Inside the AI startup that wants you to hate them

We hate Clooney. Everyone's roasting Cluly for building the ultimate cheating tool. Someone has to stop Clooy. It's just some other random startup founder, but a16z? One of the world's top VC firms just wrote them a $15 million check. What do they see that nobody else does? Are they backing the future of cheating or a new blueprint for startups? In this video, I'm breaking down why Cluli has become the world's most hated startup and why the outrage is exactly what they want. I love the hate, bro. I'll thrive on the hate, bro. Like, I love the attention and the controversy, bro. First up, let's speed. Speedrun what Clulee actually is. It's an undetectable AI assistant that literally listens to your conversations and feeds you real time answers on what to say. Meetings, sales calls, job interviews, even dates. The company's tagline is cheat on everything. So where did this come from? This is Roy Lee. He created it in February 2025 to cheat on job interviews. Then in March, he was kicked out of Columbia after using it to land roles at Amazon, Meta and TikTok. Columbia University has found you guilty of academic integrity violations. Do you have any? On a podcast, he described a key learning from college gaming. The system is better than playing fair. I can make this big protest against leetcode, and at the same time, I can do something that I suspect will be super viral. So the guy who was expelled for cheating is now building a tool to help everyone else do the same thing. And the marketing? They're hiring 50 interns, each posting at least four TikToks a day, all with the same theme. Look how I cheated my way through this. Roy's goal is 1 billion views across socials as fast as possible. And if you want an example of how bold they've been so far, they ran an ad helping a guy fake his love of jazz on a date. From day one, they've leaned into giving people an unfair edge and making it go viral. Okay, that's their product and playbook. But why are people so angry about it? Probably because it threatens norms around competence, fairness and merit. Cheating just feels wrong to a lot of people. And for those deep in the tech world, it looks like a thin wrapper on top of ChatGPT. But that's exactly the point. Cluli is built around rage bait. They embrace controversy instead of avoiding it. They want to trigger people on both sides. I wouldn't be surprised if Clulee is tracking outrage metrics, negative to positive comment ratios. How fast fights in the comments break out. That's what they seem to be optimizing for. You need people to have a reaction. Critics may have called it black mirror level, dystopian evil and a manifesto for mediocrity, but this divisive content has driven thousands of signups. Every time you share a TikTok trashing cluley, or every time you argue about how unethical it is on LinkedIn, you're feeding their distribution for free. And in a world where attention is becoming the scarcest resource, that outrage is their growth engine. Here's how well that strategy is working. By May, Roy claims Cluli hit $3 million in ARR with over 70,000 subscribers. Those are the kinds of numbers that get investors excited. So with all the hype and hate, let's look at what a 16Z actually bet on in June. There are a few ways to think about AI going forward, but one future is where features just don't matter at all. Look at it this way. If everyone is building on top of the same foundation models, GPT, Claude, Gemini, then eventually every tool can have the same capabilities. No ip, no moat, no defensibility. So what's left? Brand? Cultural relevance? Distribution? A16Z is betting on that future where the loudest and most controversial brand might be the only one standing out. And for some reason, nobody picked up on it until me. To a 16Z, that's Cluly. Roy is completely open about the company's thesis. If everyone uses the same models, only distribution and brand matter, we don't just need to be the biggest thing on tech Twitter, we need to be the biggest thing on IG TikTok, a hyperviral brand to get millions of users through the door first, then upgrade the product later. It's a mindset that would terrify most founders because it means admitting your product has no moat. Only its perception does. But A16Z reportedly loved that logic because it frames Cluly as a liquid brand, meaning it can pivot product direction while keeping cultural relevance. And they're not subtle about it. The A16Z and Clulee announcement video said this today it's cheating to tomorrow. It's fair to be honest. In two years, nobody's going to think this is cheating. This made even more founders angry. Why should a company like Cluly raise money so easily when they're the ones building useful products? What these founders might be missing is the size of a 16Z's bet. $15 million doesn't carry a whole Lot of downside for the investors. But if Cluly wins, a16z would have invested in a category defining consumer AI brand while everyone else is stuck optimizing features no one cares about. Of course, this is just one vision of the future because let's be real, the criticism is valid. Cluli could absolutely flop. The product still has to catch up to the hype. Think about it like this. You can rage bait your way into a billion views, but you may not be able to rage bait your way into retention. A16Z knows that we're still in this early stage of AI where I think momentum is the moat. Here's the thing. This isn't a novel or new strategy. There's a pattern they're betting on. It's a culture hack. Cluly is running a playbook we've seen before. Liquid death turned water into rock and roll. Duolingo turned their owl into an unhinged meme mischief. The art company turned hype into a business. They all use postmodern marketing to grab cultural relevance. It just Cluly goes further by messing with moral boundaries, not just aesthetic ones. That might be why it feels so uncomfortable to so many people, but also why it's such a fascinating test case for founders. Cluly could prove, or at least test, that in a world where every AI tool feels identical, the brand is the moat. So what does this mean for other builders watching this? The goal for any founder is to build a business that wins in the long run. What's interesting here is Cluly might be revealing a contrarian playbook for startups. Here's the question to ask yourself. Would you rather build a perfect product no one notices? Or a controversial product everyone talks about? Cluli has made their bet and is shooting their shot. They seem fine with becoming the world's most hated startup. A16Z is backing it. And the rest of us get to watch how far a brand can go before reality catches up or they meet the graveyard.