'Shea?

  I complimented you on this earlier and the liquid glass is actually pretty funny. But how did you get the inspiration for that design?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, everything like clearly right now looks very similar to what Interview Cutter looked like. And Interview Cutter, I literally spent like two months like autistically trying to figure out what is the best overlay that I could do so that an interviewer is not going to know that I'm using AI. And it starts with dropping the opacity because, well, what Interview Cutter does is it gives you like a code answer. And you want to like have that code right on top of your code editor so you can write code and like see what the answer is side by side. Uh, so it needs to be translucent because if it's opaque, then you can't fucking see what you're writing. You can't see the work that you're doing. But I mean, this, this concept applies one to one with like every other workflow. Uh, you don't want AI to completely cover up the thing that you're doing. You want it to integrate seamlessly, hence why it's translucent.

• 12:51Molly O'Shea?

  How did you build out the product on the technical side?

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, well, the, we built Interview Cutter knowing that there were other tools like Interview Cutter. Uh, we just thought there were like some UX things that they got wrong. And obviously the marketing, they got extremely wrong. Um, it's, it's a desktop app that has a React front end. Um, the backend is just Cloudflare workers. It's just like serverless workers that are deployed on edge. And, um, right now our API, like we're using ChatGPT, but eventually with, with, with all the information that we have, we're probably going to fine tune our own models. And for some of our enterprise clients, we're probably going to just host open source models for them to use. That's completely private. They own all the data and everything. Um, the technology is like, for transcription, we use Deepgram, which as far as I understand is like

• 13:38Speaker 01

  state of the art transcription. It's super fast for speech to text and, um, for seeing your screen. We've played around with a few things and we think the most accurate thing is just taking a screenshot every time you prompt AI to do something. This captures like the eighty, twenty of use cases. Ultimately, the models will get to a point where you can just pass in, say like a thirty minute screen recording, or even like a, like a two hour long screen recording, and it can just reason over everything and just give you exactly what information you need at the last second of the screen recording. But in reality, the models aren't there yet. So this is sort of the workaround. This is like the biggest technical challenge we solve is the context staging. How can you get screen recording plus audio plus a system prompt and stitch them all together to get like a fast and accurate response? Um, that, that's our biggest technical challenge, but I mean, that's, that's how we're.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  So we're getting around it right now.

• 14:24Molly O'Shea?

  How do you think about security?

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Security? I mean, of course, like the the big bet, like the the big question everybody's sitting on their ass like like looking for is like, hey, Ken Roy, with his crazy reputation, like get some people to start trusting him. Um, if I can, then all of a sudden my marketing is like the most amazing thing in the world. And if I can't, then like, ah, fuck it, another viral stunt that just uh, it's like a relic of the past. Um, so to that end, we take security pretty seriously. We're uh, in observation for SOC two, ISO, and we're we're hiring a bunch of people to do like uh, strict audits, keep our data super secure. And I think as soon as the narrative changes once, then um, like we we win.

• 14:59Molly O'Shea?

  Who exactly are your current customers? Like, who's using this?

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a lot of uh, people who are using it for sales and call centers. I think this is the most interesting use case. And I think most obvious use case is like call centers. Like, there really is no tool that will just be able to understand the decision tree of all the objections that like a customer service rep might might be asked and then just feed them the answer. And as it stands, like AI agents that are standalone, um, they can't do the all the entire work of a customer support rep. So you still need a human in the hu hu hu human in the flow, uh, but human in the loop, but you also want it to want the humans to like have answers fed to it. And right now, there's just nothing that feeds an answer to a human without anybody else knowing, uh, except except us. And I think this is like the actual stickiest use case.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  There's a lot of people using it for curiosity and meetings, um, but it doesn't work super well until you personalize it. Uh, meaning like you give a context about who you are, what you do. There's there's like things that we're doing to try and get around this, but customer support, sales calls seems to be the stickiest use case.

• 15:59Molly O'Shea?

  And in terms of like the band of types of customers, I've heard you have some enterprise customers now. Is it mostly consumer? Like, what's the typical uh, demographic?

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, right now, we make more money off enterprise than consumer, which is pretty crazy. But um, I think it's because we're still warming up the marketing for consumer.

• 16:18Molly O'Shea?

  And they're larger customers than consumers are.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, like the contracts like are like seven figures.

• 16:25Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, and I'm sure, what is the pricing on the consumer side?

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Uh, consumer side, we do twenty dollar a month subscription and a hundred dollar annual. And for enterprise, uh, you just got you got to talk to sales to figure it out.

• 16:36Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, we'll talk to sales.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:39Molly O'Shea?

  Given that, like, could you just break down the business model a little bit more? Like, what is it today and what do you think it's gonna evolve to?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  I think subscription-based model is like, pretty obviously, just where we're gonna be. Maybe we'll have like a lifetime subscription. Maybe we'll A/B test price to see what sticky is. But generally, this feels like, uh, the, the status quo for a useful, nifty tool like this is twenty dollars a month, a hundred dollars a year. So we're probably just gonna stick with this for, for a while.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I can't imagine that the month, that the, that the pricing is gonna change at all. May- maybe turns out like, we, we discover some new thing that's like ten times as computationally inefficient. But even then, I, I don't actually think we'll change the model at all. We'll just like raise more money and just, like, be less profitable than we are now.

