Roy Lee (Cluely)

In fall 2024 Lee, then an undergraduate at Columbia UniversityColumbia UniversityColumbia University, formally Columbia University in the City of New York, is a private research university in New York City and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1754 by royal charter from King George II as King's College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in New York State and the fifth oldest in the United States. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 and adopted the university name and moved to Manhattan's Morningside Heights in 1896. It has 17 schools and four affiliated colleges, with 35,978 students enrolled in fall 2025. Legal scholar Jennifer L. Mnookin became president on July 1, 2026.Open the full entry, built Interview Coder with classmate Neel Shanmugam, an AI tool for cheating on LeetCode-style technical interviews. The two filmed themselves using it to obtain internship offers from companies including Meta and Amazon; after the video was posted publicly, AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry complained to the university.⁠[1]

Amazon declined to comment on Lee’s case but said candidates must agree not to use unauthorized tools in interviews.⁠[2]

Columbia University suspended Lee for violating university policies; in late March 2025 he described the episode in a thread on X that went viral. Lee maintains that the university mishandled his case; Columbia did not respond to a request for comment. Lee and Shanmugam subsequently dropped out of Columbia.⁠[1][2]

On April 20, 2025, Lee announced that Cluely, which grew out of Interview Coder, had raised $5.3 million in seed funding co-led by Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures. Based in San Francisco, Cluely offered a hidden in-browser window, invisible to interviewers or test-givers, for AI assistance during exams, sales calls and job interviews; Lee served as CEO and Shanmugam as COO.⁠[2]

Announcing the launch on X, Lee wrote: “Cluely is out. cheat on everything.” The company’s manifesto compared the product to the calculator and spellcheck, once also derided as cheating; its launch video, showing Lee using a hidden AI assistant on a date, drew both praise and criticism.⁠[2]

At the time Cluely sold a real-time AI assistant for interviews, sales calls and meetings for $20 a month.⁠[1]

On June 20, 2025, Cluely announced a $15 million Series A led by Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry, about two months after its seed round. Two investors not involved in the deal put its post-money valuation at about $120 million; a16z declined to comment on the figure.⁠[3]

That month Cluely planned an after-party following Y Combinator’s AI Startup School; Lee said about 2,000 people tried to get in before police shut it down.⁠[3]

On June 25, 2025, a16z published “Building Cluely: The Viral AI Startup that raised $15M in 10 Weeks w/ Roy Lee” on YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry, in which Andreessen Horowitz general partners Erik TorenbergErik TorenbergErik Torenberg is a tech entrepreneur, investor, and podcast host who is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he invests and is responsible for marketing and the ecosystem network. He was the first employee of Product Hunt and founded or co-founded On Deck, Village Global, and Turpentine, long combining founder communities, expert content, and early-stage investing.Open the full entry and Bryan Kim spoke with Lee, Cluely’s co-founder and CEO. Opening with the question “What if virality wasn’t a tactic — but the entire product?”, the episode covered how Cluely used viral short-form videos, polarizing launches and building in public to gain traction, as well as virality as a moat, brand-native AI interfaces, the Gen Z founder mindset, creators as product managers and Cluely’s long-term vision for ambient AI.⁠[4]

In July 2025 Lee publicly stated that Cluely had reached $7 million in annual recurring revenue. On March 5, 2026, he retracted the claim on X, writing that it “is the only blatantly dishonest thing i’ve said publicly online, so this is my formal retraction,” and posted Stripe figures from June 2025 showing $2.7 million in consumer ARR and $2.5 million in enterprise ARR.⁠[5]

At TechCrunch DisruptTechCrunch DisruptTechCrunch Disrupt is a technology and startup conference organized by TechCrunch, combining interviews, product demonstrations, startup competitions and industry networking for founders and investors.Open the full entry 2025 Lee said: “What I’ve learned is you should never share revenue numbers.” By March 2026 Cluely had rebranded from a tool for secretly looking up answers during video calls to an AI meeting note-taker.⁠[5]

Cluely: Official website: https://cluely.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]

X: Public account: https://x.com/im_roy_lee (opens in a new window).⁠[4]