Cluely's Marketing Strategy:
How "Cheat on Everything" Fueled Explosive Growth

Cluely has quickly become one of the most talked-about AI startups in the tech world – and for good reason. This 21-year-old founder-led company burst onto the scene with a provocative brand positioning and a viral marketing playbook that defies conventional wisdom.

In a matter of months, Cluely went from an idea to a Silicon Valley sensation with $7M+ in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and a $15M Series A investment led by Andreessen Horowitz. How did they achieve such meteoric growth?

Brand Positioning and Messaging: Embracing "Cheat on Everything"

From day one, Cluely's brand positioning has been deliberately provocative and rebellious. The startup openly markets itself as the tool that helps you "cheat on everything" – a slogan that immediately grabs attention and challenges the status quo.

In Cluely's own manifesto, the team unabashedly declares: "We want to cheat on everything… If there's a faster way to win – we'll take it." This edgy positioning is not an accident; it's a strategic choice that aligns with the product's controversial promise and sets Cluely apart from more cautious competitors.

Cluely's messaging leans into the controversy. The company frames AI-powered "cheating" as the next evolution of productivity, drawing parallels to technologies once seen as cheating but now accepted (like calculators or spellcheck).

Target Audience and Use Cases: From Students to Sales Teams

Cluely's target audience is remarkably broad, reflecting the wide applicability of "cheating" with AI in various contexts. Initially, the product's earliest adopters included students and job seekers – people looking to gain an edge in exams or technical interviews.

But Cluely didn't stop at individual consumers. The startup quickly found a receptive audience among business professionals and teams. As CEO Roy Lee puts it, "Every single person who has a meeting or an interview is testing this out."

Cluely itself highlights use cases spanning Sales, Customer Support, Consulting, and Recruiting:

• •Sales representatives can use Cluely in client calls to get on-the-fly talking points and answers
• •Customer support agents could receive real-time suggested responses during support chats
• •Job candidates can discreetly get the "right" answers in interviews
• •Students could potentially use it in oral exams or tutoring sessions

As Cluely moved into serving businesses, it adapted to enterprise needs. The company introduced an Enterprise tier with team management, security features, and centralized administration, even signing at least one major public company to a large contract (reportedly $2.5M/year).

Growth and User Acquisition: Hype-Driven Launch to Hyper Growth

Cluely's growth trajectory has been nothing short of astounding. The startup went from zero to $3M ARR in just 67 days, and then doubled to $7M ARR within a week of launching an enterprise offering.

From the outset, distribution was prioritized over product development. Roy Lee has openly said they "didn't even have a functioning product when we launched the video" that went viral. Instead, the team used that viral content to drive sign-ups and gather user data.

Once users signed up, Cluely smartly lowered barriers to trying the product. They offer a free Starter plan so curious newcomers can get a taste of the "cheating" assistant with no commitment, then funnel power users into a $20/month Pro plan and negotiate higher-priced enterprise deals.

Viral Content Strategy: Controversy, Volume, and "Rage-Bait" Marketing

If there's one aspect of Cluely's marketing that everyone talks about, it's their viral content strategy. Cluely essentially turned its marketing into a media engine – flooding social platforms with attention-grabbing content and deliberately stoking controversy to fuel virality.

As Roy Lee observed, "Distribution beats product. Attention beats engineering." Cluely's team set out to win the attention game by any means necessary, effectively making virality their core product in the early days.

Importantly, Cluely didn't rely on one-off virality or luck; they engineered virality as a systematic process. Instead of a typical startup marketing team, Cluely hired 50+ interns and content creators whose sole job was to churn out content.

At their peak, the company was producing 200+ short videos per day across platforms. The philosophy was simple: "If you make 100 different videos, one will go viral. If you repost that viral video across 100 accounts, 20-30 will go viral too."

Content Channels and Media Presence: Owning the Conversation

To fuel its growth, Cluely established a presence on every relevant channel where its target audience spends time. The founder's weapon of choice was X (Twitter), where Roy Lee's provocative threads and frequent posts built much of the early momentum.