• 17:22Molly O'Shea?

  You guys are profitable.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, very much so.

• 17:25Molly O'Shea?

  You post this a lot.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:27Molly O'Shea?

  You're very much so profitable.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:29Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, so what does that mean? How did you get to profitability so fast?

• 17:33Speaker 01

  I mean, we have like traditional SaaS margins. Like, when I started Interview Coder, it was like just me and Neil, and we didn't have any employees and we didn't pay ourselves shit. So like, the first dollar we made was a dollar profit. Uh, traditional SaaS margin, like, we, we have like, like fucking like, what, one percent of costs? Um, go to, go to like the APIs that we use and, and that's it. Like, maybe some hosting, but it's an Electron app that runs locally. So it's not even like we pay for significant hosting fees there, too. Uh, all we have to pay for is like the, the, the, the, the free backend cloud provider for our API and, and the actual APIs that we use. So it's, it's like fucking like, like, like, like three cents per user. Um, so since, since day one, we've been profitable and, uh, the growth has just been so fast. Like, Interview Coder, before we hired anyone, hit like three mil ARR. And then, um, and then we started hiring people.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  So like, of course, like, we have like fucking like three million dollars, like, like, like any, we can hire ten engineers and we'll still be profitable. So like, like, as it stands, we are unable to hire faster than we are making money. And, um, we're, we're paying a lot, too.

• 18:29Molly O'Shea?

  How do you manage the burn and the scale?

• 18:31Speaker 01

  I feel like burn doesn't fucking matter. Like, like, if you just make more money. Like, like, the revenue timelines are so fucking crazy. If you're a founder and you spend ten hours thinking about burn and like cutting costs, that's ten hours you didn't spend about making product and like making product decisions and making your product better and like growing your company. Like, right now, like, we will literally spend like fifty thousand dollars a month on doordashing random food. Just so we like, like, spend more time, like, spend less time cooking, because everyone is more efficient, we can like grow the product faster that way. Like, uh, I do not care about the money.

• 18:58Molly O'Shea?

  Well.

• 19:00Molly O'Shea?

  Sorcery is sponsored by Brex and someone that you're a super fan of. I know Cluley's a big fan.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 19:06Molly O'Shea?

  But you know, they're all about spending smarter and moving faster. Is that your playbook?

• 19:10Speaker 01

  I don't think you have to spend smart. I think you like spend big, uh, spend big, move big, move big, make big moves. Like, like at every point, just be risky.

• 19:19Molly O'Shea?

  Are you saying that you are maximizing their rewards?

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Of cour- bro, I use Brex for everything. Uh, I use as much of their rewards as possible. Uh, Brex has been a lifesaver. There's no other company that would let us spend fifty thousand dollars a month on food.

• 19:31Molly O'Shea?

  I also saw that one of your employees just bought a ten thousand dollar suit.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  There's a lot of, a lot of, the, the, the, the specific numbers are fake, but yeah, we spent a lot of money on Brex.

• 19:42Molly O'Shea?

  Well, I wanted to gift you with something and so we got you a gold card.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Oh my God, that's amazing.

• 19:47Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  This is for me?

• 19:49Molly O'Shea?

  Mm-hmm. Now you can spend all your money on that.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Are you serious?

• 19:52Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Well, they, they, they were mentioning that, that we're going to be on the gold card soon, but I still have the little black, black plastic. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll show this is, um, this is the card that I still have that I spend, uh, probably close to five hundred thousand dollars.

• 20:04Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, that's, that's about like a Siri, that's a seed card.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Seed card. That's what, that's what I'm saying. They, they, they, they haven't realized, we didn't, we didn't get the upgrade yet. We will soon.

• 20:12Molly O'Shea?

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• 20:58Molly O'Shea?

  Companies like Scale AI, DoorDash, Service Titan, Hims, Anthropic, Flexport, Robinhood, and Plaid. Trust and use Brex. Start today at brex.com/sorcery. That's B-R-E-X dot com slash sorcery. To switch to the hot topic that I'm sure lots of people really want to hear about, Roy.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:24Molly O'Shea?

  Please explain to me this stunt marketing scheme. How did you get this idea and what is the strategy?

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Which which stunt marketing? Just in general, all the things that I've been doing?

• 21:38Molly O'Shea?

  It started off with the viral launch video.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:40Molly O'Shea?

  That went really well. Really good language. More recently, you had a stripper. How did you find this stripper? How did you get this video or this photo together?

• 21:54Speaker 01

  I'll I'll tell you some things.

• 21:55Molly O'Shea?

  Why did you? Why did you? Why did you go all the way to getting a stripper?

