AI Startup Cluely CEO Roy Lee Admits Yesterday (3/5) on X that the $7 million annualized revenue (ARR) he mentioned to TechCrunch last summer was a casual lie. This startup, which gained fame for “helping you cheat during video interviews,” stopped discussing revenue publicly after raising a $15 million Series A from a16z.
(Background: Twitter Threatens to Accuse Threads of Stealing Trade Secrets! Elon Musk: Cheating is Not Allowed)
(Additional context: Bloomberg: Why is a16z a Key Player Behind U.S. AI Policy?)
Table of Contents
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- Who is Roy Lee
- Let’s Start from the Beginning
- The $7 Million, That’s What I Said
- No One Checked
- AI Product Marketing Has Become Mainstream
A CEO posted a few lines on X.
No legal threats, no journalist exposés, no regulatory knocks.
He admitted that the $7 million ARR he told the media last year was made up.
A straightforward confession of lying.
eh kinda, here’s our stripes from June 2025
got a random cold call from some woman asking about numbers and told her some bs, did not expect an article about it
here’s what we were doing at the time:
consumer ARR 2.7M, run rate 3.8M
enterprise ARR 2.5M, run rate 2.5M
… https://t.co/CzAoPRru2R pic.twitter.com/C5bXuz8HqW
— Roy (@im_roy_lee) March 5, 2026
Who is Roy Lee
Roy Lee’s story begins with a cheating scandal.
In 2024, he was still a student at Columbia University. He and classmate Neel Shanmugam created Interview Coder, a tool designed to help engineers cheat during technical interviews: secretly sending questions to AI and displaying answers on a side panel so interviewers can’t see. Companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon had users employing it.
The school expelled them. That’s where a typical story ends. But Lee’s story was just starting.
He upgraded Interview Coder to Cluely, declaring that the service could “help you cheat in everything.”
Video calls, online exams, any situation requiring real-time answers—Cluely quietly provides the best answers. Its core idea is to package “cheating” as a productivity tool.
This positioning worked. Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures invested $5.3 million in seed funding.
Overnight, Cluely became one of Silicon Valley’s most talked-about AI startups.
Let’s Start from the Beginning
Roy Lee’s branding logic is clear: cheating isn’t a moral issue, it’s a competition issue. In a world where everyone uses AI, those who cheat first win, those who don’t lose. This logic resonates strongly with engineers facing technical interview hell.
Cluely turns controversy into marketing fuel, transforming into an internet celebrity brand. Every mainstream media critique about fostering a “cheating culture” is free publicity. Every moral attack helps boost Cluely’s subscriptions—an operation that trades black and red for traffic.
By June 2025, a16z announced leading a $15 million Series A investment in Cluely.
a16z partner Bryan Kim explained his reason for investing: “He found a way to turn attention into paying users.”
Note the wording: attention, not product strength.
The $7 Million, That’s What I Said
Shortly after the Series A, in July 2025, Lee gave an interview to TechCrunch. The report claimed Cluely’s ARR had doubled in a week, surpassing $7 million.
This number made it seem like they had truly become a profitable business. For a startup less than a year old, $7 million ARR was convincing enough to attract more funding. The report spread widely, establishing Cluely’s image as a “profitable business.”
But that number was fake.
Roy Lee wrote on X yesterday (3/5): “This is the only dishonest thing I’ve ever publicly said, and I am officially retracting it.”
He added that he thought it was just a “random cold call,” and when asked about the numbers, he casually blurted out nonsense, not expecting it to be reported.
This explanation itself is likely part of the lie.
TechCrunch clarified later that the interview was arranged via email by Cluely’s PR team, not a cold call. It was a carefully planned media operation, which included false numbers.
No One Checked
There’s an even deeper issue than the lie itself: no one checked those numbers.
a16z conducted due diligence before the Series A, but that didn’t stop Roy Lee from telling the media false figures a month later.
TechCrunch published the story with the $7 million figure without independent verification. The media relied on the startup’s self-reported data, with no third-party audit or legal requirement to disclose. The numbers entered the public record as-is.
Since then, Cluely has stopped mentioning revenue. By November 2025, Roy Lee hinted that talk alone was no longer enough, and the company quietly pivoted from the controversial “cheating everything” tool to an AI meeting recording app.
Then, in March this year, he “came clean.” The timeline is as follows:
June 2025: a16z invests $15 million Series A
July 2025: Lee claims to TechCrunch that ARR is $7 million
November 2025: Lee hints that “attention is not enough,” begins pivoting
March 2026: Lee posts on X admitting that the $7 million was a lie
AI Product Marketing Has Become Mainstream
This isn’t just a story about a startup CEO lying.
Silicon Valley has an unwritten rule: before funding, you can “vaguely” talk about your numbers. ARR can be projected by multiplying a monthly figure by twelve. User counts can include free trial accounts, growth curves can be what you hope they are—whether or not they’re real.
This unwritten rule exists because no one cares. VCs are betting, media want stories, and no one needs real financial details.
Roy Lee did what many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs do: he made the numbers look better than they really were. But he was less fortunate—he chose to proactively expose the lie, which likely marks the start of another marketing operation.
A CEO who helps you cheat, admits to cheating himself, and then seeks the “conscience” label in the startup community on social media.
Their next funding round is probably just around the corner.
