Goodbye Fancy Bar, Hello At-Home Pizza Party: Young Americans Cut Back
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Cluely's ARR doubled in a week to $7M, founder Roy Lee says. But rivals are coming.
Cluely's revenue has skyrocketed to about $7 million in ARR since it launched its new enterprise product a week ago, founder Roy Lee told TechCrunch. 'Every single person who has a meeting or an interview is testing this out.' Cluely, one of Silicon Valley's most-talked-about startups, offers products that use AI to analyze online conversations, deliver real-time notes, provide context, and suggest questions to ask. This information appeared discreetly on the user's screen, invisible to others. For weeks leading up to the product reveal, Lee boasted that the company's annual recurring revenue (ARR) exceeded $3 million and that the startup was profitable. The increase in interest is coming from consumers and businesses alike, he said. Cluely is a startup born of controversy after Lee posted in a viral X thread saying he was suspended by Columbia University because he and a co-founder developed a tool to cheat on job interviews for software engineers. He turned around and created a product and startup out of the tech, originally using the marketing tagline that it helps you 'cheat on everything.' Now that it is backed by big-league VCs like Andreessen Horowitz, Abstract Ventures, and Susa Ventures, it has toned down its marketing to 'Everything You Need. Before You Ask. … This feels like cheating.' It has turned into a Silicon Valley sensation from its rage-bait marketing. But the startup's controversial history hasn't stopped businesses from showing interest in Cluely's product, Lee insists, telling us that it has signed a public company that just this week doubled its annual contract with Cluely to $2.5 million. Lee declined to name the company. The enterprise version of the product is similar to the consumer offering, but it comes with some extra features such as team management and additional security settings, Lee said. Business use cases include sales calls, customer support, and remote tutoring. Which Cluely features are the most interesting to customers? According to Lee, it's Cluely's ability to take real-time notes. 'Meeting notes have been a proven very sticky, very interesting AI use case. The only problem with them is they're all post-call,' Lee said of competitors' products. 'You want to look back at them in the middle of a meeting, and that is what we offer.' However, Cluely's real-time notetaker may be easy to replicate. On Thursday, Pickle, a company that describes itself as a digital clone factory, claimed on X that it built Glass, an open source, free product with very similar functionality to Cluely. By mid-day it had already garnered over 850 stars and been forked nearly 150 times — indicating that the open source developer community is giving this free version a try. Time will tell if Cluely's meteoric rise can withstand competition from free copycat products like Glass. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
29 minutes ago
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Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000' pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit
Slate Auto, the electric vehicle startup backed by Jeff Bezos, has stopped promoting that its upcoming pickup truck will start 'under $20,000' following passage of President Trump's tax cut bill. The bill, which is expected to be signed into law by Trump on July 4, will cause the federal EV tax credit to end in September — a $7,500 incentive that Slate had counted on to help its all-electric pickup clear that mark. When Slate came out of stealth mode in April, the startup heavily promoted that its all-electric pickup would start at 'under $20,000' with the $7,500 federal EV tax credit. That language was still on Slate's website as recently as yesterday according to the Web Archive. The change is a potential blow to the young company's attempt to make a radically affordable electric vehicle. Slate didn't provide a precise price for the EV at its launch event; and it has yet to say what the actual starting price of its vehicle will be, sans-credit. A Slate spokesperson declined to comment on the change. The company won't start building the truck until the end of 2026 at the earliest. Slate's business is also built around making this vehicle highly customizable, which means it's possible that few people will buy the base model to begin with. The sub-$20,000 price had been a big attraction point for the brand new company's product, and it was a major focus following its April launch event. The auto industry has 'driven prices to a place that most Americans simply can't afford,' chief commercial officer Jeremy Snyder said during the event. 'But we're here to change that.' 'We are building the affordable vehicle that has long been promised but never been delivered,' CEO Chris Barman added at the time. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
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Trump's ‘Big Beautiful Bill' Cements GOP Dominance
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) and President Donald Trump, speak to members of the media as they depart a House Republican meeting at the U.S. Capitol on May 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit - Andrew Harnik—Getty Images The passage of the 'Big Beautiful Bill' on Thursday was a moment when President Donald Trump's hold on the Republican Party was tested — and he won. GOP holdouts objected to the trillions of dollars the bill is projected to add to the debt and the cuts to Medicaid and other safety net programs. But in the end, Trump was able to browbeat Republicans into supporting his costly plans to fund long-term tax cuts for the wealthy, more deportations of immigrants and boosting defense spending. Trump's victory further strengthens his power in Washington and clears the way for him to take even more aggressive actions on immigration, trade policy and depart from American tradition to hammer the chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell into lowering interest rates, a move that could give the U.S. economy a sugar high of cheap cash. Read more: The Budget Bill's Big Consequences Trump's control over the GOP 'is as close to total as any President has ever had over his own political party,' says Whit Ayres, a long-time Republican pollster. 'It gives him the support of his own legislative caucus for almost anything he wants to do.' Trump plans to sign the bill into law on Friday at 5 p.m. as B-2 bombers jet over the White House during a Fourth of July celebration for military families. 'We'll be signing with those beautiful planes flying right over our heads,' Trump told reporters traveling with him on Air Force One on Thursday evening. In order to get the bill passed, some Republicans broke their promises not to cut Medicaid, other Republicans reneged on pledges to keep down the national debt. In the House, only two Republicans—Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania—ended up voting against Trump's bill. The bill narrowly passed the House 218-214 with all Democrats voting against it. Massie wrote on X that he voted 'no' because 'it will significantly increase U.S. budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates.' The bill barely made it out of the Senate earlier in the week. Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted against Trump's bill forcing Vice President J.D. Vance to cast a tie-breaking vote. Tillis said the Medicaid cuts would be devastating to his state, and, after bucking Trump, said he wouldn't run for reelection. Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri had argued against the cuts to Medicaid but ended up voting 'yes,' and Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a Republican, had criticized the bill for not cutting enough to offset adding trillions to the debt, but ended up voting for the bill. Read more: The GOP Budget Will Balloon the National Debt. Here's What Trump Could do to Fix it Now Trump is faced with the daunting task of selling the unpopular bill to the public. Only 29% of voters said they support the bill, according to a Quinnipiac University poll published on June 26, while 55% percent of voters said that they oppose the bill and 16% were unsure. The cuts to social safety net programs and the increase in the deficit could lead to political blowback that helps Democrats take back control of the House in the 2026 mid-term elections. The bill could be a political risk for Trump, says Ayres, if 'a whole lot of Trump supporters lose their health care and get angry about it.' Contact us at letters@