• 22:02Speaker 01

  I think the the first step of the pyramid is Twitter or people on Twitter are about two years behind when it comes to humor compared to people on Instagram, TikTok. And I think anything that I do on Twitter would not have gone viral on Instagram, TikTok, uh, because they're not crazy enough. But for people on Twitter who are like behind or sorry, X, uh, everything I do feels crazy. And I think there is a gigantic, like gigantic, gigantic delta in this where people on Instagram have realized you need to be extremely crazy. And as a result, you what you see on the Instagram for you page is literally insane. But um, what you see on Twitter is not on on X is not crazy at all. There's a gigantic delta in in this.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  And I think the first person that proved it is uh, Avi Schiffman with his launch a friend dot com. He showed us literally over a year ago. If you make a controversial cinematic demo video, you will get tens of millions of views. And for some reason, nobody fucking picked up on it. Uh, and and told me to to loop back fully to your point and and your question. Virality is really important, but it means nothing if you can't do it consistently. But if you can do it consistently, then it's the most powerful thing in the world and it will make you untouchable. The trick here is to do it consistently. And the only way to be viral consistently is to be doing interesting things consistently. And um, I promise you, whether it's hiring 50 interns or doing crazy shit, I will uh, continue to do interesting things.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  And um, I will be unique in this because I'm not just doing interesting things. I'm also building a tech company and the intersection of people who are are willing to do interesting things to go viral and are also building tech companies is uh, pretty much one.

• 23:42Molly O'Shea?

  There's a lot to unpack here.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:45Molly O'Shea?

  I would say, one, the type of virality that YouTubers and social media people go after is less, less of an accountable risk because they're kind of on their own, right? For you, you're the CEO of a company, you're venture backed by some really reputable names. There's a difference there. So do you not see any sort of risk with your investors and your professional reputation with doing these kinds of stunts?

• 24:18Speaker 01

  I think we've seen for about the last thirty to forty years, there's been a sharp drop off in professionalism in the workplace. You have engineers that walk around in like hoodies and sweatpants and this is normal now. Twenty years ago, maybe thirty years ago, this would not have been normal and it would have been extremely frowned upon. If you're a professional, you wear a suit and tie. There's a growing decrease in professionalism and that's because the rise of short form, short form content has kind of desensitized everyone to the craziest things. Because you don't just watch TVs and commercials with like these polished, sorry, you don't watch TV anymore with polished commercials and super professional, like no real controversial commercial. Now you scroll on your timeline and the timeline algorithm rewards the things that are most controversial. As a result, everyone has seen things that are extremely controversial and has become

• 25:03Speaker 01

  desensitized to it. This is why you see sports like fucking sperm racing come out. And sperm racing would never have been allowed to air on TV back in like twenty years ago. But now, of course it's can, of course you can, everyone is aware that there's controversial things happening and it's okay. And I think we're going to see the same thing with professionalism. And let's just imagine a world where I do make it here. Like what do you think will happen to the culture of startup professionalism and like, oh, like brand risk and like all this shit? Like, I strongly think that it's just gonna, people are gonna realize like, oh, this shit doesn't matter, everyone's cool with this now. And if I make it, then it will like be like the death of professionalism.

• 25:38Molly O'Shea?

  So there are two sides to your argument. There's one that would say you're a marketing genius and there are people that are posting about it online, like you did it, you are very polarizing, you have camps that are like super supportive and some that are like, wow, this is really not, this is very distasteful. I don't want anything to do with it, this is a shame on the venture capital industry and everybody in technology. Because there are these two camps to this.

• 26:08Molly O'Shea?

  Where do you think the risk lies?

• 26:13Molly O'Shea?

  Is there anyone that you're concerned about offending?

• 26:19Molly O'Shea?

  Or do you think that the more virality, the more stunts you do, the more desensitized everyone becomes?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  I have two responses to this. I think probably the most controversial person in the world might be Elon Musk. And Elon Musk is a founder that everybody looks up to. He has undeniably made it. And perhaps he's like big to, and this ties into my second point. When you become big enough, you become untouchable and the risk of controversy becomes zero. Like, or about as close to zero as it gets. And now Elon can pretty much say whatever the fuck he wants, do whatever the fuck he wants.

• 26:55Molly O'Shea?

  He's also the richest man on earth.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 26:58Molly O'Shea?

  And has many multi-billion dollar companies that shield him from that.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Once you make it, then you are shielded.

• 27:05Molly O'Shea?

  But he didn't make it by being controversial. He made it by working really hard.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  I would push back that he didn't make it by being controversial. The person that he is right now is very likely similar to the person that he was when he was 20. And I guarantee you the bets he's making now that are controversial and people think are crazy are the exact same bets they would have made 20 years ago. He just didn't market it so publicly. The difference is that I'm being extremely public about the marketing of it. And perhaps it'll burn me, perhaps it'll make me win. But I know that I would not be here right now if I wasn't public about being controversial. And I think this is, the revenue numbers, the fundraising, everything that's happened so far is a place where 99% of founders don't ever see in their lives.

• 27:46Molly O'Shea?

