🔎 Spotlight #23: Inside Cluely
Astronomically viral startup that promotes cheating, and raised money doing it.
The founding story: turning interviews into a solvable problem
Cluely was founded by Roy Lee and Neel Shanmugam, two former Columbia University students who started with a blunt observation: interviews and live assessments often reward memorization and stress management more than real problem solving.
Instead of treating that as a flaw to work around, they treated it as a system to redesign.
Their question was simple. If people are allowed to use tools on the job, why are interviews the one place where help is banned? In real work, engineers Google, operators reference dashboards, and analysts use models. Yet interviews pretend none of that exists.
Cluely was built as a response to that disconnect.
I do not condone cheating of any sort lol just thought this company was interesting, don’t come for me
The lore: from InterviewCoder to Cluely
Before Cluely ever existed, Roy Lee was already poking the bear.
Roy first built Interview Coder, a tool that was very explicitly designed to help candidates cheat during technical interviews. There was no ambiguity about the intent. It listened during interviews and helped generate answers in real time. Unsurprisingly, it blew up. And just as quickly, it got banned, criticized, and written off as unethical by much of the hiring world.
Most founders would have stopped there.
Instead, Roy doubled down.
Rather than walking away, he reframed the entire argument. The backlash around InterviewCoder made something very clear to him. People were not just mad about cheating. They were uncomfortable confronting how artificial and outdated interviews had become.
So Cluely was born as the evolved version of that original idea.
Where InterviewCoder was deliberately provocative, Cluely was positioned as philosophical. The core question shifted from “How do I cheat interviews?” to “Why do interviews ban the exact tools people use every day at work?”
That context matters. Cluely did not come out of nowhere. It was the second act of a very intentional experiment. InterviewCoder tested the boundaries. Cluely challenged the assumptions behind those boundaries.
The lore is part of the product.
Roy has been unusually open about this progression, and that transparency is a big reason Cluely keeps showing up in conversations across tech Twitter, LinkedIn, and hiring circles. Love it or hate it, the company is not pretending this was accidental.
Cluely exists because InterviewCoder forced a reaction. And Cluely is the refined answer to that reaction.
What Cluely actually does
At its core, Cluely is a real time AI assistant designed for live interviews, screens, and technical evaluations.
It listens, understands context, and provides guidance during conversations or problem solving sessions. Think of it less as cheating and more as augmentation.
Cluely can help users:
Break down ambiguous interview questions
Structure responses more clearly under pressure
Get real time nudges during technical or case style prompts
Stay calm and organized when stakes are high
The key idea is not replacing thinking. It is reducing unnecessary friction. Cluely assumes that interviews should test judgment and reasoning, not memory recall or stress tolerance.
That philosophy is exactly why it sparked so much debate.
Funding and team at a glance
💰 $20.3M+ raised to date, including Abstract Ventures, Susa Ventures, and a16z
👥 Small but fast growing team of ~70 employees
🌎 Based in NYC
🖥️ Website: cluely.com
The competition and how Cluely compares
Cluely does not compete directly with traditional interview platforms like HackerRank or Codility. Those tools still focus on testing in isolation.
Its closest comparisons are:
Generic AI copilots that are not interview aware
Practice tools that stop working once the interview begins
Cluely’s differentiation is timing. It operates during the moment that matters most.
Rather than prepping you beforehand or grading you afterward, it exists inside the live interaction. That makes it uncomfortable for traditional hiring frameworks, but also uniquely powerful.
The real engine: UGC, distribution, and attention
Under the hood, Cluely is just as much a media and marketing company as it is a software startup.
Their biggest advantage isn’t purely the product. It’s distribution. The team has built a massive presence on Twitter and TikTok, where short clips, memes, and polarizing takes regularly rack up millions of views. Instead of polished launch announcements or traditional SaaS marketing, Cluely leans into internet-native storytelling. Fast edits, bold claims, and content that sparks debate.
A lot of their UGC blurs the line between product demo and satire. Some posts openly joke about “cheating,” others frame Cluely as a productivity edge, and many are designed to trigger strong reactions. That ambiguity is intentional. It keeps Cluely in the feed, in group chats, and in comment sections.
What’s clever is how tightly the content loop feeds the product. Every viral clip becomes a funnel. Every controversy becomes awareness. They are not waiting for press or enterprise deals to validate them. They are manufacturing attention in real time.
In that sense, Cluely feels less like a traditional startup and more like a modern consumer brand that happens to ship software. Distribution first, product second. And in today’s market, that playbook can be just as powerful as any technical moat.
Just check out their launch video and look how it’s set up. It’s really just a meme of a company in my honest opinion, but you can’t help but appreciate what they’re building and how they’re going against the grain.
My take
Cluely is not an easy company to have an opinion about, and that is exactly why it is interesting.
Personally, I do not condone any form of cheating/gaming the system, but as I said earlier, I can’t help but appreciate a company that goes against the grain. Their philosophy of “cheating” on everything has a great double meaning, because not only does it mean you can cheat on your technical interview, but you can take a sales call with Cluely and learn industry insights or tips about the client you’re chatting with.
Do I really think it’ll go far? I’m not quite sure. I think they’re an incredible viral marketing company. Are they an actual SaaS firm? Not in my books. But definitely something to keep an eye on!
🧭 Cluely Roles
These are some interesting (but technical) roles at Cluely. I probably won’t be sharing many more of their roles on LaunchPad, but who knows maybe I will one day.
That’s a wrap on Spotlight #23
If you made it this far, thank you for reading! I hope these spotlights help you discover companies worth your time, and make the job hunt feel just a little bit less overwhelming. Keep an eye out for next Tuesday’s LaunchPad job drop, and if you know someone looking to break into tech or level up, feel free to share this with them too.
Here’s to building something cool, or better yet, joining something cool. 🚀