Traditional and tech media became another crucial channel. Cluely's antics earned features in TechCrunch, Business Insider, Fortune, The Times, Morning Brew, and numerous other outlets. Each article served as a marketing touchpoint, reaching audiences beyond social media.

Even in offline channels, Cluely found ways to make noise. In one stunt, the team attempted to host a huge after-party during Y Combinator's AI Startup School event. The party's sheer popularity (2,000+ people showed up) caused police to shut it down for overcrowding, generating yet more chatter about Cluely in the startup scene.

Paid vs. Organic Marketing Tactics: Blurring the Lines

One striking aspect of Cluely's marketing strategy is how it blurs the line between organic and paid tactics. On the surface, much of Cluely's growth appeared to be viral "magic" – the kind of organic word-of-mouth that money supposedly can't buy.

In reality, Cluely was not shy about putting budget behind its content; they just spent in unorthodox ways. Traditional paid advertising wasn't what drove Cluely. Instead, they practiced what you might call "paid virality".

At the same time, Cluely enjoyed enormous earned media as a result of its edgy approach. The controversial content and Roy's outspoken persona earned them interviews, podcast invites, and articles without PR spend.

Cluely's team essentially hacked the marketing funnel: they didn't rely on slow, gradual organic growth, nor did they burn big budgets on obvious ads. Instead, they spent money creatively to ignite word-of-mouth, then let the internet fan the flames.

Partnerships and Collaborations: Unconventional Allies

When it comes to traditional marketing partnerships, Cluely's strategy was anything but traditional. The startup's controversial nature meant that big brands or conservative institutions would likely shy away from formal partnerships. Cluely turned this into a strength by forging unconventional alliances.

Innovative and Differentiating Marketing Elements

Cluely's approach to marketing wasn't just effective – it was fundamentally innovative and filled with differentiators that other startups had rarely tried:

Results and Impact: What Cluely Achieved

The outcomes of Cluely's marketing blitz are as eye-popping as the tactics themselves. By mid-2025, roughly three months after launch, Cluely had achieved milestones that would make any growth team jealous:

Finally, Cluely's marketing campaign had an impact on the conversation around AI and ethics. They forced a mainstream dialogue about "what counts as cheating in the age of AI." That level of mindshare impact is rare and speaks to the power of their strategy.

Key Takeaways from Cluely's Marketing Strategy

For marketing professionals and founders, Cluely's rise offers several key lessons (even if not all tactics are advisable for every business):

Advanced Marketing Execution with Cassius: Your Next Step

Cluely's meteoric rise underscores a powerful truth: with the right strategy and tools, marketers can achieve unprecedented outcomes. Of course, not every brand will choose the path of controversy or have a founder willing to tweet 1,000 times in three months.

The good news is, you don't have to. You can harness the core of what made Cluely successful – data-driven content, agile multi-channel campaigns, and creative audience engagement – in a way that fits your business and values.

This is where Cassius's marketing platform comes into play. Cassius offers tools designed for marketing teams who aspire to Cluely-level performance without the chaos:

• •
  Plan and scale content production across channels with centralized control and quality checks
• •
  Leverage AI-driven insights to identify messaging that will resonate with your target audience
• •
  Automate multi-platform distribution while maintaining brand integrity and compliance
• •
  Measure and optimize in real time with actionable insights and performance tracking

The Future of Viral Marketing

Cluely's bold journey illustrates what's possible when marketing breaks the mold. They proved that speed and boldness can triumph over traditional approaches, and that controversy – when aligned with authentic brand values – can become a powerful distribution mechanism.

While not every brand should or will follow Cluely's exact playbook, the underlying principles are universally applicable: understand your audience's desires and fears, create emotionally charged content, distribute aggressively across channels, and never stop iterating.

The tools and platforms exist today to implement these strategies at scale. The question is: will you be bold enough to use them?