  One of the biggest pushbacks in addition to those is they don't think that this is sustainable, that you're gonna crash and burn. There's actually a Kalshi market out on it that

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:59Molly O'Shea?

  will the CEO of Cluely leave the company this year? Insinuating either, you know, you crash and burn, you get fired, you get pushed out, or maybe you go to jail. I don't know.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:10Molly O'Shea?

  I don't know what the lines are with your stunts. So what do you think?

• 28:15Speaker 01

  I mean, I think every single great person in the world has had a point in their lives where they faced extreme controversy. The richest people in the world with the most successful companies, you post a picture of them on Instagram and they just get dogged on by a million people saying, oh, this is an evil billionaire, this person is literally morally bankrupt. They say all these things and when you fail, you become Sam Bankman-Fried and when you win, you become Ilhan Omar Sam Altman. And like, there's people who say Sam Altman is building like the fucking devil and accelerating the end of humanity as we know it. There's people who think he's like a saint and it's like, at the end of the line, the person with the most attention has 50% of people rooting against him and 50% of people rooting for him. And it's just, you will be hated by people and I'm just unfazed.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  The only thing that everyone needs to worry about is can you hit escape velocity fast enough to become untouchable before you piss enough people off? And I think right now I'm accelerating my trajectory towards both escape velocity and towards pissing a bunch of people off, but who knows if I will get there.

• 29:17Molly O'Shea?

  What are your odds on leaving the company this year?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  My odds on leaving the company? I mean, zero. Like, we're literally profitable and we spend, like, we spend as much money as we can. There's almost zero expense that goes unproved by us, uh, cause we understand that, um, you need to spend big and swing big to win big and all of our marketing sense, like, if it means, like, we buy 10 fursuits and they're all $10,000 and we dress up everybody in the office as like a furry for a video, like, fuck it, we'll do it, bro. Uh, and yet, we're still profitable, cause we make a bunch of money. So again, like, we're accelerating both towards escape velocity and we're accelerating towards, um, towards burning.

• 29:48Molly O'Shea?

  You guys are profitable?

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Still, still profitable.

• 29:51Molly O'Shea?

  That's crazy.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  I know, right? Still profitable.

• 29:54Molly O'Shea?

  Uh, more seriously, though, you have enterprise customers now.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:58Molly O'Shea?

  How does this lead into customer service with those enterprise customers? Have you been getting any pushback from them?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Almost none. The only reason I have the contracts that I do right now is because the decision makers at these enterprise companies have seen my Twitter and think I'm funny and are rooting for me. And they're part of the 50% of people that are rooting for me. And I would never have had these contracts if I was just some lame post about this random HUD translucent liquid glass screen overlay. Like if that's all Cluely was, just like, oh, AI sales calls, like, I would have not had any of these contracts. But I have these contracts because I'm willing to take the risk, be polarizing, and some people support me.

• 30:34Molly O'Shea?

  Your company account tweeted yesterday, you tweeted 20 million UGC views in two weeks. X and LinkedIn is not our target audience. And if you're fuming at our messaging, you will soon find yourself on the wrong side of history. Victory is inevitable when you understand how to capture attention consistently.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  That's deep.

• 30:55Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, you guys are good with words. But beyond X, where are you also capturing this attention? What's the strategy?

• 31:04Speaker 01

  X and LinkedIn are extremely small, and especially tech Twitter, it's super small. What I've learned is if you have a post, if you're in tech Twitter and you have a post that does over, say, 40,000 impressions, you've hit pretty much every relevant decision maker in tech. It's an extremely, extremely small world. And realistically, if I go outside San Francisco, I walk around for 10 hours with a giant shirt that says Cluely Guy, nobody's going to recognize me. Maybe like a handful of people will recognize me. Because this world, it's super niche, and what feels like, man, Cluely's been on my timeline for the past two months, like, it's all I can hear about. In reality, you walk outside, nobody's fucking heard of this. Because regular people are not on Twitter, LinkedIn, or X-LinkedIn.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Regular people are on Instagram, TikTok. Well, many, many more people are on Instagram, TikTok than on X-LinkedIn. And every single big company is known by regular people. And I think the two ways that you achieve, like, full consumer mindshare is you can either get the mindshare first, or you can have your product.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  funnel you into Mindshare. I think we don't have the time to let our product grow that fast, that big, like that big, that fast. But we do have the time to go hyper viral on IG TikTok. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not sure that I'm framing this right, but I guess the, to, to put it in like an analogous way to building companies, the TAM of IG TikTok is way bigger. And even if I've captured the TAM of, of X, it's, it's not big enough for the company to hit escape velocity. We don't just need to be the biggest thing on tech Twitter. We need to be the biggest thing on IG TikTok. And

• 32:46Speaker 01

  that takes a lot.

• 32:48Molly O'Shea?

  In the tweet, Katie Sue from your team, she broke down how you guys achieve a million views per day.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:56Molly O'Shea?

  And this bleeds down into hiring in 10 creators in-house.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:01Molly O'Shea?

  How did you get that idea?

• 33:03Speaker 01

  I mean, this is, this is the playbook that every consumer app uses.

• 33:09Molly O'Shea?

