Roy Lee
Co-founder & CEO, Cluely. On 4 shows, 6 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineer@im_roy_lee ↗cluely.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Roy Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Cluely, an AI desktop assistant and real-time notetaker. He previously developed Interview Coder, an AI tool for live coding interviews, which gained widespread attention and led to his suspension from Columbia University.
4shows
6appearances
87statements
8resolved
5supported
1contradicted
63%fully supported
50said about them ↓ Everything Roy Lee said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Cluely remains invisible to screen share and undetectable to others
“We are the tool that lets you use AI without anybody else knowing. We're still invisible to screen share. We still have all our undetectability features”
Founders waste valuable time obsessing over burn rate and cost-cutting
“If you're a founder and you spend 10 hours thinking about burn and like cutting costs, that's 10 hours you didn't spend about making product and like making product decisions and making your product better and like growing your company.”
Cluely spends $50,000 monthly on DoorDash to accelerate product development
“Like right now, like we will literally spend like 50,000 dollars a month on door dashing random food. Just so we like spend more time, like spend less time cooking because everyone is more efficient and we can like grow the product faster that way.”
Cluely secured enterprise contracts entirely through Lee's Twitter presence
“The only reason I have the contracts that I do right now is cuz the decision makers at these enterprise companies have seen my Twitter and think I'm funny and are rooting for me.”
Serious founders should eliminate work-life balance and live at work
“You need to work where you live if you're serious about building the company. Like work-life balance should not be a thing that you think about. Your work should be your life and vice versa. And if that's the case, then the best way to realize this is by liter…”
Cluely strictly hires world-class engineers or influencers with 100k+ followers
“We only hire one of two types of people. You're either an engineer or like a world-class engineer or you're an influencer and also like a world-class influencer with like high alcohol. There's nobody who's not a great engineer who has less than a 100,000 follo…”
Cluely allocates roughly 80% of its venture capital toward marketing
“The budget is essentially all of our investor money. Probably like, 80% of it.”
Artificial superintelligence will cause almost no harm and self-restore
“I genuinely think super intelligence will do almost no harm. Whatever harm it will do, it will like self restore.”
Columbia suspended Roy Lee for a year after his Amazon interview stunt
“Amazon reported me to Columbia. Amazon is mad. Columbia is mad. And this ends up being a spat that I sort of publicize on my Twitter. It becomes this big spectacle and I eventually get kicked out of Columbia or suspended for a year. And I'm blacklisted from mo…”
Roy Lee: Amazon interview stunt was aimed at viral distribution, not employment
“I was never intending on taking the job at Amazon. The impetus for everything was I did a bunch of legal questions thinking that I would work at a big tech company one day. I really hated it. And at a certain point I kind of just thought I really want to build…”
Lee: Cluely's ultimate end state is a brain chip using AGI to think
“Ultimately though, what we want the end state of the product is a chip inside your brain that lets you use AGI to think that, that is the ultimate end state.”
Lee: Cluely plans to hire 100 interns as summer content farm
“We're probably gonna hire about a hundred interns. And we're going to turn them into like sort of the ultimate content farm over the summer.”
Roy Lee: Immediate AI opportunity is on desktop, not VR or glasses
“Everyone thinks it's some people think it's VR, some people think it's glasses, some people think it's pendants, and I think right now there's so much money to be made in the computer, and right now, I think it all starts at the computer, so that's where we're…”
Roy Lee: Startups die because working 13-hour days with unlikable people sucks
“Most companies die because I think they get the culture wrong because it's not fucking fun to work at your startup where you're grinding 13 hours a day with people you don't even like.”
Roy Lee: Gen Z lacks the ability to socialize and do deep work
“I mean, you could just tell, like, people don't know how to fucking socialize, and I feel like people don't know how to sit down and do hard, deep, meaningful work, and people don't know how to socialize and talk with each other, and everyone is so fucking, li…”
Lee: I raised my seed round in 24 hours after my viral suspension
“When I went out to do my fundraise, like it took, literally took like 24 hours. I think there was a lot of interest for VCs.”
Lee: Ambient contextual overlay is probably the future UX of all AI
“The more we realize this is actually probably the correct UX for all AI interaction in the future.”
Roy Lee: Cluely scaled from zero to $5M ARR in three months
“Interview Coder launches February first, and right now it's, like, hovering at around two millier R. Cluey launches April twenty-th, and right now it's up in, like, a little over two months. Probably, like, almost three months now, and Cluey has gone from zero…”
Roy Lee: I can predict any tweet's impressions within 25%
“And now at this point I can sort of like tell within like plus -25% exactly how many impressions every single tweet I post will do.”
Lee: Nobody will watch a standard product demo launch video
“If you actually do an actual sales call on, like, a genuine demo of the product, then nobody's gonna fucking watch your thing, as A, it's not interesting and, like, B, it's, well, Unless it's super informational and you just have, like, the most crazy fucking …”
Roy Lee: A launch just gives you momentum to go viral repeatedly
“The benefit of a launch is that it gives you the right to try again. And try to go viral again. And if you can go viral enough times, then like, bro, you will like, end up like Cluey.”
Roy Lee: Cyclically reacting to audience outrage creates a distribution goldmine
“You have the fucking distribution potential goldmine that you get out of just making something very reactionary, and then reacting to all the reactions over and over again, cyclically, it will literally, like, spiral you up into something that you never even k…”
Roy Lee: Cluely averages 80 million monthly views on Instagram and TikTok
“I think we're averaging somewhere around eighty million views a month on there.”
Roy Lee: Cluely has a strong shot at winning next-gen hardware distribution
“And like from then on, it literally just replaces your computer. And I think like once, once we get to a point of like truly replacing the computer and like being a completely new graphical interface for technology. And at that point we have a very strong shot…”
The other half of the tape: Roy Lee's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 48 times in 6 episodes across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Brian Kim 16Molly O'Shea 13John Coogan 8Yacine Mtibaa 7Jordi Hays 2
Statements about Roy Lee, by other people (2)
Kim: Cluely has good margins and founder claims profitability
“We know the product has good margin. He's said a couple of times he's profitable.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Sourcery 29
TBPN 19
2025 48 mentions in 6 episodes 8 per episode
- Why a16z Bet $15 Million on THIS Controversial Startup · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Weekly Recap: Tesla Robotaxi, Mr. Beast's AI Tool, Yacine, The Social Network 2, Neuralink Update
- Weekly Recap: Sam vs. Elon, Cluely's Crazy Ad, UFC x Paramount, Apple's AI Robot
- Weekly Recap: Mark Cuban, Kanye’s Wild Mansion Makeover, China Heads to the Moon, Money in Clipping
- Weekly Recap: The Soham Parekh Drama, Meta Attacks OpenAI, Trump's Mega Bill
- Is Venture Capital Broken? | Sam Lessin on TBPN
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Roy's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SOURCERYLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Cluely | 1 | 29 | 50% 1/2 | full record on Sourcery → |
 PRODUCT MARKET FITLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Cluely | 1 | 27 | 67% 2/3 | full record on A Product Market Fit Show → |
 a16zLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Cluely | 1 | 17 | 50% 1/2 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
| TBPNLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Cluely | 3 | 14 | 100% 1/1 | full record on TBPN → |