Cluely co-founder and CEO Roy Lee has admitted that the $7 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) figure he previously shared publicly wasn’t true. In a post on X on Thursday, Lee called it “the only blatantly dishonest thing” he’s said online and issued what he described as a formal retraction.
But while Lee owned up to the inflated ARR claim, his explanation of how it happened leaves out important context. In the same post, he suggested the number came out during a “random cold call” from a woman asking about company metrics, implying he tossed out “some bs” and didn’t expect it to turn into a published story.
The reality is that the call wasn’t random. The conversation took place after Cluely’s public relations representative reached out to a reporter to offer Lee up for an interview. The reporter agreed to speak with him, Lee’s contact information was provided, and the PR representative confirmed he was expecting the call. After a few attempts, Lee answered and participated in the interview as planned.
At the time, Cluely was one of the most talked-about viral startups in tech. In the summer of 2025, it gained notoriety as a “cheat-on-everything” style tool that let users discreetly look up answers during video calls without being detected. The company’s origin story only fueled the attention: Lee had gone viral after posting that he’d been suspended by Columbia University after he and a co-founder built a tool designed to help people cheat on software engineering job interviews. Instead of letting that moment end as internet drama, the founders turned it into a business.
Cluely soon raised $5.3 million in seed funding from Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures, aiming to commercialize the same concept that got them suspended. The pitch was straightforward and provocative: help interviewees (and others) pull answers on demand during an online conversation—quietly, and without getting caught. For a while, industry chatter even suggested Cluely’s success could spark a wave of opposing “detection” products built to spot users relying on it.
Momentum continued. In June 2025, Cluely raised a $15 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz. By then, the company had become known not just for the product, but for its marketing playbook—provocative stunts and viral content engineered to keep Cluely in the spotlight and pull in new users. That strategy became a frequent talking point across the startup world.
Later that year, Lee spoke publicly about how effective rage-bait marketing can be for landing early customers. But he declined to share updated revenue at the time, and he also offered a warning that feels especially relevant now: marketing alone can’t create a durable company if the product itself is still evolving. He also shared a blunt takeaway: “What I’ve learned is you should never share revenue numbers.”
Since then, Cluely has shifted its public identity, rebranding as an AI-powered meeting note-taker rather than a tool associated with cheating during calls. Yet in his recent retraction, Lee posted figures he said reflected what Cluely was actually doing around June 2025, including a breakdown of consumer and enterprise revenue trends—effectively reopening the revenue conversation he once suggested founders should avoid.
The episode is a reminder of how fast hype can travel in the startup world—and how hard it can be to correct the record once a bold metric becomes part of a company’s story. For Cluely, it’s also another twist in a journey defined by viral attention, controversial positioning, and now, a public walk-back of one of its most cited numbers.