  Do you think marketing teams are gonna have to all shift to this now is growth now in the hands of the creator?

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Of course. I mean, I mean, marketing teams can try, but I think the reason why Calais founder is like fucking 18, Quitter founder is like 19, reason why all these big consumer app guys are so young is because you need to be tapped in with young culture to understand what's funny. And you can have like a 35 year old marketer who's like scrolls as much as they want. For some reason, they just won't have the viral sense to come up with hooks that are capable of generating 10 million views. And if you don't have a guy who's capable of generating these crazy hooks or capable of identifying who has AlgoPul right now, then like you, you can't do this. This process is, uh, the one thing that you need for this process, which in, in reality is quite easy, is viral sense. And viral sense is something that is extremely scarce.

• 33:58Molly O'Shea?

  How big is your team to date without the interns?

• 34:03Speaker 01

  11 full-time.

• 34:04Molly O'Shea?

  11 full-time?

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 34:05Molly O'Shea?

  And you guys all live in a house together?

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Uh, most of us live in the house, but some of us live in an apartment that's a block away.

• 34:12Molly O'Shea?

  How'd you think of the whole house idea? I know Hacker Houses have been mainstay in San Francisco for a while, but you got a very nice one.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:20Molly O'Shea?

  You got a very big one.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Um, I think you need to work where you live. If you're serious about building the company, like work-life balance should not be a thing that you think about. Your work should be your life and vice versa. And if that's the case, then the best way to to realize this is by literally living where you work. You wake up, you go straight to work, you go to you go to bed uh on the couch essentially. Um, and that's that that's sort of the culture that we're trying to promote here. Um, there is no work-life balance, your entire life is clearly and your entire work is clearly.

• 34:50Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, what's the team composition?

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Uh, four and seven growth.

• 34:56Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, and then.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  We only hire one of two types of people. You're either an engineer or like a world-class engineer or you're an influencer. And also like like a world-class influencer with like high alcohol. Uh, there's nobody who's not a great engineer who has less than a hundred thousand followers.

• 35:14Molly O'Shea?

  Wow.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:15Molly O'Shea?

  How do you find everyone? What's your recruiting process?

• 35:18Speaker 01

  I.

• 35:18Molly O'Shea?

  How do you filter them out?

• 35:19Speaker 01

  I think.

• 35:20Molly O'Shea?

  That's a very dense.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:22Molly O'Shea?

  Team.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  I think I have viral sense. Um, I I scroll quite a bit and I understand what's trending in culture right now. As a result, like when you when I suddenly got this inject injection of money, like I knew immediately. Here's like the top ten people I want to hire and now fucking like seven of them are living with me in in the house. Uh, you when when you scroll enough, uh, you just know like the same people tend to pop up. Uh, recently you see the same series, you know exactly which series are are hot right now and you know which creators are hot. Uh, and it it's it's it's not celebrities anymore, it's not people with ten million followers anymore. It's literally like the college kid with a hundred thousand followers or maybe even like ten thousand followers sometimes. And that those are the people that we've recruited.

• 36:03Molly O'Shea?

  Talking about the culture within the house, are you at all concerned with all these stunts? The stunt marketing that it's gonna leave the wrong impression on your employees? Or something might go too far and you won't be able to manage it? Or you're gonna bring in a lot of really bad talent who just thinks that you're crazy and you're not serious? How do you? How do you manage that?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  A lot of people think because of my ex that I'm the guy that comes up with all the crazy stunts. But in reality, almost every single day, we have a brainstorming session about what is the craziest thing we can do in the near future? Um, that will capture attention again. And if you think what we've done to date is crazy, then you're going to shit your pants when you see what happens for like the next month or two months. We have a. A storyboard of content that is like genuinely insane and has never ever been attempted before in in in the realm of Twitter. And I think it's, I don't have to worry about the employees because the employees are the ones coming up with these ideas. Everyone is on board with the craziness and we understand that this is like the lifeline of the company. We're either crazy enough to make it or crazy enough to die. Or too crazy and we die.

• 37:08Molly O'Shea?

  What would you want someone to know if they were coming to work at Cluely?

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Hmm, what would I want a future employee to know?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  I think perhaps the the the one pinnacle of the company is that there are only two roles here. You're either building the product or you're making the product go viral. And if you're not excel like excellence at one of two things, then you're probably not going to get hired. And if you are excellent at one or two of the things, then you're likely crazy enough to be fully on board with what we're doing. And if you're not, then you wouldn't have applied in the first place. So there's no reason for you to be here. A world-class engineer only applies for a company like Cluely because they're attracted by the culture. And if you're attracted by the culture, then why would you ever try and like stop the culture from promulgating? And if you're an influencer, then just by nature of influencers, like you will understand what it takes to be viral. You will understand that it's cool what we're doing and you will contribute.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Or you'll you'll you'll you'll quit because because you don't you don't think the culture is right.

• 38:08Molly O'Shea?

  What do you think is like your grand vision for Cluely?

