{"id":18048,"date":"2025-06-27T03:49:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T03:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/18048\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T03:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T03:49:08","slug":"why-a16z-vc-believes-that-cluely-the-cheat-on-everything-startup-is-the-new-blueprint-for-ai-startups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/18048\/","title":{"rendered":"Why a16z VC believes that Cluely, the \u2018cheat on everything\u2019 startup, is the new blueprint for AI startups"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Cluely, a startup claiming to be building a product that helps people \u201ccheat\u201d on everything, announced that it raised a $15 million Series A financing round from Andreessen Horowitz, some people on X criticized<\/a> the VC firm for backing the controversial company.<\/p>\n

After all, Cluely isn\u2019t just offering a product that may have questionable uses; the startup has also become famous for using what many people call rage-bait marketing.<\/p>\n

But Cluely\u2019s ability to grab attention is precisely what attracted a16z to the startup.<\/p>\n

Even before meeting Cluely\u2019s founder Roy Lee, Andreessen Horowitz\u2019s partner Bryan Kim thought that startups need new marketing tactics in the AI era.<\/p>\n

Kim, like many investors, previously thought that building a superb \u201cartisan\u201d product with highly desired features was the key to a startup\u2019s lasting success, he explained on the latest a16z podcast episode<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But shortly after the emergence of generative AI, he noticed that offering an exceptional product might not be enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you craft this thing and OpenAI or someone builds a new model to include that part in their product, you\u2019re done,\u201d Kim said. \u201cSo, it couldn\u2019t become this highly thoughtful, slow-build product. It needed to be something where founders moved extremely quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

That realization has led Kim to believe that speed, whether in marketing or product building, is paramount to creating a successful startup.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Kim published a post<\/a> explaining his theory of why, for consumer-facing AI startups, \u201cmomentum is the moat.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Kim met Lee and saw that Cluely had been able to convert awareness into paying customers, he instantly knew that he had discovered a founder he had theorized about.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been so hard to pierce through the noise of everything AI, especially in consumer, and to do that consistently is actually near impossible,\u201d Kim said.<\/p>\n

How does Lee explain why his polarizing marketing approach has generated so much buzz?<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people don\u2019t know how to make viral content,\u201d Lee said on the podcast. \u201cEveryone on X is trying to [sound] like the most intellectual, thoughtful person. But this just lacks viral sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee, instead, had studied why some posts on TikTok and Instagram blow up.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlgorithms promote the most controversial things,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m just literally applying the same principles of controversy on X and LinkedIn.\u201d<\/p>\n

What many people don\u2019t know, Lee said, is that Cluely barely had a functioning product when the startup launched in April with its slickly produced video<\/a> of Lee using its hidden AI to lie to a woman about his age and knowledge of art while on a date.<\/p>\n

Despite having some semblance of a product, the startup has yet to unveil the solution it has been hyping.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe internet is up in storm saying, \u2018Where\u2019s the product?\u2019\u201d Lee said. \u201cWe\u2019re earlier than the latest YC batch of companies. Yet, we\u2019re generating more views than every single one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee is convinced that once the product launches, it will generate even more excitement than if Cluely introduced it without \u201cmarketing\u201d the company for the last two months. (The official launch is set for Friday, June 27, he posted on X<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Kim sees Cluely\u2019s approach as a perfect embodiment of his \u201cmomentum as a moat\u201d theory.<\/p>\n

Since time is of the essence in AI, the a16z partner is certain that Cluely can figure out its product on the fly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s important is to try to build a plane as it\u2019s falling down the cliff,\u201d Kim said.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll all see soon if that plane soars or crashes.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Cluely, a startup claiming to be building a product that helps people \u201ccheat\u201d on everything, announced that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[17318,64,5702,2436,607,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-18048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-a16z","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-cluely","11":"tag-consumer","12":"tag-entrepreneurship","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}