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India Today
25-06-2025
- Business
- India Today
AI cheating startup Cluely CEO calls work-life balance a myth, says work should be your life
If you fancy working at one of Silicon Valley's more unconventional startups, be prepared to either code like your life depends on it or become the next social media sensation. That's the philosophy driving Cluely, a young artificial intelligence company that's already causing a stir for its bold approach to growth, hiring, and, apparently, work-life balance. The cofounder and CEO, Chungin 'Roy' Lee, has previously made headlines, claiming that cheating is the future, especially when AI is in the picture, and traditional recruitment procedures must be replaced with just looking at whether the candidate is a "cultural fit". Now, with these statements, we can only assume that Cleuly's work environment must be pretty chill. However, in the recent Business Insider interview, Lee cleared the air. advertisementCluely's team, which mostly lives and works together in the same house, embraces a philosophy that many would find extreme. 'Work-life balance? That's not really a thing here,' Lee said with a grin during the podcast. 'We wake up, we're at work. We go to sleep on the sofa if that's where we crash. The work is our life.'Lee argues that such a commitment is essential at this stage of the company's journey. 'When you're building something from scratch, it's not a 40-hour-a-week job,' he added. 'You have to be all in, or you'll be left behind.' According to Lee, everyone at Cluely understands and accepts what he describes as 'the madness required to make it.' It's a sentiment echoed by Silicon Valley veterans. LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman has said that anyone expecting work-life balance at a startup probably isn't cut out for it. Hoffman's message indicates that if you want to succeed in the startup world, you need to be fully consumed by it. The focus, he insists, must stay firmly on the business. 'It's incredibly tough, and there are countless ways a business can fail,' he cautions, urging aspiring founders to recognise that building a company from the ground up is a relentless and demanding are only two kinds of people here,' Lee explained on a recent episode of the Sourcery podcast. 'You're either creating the product, or you're making sure the world can't stop talking about it.' The company, based in San Francisco, employs just engineers and influencers, no marketing departments, no sales teams, no middle managers. And if you don't fall neatly into either camp? According to Lee, you don't belong at startup initially grabbed attention with an eyebrow-raising promise, to help software engineers 'cheat' their way through job interviews. That pitch, which saw Lee briefly suspended from Columbia University over a prototype of the tool, generated both headlines and controversy. Cluely has since scrubbed overt references to 'cheating' from its website, but its core proposition remains the same, AI that quietly feeds users answers in real time by watching their screens, all while staying 'undetectable.'Lee's ambitions for Cluely go far beyond the niche world of technical interviews. The young founder believes the company's success hinges not on slick advertising, but on achieving what he calls cultural relevance. 'Our goal is to be everywhere, the biggest thing on TikTok, Instagram, you name it,' Lee said. 'It's not about polished campaigns. It's about understanding what makes people click, laugh, and share.'And that's where Cluely's influencer-heavy strategy comes in. 'You can hire marketers who've been scrolling for years, but they just don't get it the way someone truly plugged into online culture does,' Lee told Business Insider. 'The people creating these viral moments aren't sat in an office somewhere planning ads — they're living it.' His target? A billion views across platforms. - Ends
Business Insider
24-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The cofounder of the viral AI 'cheating' startup Cluely says he only hires people for 2 jobs
At the AI startup that promised to help people "cheat on everything," there are only two job titles: engineer or influencer. "There are only two roles here. You're either building the product or you're making the product go viral," Chungin "Roy" Lee, the CEO and cofounder of Cluely, said in an episode of the "Sourcery" podcast published Saturday. "There's nobody who's not a great engineer who has less than 100,000 followers." Cluely launched earlier this year as a tool to help software engineers cheat on their job interviews, among other use cases. Lee went viral after he was suspended by Columbia University over an early version of the tool. Cluely has since removed references to cheating on job interviews from its website. It still positions itself as an "undetectable" AI that sees its users' screens and feeds them answers in real time. The San Francisco startup, which announced a $15 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz on Friday, has made it clear it's betting big on influencers — not marketers — to drive growth. Cluely needs to be "the biggest thing" on Instagram and TikTok, the 21-year-old said. "Every single big company is known by regular people," he added. Lee previously told BI that his main goal for Cluely is to reach 1 billion views across all platforms. "Marketing teams can try," he said. "The reason all these big consumer app guys are so young is because you need to be tapped in with young culture to understand what's funny." "You can have a 35-year-old marketer who scrolls as much as they want. For some reason, they just won't have the viral sense to come up with hooks that are capable of generating 10 million views." No work-life balance Lee said most of the team lives and works together — part of his belief that "work-life balance should not be a thing." "You need to work where you live if you're serious about building the company," Lee said. "Your work should be your life and vice versa." "You wake up, go straight to work, go to bed on the couch," he said. "That's sort of the culture we're trying to promote here," he added. Lee told BI on Tuesday that "work-life balance at an early-stage startup is a myth." "The only way to succeed is by being all in on your company, not by working 40 hours a week and going home early," he added. Lee also said on the podcast that he doesn't have to worry about his employees because "everyone is on board with the craziness." "We understand that this is like the lifeline of the company," Lee said. "We're either crazy enough to make it or we're crazy enough to die." The rejection of work-life balance is hardly new in startup culture. LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman said during an episode of the "Diary of a CEO" podcast that startup employees shouldn't expect work-life balance if they want their business to take off. "Work-life balance is not the startup game," Hoffman said. Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban said on an episode of "The Playbook" that "there is no balance" for the most ambitious people. "If you want to crush the game, whatever game you're in, there's somebody working 24 hours a day to kick your ass," he said.