• 38:12Speaker 01

  I think it's inevitable that in about two or three years, we will have

• 38:17Speaker 01

  models that are multimodal, large context windows are capable of reasoning over, say, three hours of a screen recording. In that world, all of a sudden, like the second that that release comes out, the second that API comes out, all of a sudden, there's like every technologist in the world has the capability to build essentially Jarvis. But in that world, who wins? Who is actually the one that becomes the main distributor of Jarvis? In my opinion, it's whoever has the same thing that Google had when they put out Gmail and and killed Yahoo Mail. Same thing that Google had when they put out search and they beat Bing. It's not a fundamentally better product, it's a capturing of mind share. And I think mind share is something that is probably like the most important lever of consumer or just lever of technology distribution in general.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  And what people often mistake this for virality, they think, oh, virality is not sustainable. But what is sustainable is mind share. And the difference is this. You can have a product that gets a billion monthly views for say UGC content every single month and nobody will ever sit down at a lunch table and start talking about your product because they might see it brain rotting or they might have heard about it but they don't actually care and to make people care you need to do something polarizing something crazy like our launch video and I think the only way to capture mind share is to know that in this world there's millions of people who go to lunch every day and talk about you and truly the only way to do this is to be controversial and viral and do it consistently and if you can do this then you will get the same like there's a reason why people

• 39:45Speaker 01

  use discord all the time they don't use any other social app they was uh like like it's cool and you don't become cool by just getting views you become cool by being the talking point of every lunch table and you get there by doing pretty much exactly what I'm doing it's it's how Mr. B's got there it's how Jake the Paul brothers got there it's how Charlie and Molly got there like everybody gets there by doing some crazy shit and getting talked about over and over and over again.

• 40:09Molly O'Shea?

  Are there actually fifty interns there?

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Fifty interns never meant fifty interns well not not not fifty actual in-person interns the same way that you think about them today but it means like five interns and like say forty-five UGC creators we're actually planning on scaling this to way more but like this is what a modern day internship looks like and this is probably what like labor in general looks like in a in a future of AI I mean UGC creator you sit down on a phone and you make TikToks about a product this is like a concept that wouldn't it's a job that did not exist even twenty years ago so it feels sort of absurd to call it an internship in reality it is an internship like you're here doing part-time work at a job that might that may convert to full-time in the future and you're providing value to the company like this is by all means a growth internship so we have a bunch of interns and right now like yeah we're like closing in on fifty if you count all the UGC creators.

• 40:56Molly O'Shea?

  How do you manage that internally like are you guys gonna create your own platform for managing like views analytics what metrics do you measure how do you think about that against the virality against the growth hacking I mean this is like a critical component to the business so how do you how do you manage it?

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Yeah I mean we have like what is shaping up to be our own internal CRM for managing all this stuff and probably this will be like the first of its kind like a CRM exclusively for managing creators but it's it's in-house right now there's not too much overhead because in reality you don't have to manage the people you have to manage the content that they that they produce and you get paid for the content that you make so like if you don't if you're lazy then you just don't get paid and that's it. Um, there's not significant operational overhead and we have the systems in place for this to scale to like two thousand creators. Uh, so I'm, I'm, I'm pretty confident about this. Um. Not sure, I think, I think I might have.

• 41:50Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, but how do you, how do you, okay, so how do you manage?

• 41:55Molly O'Shea?

  That system, like, how do you manage the views of all that? Like, how do you determine they're real, they're fake? Are they bodied? Are they not? Like, if you scale to two thousand creators, like, I'm in Discord channels, I'm in WAP, like, I'm doing content rewards, like, you can, like, scaling for quality is really hard. And something that, I don't know, like, not every view is worth it. So I'm just really trying to deeply understand, like, how do you scale up quality views?

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, um, there's two main types of content that we put out. One is like converting content. Um, you have a hook where you actually like, you, you, you visually show the product and you explain one of the use cases of the product and you just expect it to convert and be profitable. And you have, uh, ones that are intended to, um, capture hive mind. And, uh, again, this is, uh, we don't care about the profitability of this at all. We just want people to consistently see Cluey. And like hear about Cluey, like, man, like another fucking Cluey, Cluey, Cluey, like video on my timeline. Uh, I can't, I cannot get this off my feet. This is crazy. E- even if they're never gonna go to Cluey dot com, just implant it deep in their mind. A co- and, and I, I think tracking conversions on views and all this shit, it's like, it's like the most stupid thing you can do.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Cause, uh, in reality, what does, like, there is no dollar amount of one view. You can't really calculate what the dollar amount of my launch video was, cause this was like a culturally significant moment in tech. This is something that everyone was talking about. And as a result, like, there's people going around in, in, in, in the biggest rooms talking about like, like the Cluey launch video. How do you calculate, like, how do you put a monetary value on that? Is it like the conversion? Like, I don't give a fuck about the conversion. Like, we made a cultural moment. Um, and I, I, I think tracking that stuff is, is, is like pretty meaningless. Eventually, suppose you could scale up to, say, a hundred billion views a month. That, that's pretty extreme, but if you could do that, then like, bro, like, fuck, I will pay any fucking, how, how, how much money do you think Google would, would, would pay to get a hundred billion dollars on view, views a month consistently? Like, bro, a lot of fucking money.

• 43:49Molly O'Shea?

  How much money have you spent on views?

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Less, maybe like twenty thousand.

• 43:53Molly O'Shea?

  Twenty thousand? How much did you spend on the viral video?

• 43:56Speaker 01

  The which, which viral video?

• 43:57Molly O'Shea?

  The Cluey launch video.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Cluey launch, Cluey launch video was a hundred forty thousand. Yeah. It was before the raise too, so at the time it was like our entire lifesavers.

• 44:04Molly O'Shea?

  Do you have a budget for all of this? Like, how do you manage?

• 44:08Speaker 01

  The budget is essentially all of our investor money.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Probably like eighty percent of it. And it's just, you just can't track these things. I don't, I, I, I don't think you should be tracking these things. And it's pretty obvious, if you have like a very visual product demo, um, it will convert. And all you have to worry about is if you watch the video, do you think this is highly converting? Does it actually show a demo, like demonstrable use case, uh, visu- visual of the product? And is it actually something that would make someone with a need buy your product? If yes, then fuck off the conversions, like, don't track the analytics, cause uh, like, the analytics means nothing.

• 44:43Molly O'Shea?

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• 45:26Molly O'Shea?

  Are you gonna use any of these AI-generated videos? Like VO just came out, Calshi just made an amazing viral video on this. And I'm not just saying that because I work with Calshi and they're sponsors. But Calshi just made like an incredibly very tasteful AI-generated video with another creator and it went so well. Are you thinking about using any of those?

• 45:50Speaker 01

  It's possible. There's like literally a million viral formats out there. Right now, we're sticking with what we know works and what we as influencers know. And like a lot of these are just like talking head videos from real people. I think the most important thing with a video going viral is like, do people think that it's real? And um, if there's even like a slight hesitation, like, oh, this might not be real, this feels AI, then. There's formats that that kills, like there's formats that that kills in, but there's also formats that are just like impossible if the average viewer looks at it and thinks, ah, it doesn't look real to me. And the, the, those are generally the formats that we try to use. So I, I don't think we've completely crossed the uncanny valley with VO3. So.

• 46:28Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:29Molly O'Shea?

  Well, I want to get into some more personal stuff, Roy. I can't imagine that this whole process has been up and to the right for you. I'm sure that there have been challenges and there will be challenges and you're probably facing many when you pull these things. But like, how do you manage that? And what kinds of challenges have you faced so far as founder and CEO of the company?

• 46:51Speaker 01

  I think obviously the, the PR crises are the biggest thing we have to manage.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  But there's a very clear north star here and it's a, I want to be conqueror of the fucking universe. And I think anybody who wants this does not have the time to sit in their room, shit in their pants, worrying about the people that they might have pissed off. The only thing I can do is what I do best right now. And clearly this is capturing people's attention and building this specific product. Uh, I think these are like, I spike in one thing very obviously and clearly, if my goal is to make as big a swing as possible, then um, I need to capitalize on the things that I'm great at. And if it turns out, and I think like so far I've been rewarded immensely for capitalizing on this one particular skill that I have. Uh, and in the future, perhaps I will be burned by it,

• 47:42Speaker 01

  but perhaps I will be rewarded a million times more immensely. And um, I think obviously like the PR crises, like when you swing this big, it is inevitable that sometimes you'll miss. And when you do miss, like it's, it's pretty bad because you swing really big and you missed. When you make these huge bets on virality and you try and go super viral every time, it is inevitable that sometimes you'll win, but sometimes you will lose. And the times where you lose, I think, I'm faced with a situation that almost nobody faces in their, in their lives ever. And it's hard. There's like no one I can turn to for advice. Who's the person I ask for, hey, I just got kicked out of Columbia for building a cheating tool and going viral. I'm blacklisted from every big tech company now. What should I do? Who can I ask for advice on that? There's almost no one. And it's, it's times like this where I have to uh,

• 48:28Speaker 01

  sit in a room and just like reflect with solely myself.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  And I think just being alone and thinking about like, man, maybe I really fucked it up this time.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Those are definitely the hardest times. And I think this is like a challenge that even like among tech founders, no, almost nobody experiences.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Things that helped me are, there might not be people that I can go to directly for advice, but there's people that I know will always be on my side. And like my parents or my best friends, my co-founders.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  And I think it's very important to draw a distinction between my real life and who I am online. Who I am online is like the craziest person ever. I'm optimizing for one thing and that's eyeballs on Cluely. But the life that I live in the real world, the people that I'm around that love me unconditionally and I love them unconditionally back. Uh, I know this will never change and it's, I, I, I, I anchor myself to them.

• 49:28Molly O'Shea?

  So what are you looking to improve upon as a CEO?

• 49:33Speaker 01

  I think I've been like thrust into a position of leadership and, and management over a lot of people and uh. It's pretty crazy. Like this is such a stark difference from me just like hacking in a dorm room with, with Neil. Like I don't really get to make the same engineering mistakes and just be like, oh, fuck it. Like, sorry, I'll send a sorry email to our 20 users and just, uh. Just, just, just redo the entire DB. Uh, I don't really get that anymore. Um, now I sort of have to, uh, be stricter with people and like, that's, that's sort of like the framework that we've always operated in. And I'm sure the one that has to step up now and be like, hey, um, we gotta be more serious. And it's, it's hard for people to take that seriously when it's coming from me. I think, I think thi- thi- this is probably the thing.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Even, even at work, I'm like, I try to inspire people to think creatively about swinging big, taking huge risks. But I'm also the guy that has to step in when things get bad and like, hey, this is a shitty migration. We can't do this again. And I think it's been hard to different, distinguish that with my, with the, with the employees. Um, and like sometimes being like serious CEO Roy mode and most of the time being like, let's, let's all think about crazy shit we can do.

• 50:37Molly O'Shea?

  Is there anyone you particularly admire or look up to?

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, Elon Musk. I think this is like the, the one guy who uh, he gets it so right. He was the most controversial, hated, might have been at one point the most hated person on the internet. And he just fought through and this guy is like a fuck, like literally the richest man in the world. There is a, nobody that's ever been like Elon or done what he's done. And um, I think if there ever was a role model for my sort of controversial polarizingness, uh, hitting escape velocity and just being able to like go to the, I do whatever the fuck I want zone, it's Elon.

• 51:06Molly O'Shea?

  Go to Mars.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Go to Mars, exactly, bro, exactly.

• 51:09Molly O'Shea?

  Alright, well, as we wrap up, I like to close out on um, a really fun predictions segment.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 51:16Molly O'Shea?

  So we're gonna use Kalshi and we're gonna go through a couple. I know we already went through one. Whether or not you're gonna leave the company.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:22Molly O'Shea?

  So, the market's out for that. But, on the topic of Elon, do you think Elon will create a new political party this year?

• 51:32Speaker 01

  I hope so. I am very anti-politics. I try to be as apolitical as possible. I have almost no political takes, but the one thing that I love about politics is that it's very um, very ruckus. There's always some shit going on that riles people up and I think um, it's entertaining to watch. And I would love to see Elon, Elon start a new political party. As he tweeted, the most like entertaining outcome is the most obvious. And I think if there's ever a person in the world who has the ability and willingness to do some crazy shit like this, it'd be Elon. I'm all for it. I'm like, I would full port that.

• 52:03Molly O'Shea?

  What do you think that political party would be?

• 52:06Speaker 01

  Probably like the fucking technology party, AI party, I don't know, American party? And the, the, the American party probably is what people are saying, right?

• 52:13Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, the party that represents the eighty percent of uh, people in the middle.

• 52:17Molly O'Shea?

  If Cluely disrupts the labor force as much as you think it might, jobs might be lost.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 52:25Molly O'Shea?

  What do you think the unemployment rate will be in twenty thirty?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Probably like fucking four percent. Like, things will revert back to the middle. Like, humans will always find new jobs, except for the four percent of people that just don't wanna work.

• 52:35Molly O'Shea?

  Okay. Well, you're, we don't know. We don't know if you're right or you're wrong.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  I know.

• 52:41Molly O'Shea?

  The, the market right now says eight point seven. That's the forecast.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Cluely told me this. The market is wrong. We could expect four.

• 52:49Molly O'Shea?

  Alright. Lastly, you seem like you know a lot of stuff. You're online all the time.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  All the time, yeah.

• 52:55Molly O'Shea?

  All the time.

• 52:57Molly O'Shea?

  Do you think a major meteor will hit the earth by twenty thirty?

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Bro, absolutely not, bro. Like, I feel like this is such a stupid thing to bet on, because if you're right, what the fuck do you win? And i- if you're wrong, like, uh, like, you have nothing left to gain but, but, but to win. I think it is stupid to think about, like, the worst case scenario. I'm like an extreme optimist. I genuinely think superintelligence will do almost no harm. Whatever harm it will do, it will, like, self restore. I think all the people worried about, like, AGI safety, all that bullshit. This is like, bro, like, I'm an extreme optimist. I think AI will cause us all to live to five hundred years plus, will cure cancer and Alzheimer's, and literally, in probably like fifty years, I'm gonna be on Earth three in uniforce uni- universe like B forty-seven, thanks to AI.

• 53:41Molly O'Shea?

  And Elon Musk.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  And Elon Musk, exactly, bro. I'm an extreme techno-optimist. Uh, I thi- I think meteor strike is just, it's the most negative thing to think about. If I could bet on, like, if I, I, I will full port, no.

• 53:53Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, alright. Well, there's a sixty-five percent chance.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  A guess?

• 53:57Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Or serious? I mean, I think that's ridiculous.

• 54:00Molly O'Shea?

  Maybe I'm reading it wrong. Um, okay, Roy, well, this was certainly an interesting conversation. I don't think I've been called bro more than my life. Uh, but thank you so much for coming on and sharing more about Cluely and your crazy, uh, your crazy stunts and all the things you're doing.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  You're welcome, bro.