How Cluely Went Viral With Interns and Gen Z Creators

Behind Cluely’s Viral Growth

The AI startup raised $20 million, trended on TikTok, and got people talking. But underneath the excitement, there's a more profound lesson about strategy, trust, and how analytics can keep your momentum going.

Let’s start at the beginning: What is Cluely?

Cluely is a new AI product that provides users with real-time insights during interviews, meetings with the claim to enable live cheating on everything. It was founded by Roy Lee, who was suspended from Columbia after posting a video of himself using AI to land jobs at Amazon and Meta. That video went viral on TikTok and Instagram, sparking massive attention and controversy. Roy turned all the criticism into a bold marketing strategy and positioned Cluely as the app to “cheat on everything.” The result: $15M in VC funding and $7M in ARR, powered not just by product, but by virality & controversy.

Cluely quickly became a sensation. However, the growth was driven more by discussion than trust based on a superior product. The team went all in on social media, especially TikTok, where they shared user-generated content (UGC) across dozens of accounts posting explainers, demos, and reactions. On Instagram, they leaned into storytelling and founder personality with vlogs and behind-the-scenes content. Most prominently, they hired lots of content craetors as content interns with comperetitive salaries. Most of these interns already had lots of experience in creating viral short-form video content on TikTok and Instagram.

The results:

TikTok videos mentioning Cluely racked up 38M+ combined views within six weeks.
Over 220K new followers across all official and affiliated accounts.
UGC (user-generated content) exploded, 1,500+ unpaid videos were created by fans, creators, and curious critics alike.
On Tik Tok, the engagement rate reached 11.4%
Daily mentions of “Cluely” on social platforms peaked at 5,800+ per day during the viral window.

The hype and viral sentiment around Cluely helped the company to close a significant Series A round of $15 million just shortly after they announced their first seed raise. The investors mentioned that what stood out most was how much people were talking about Cluely online. At one point, the attention around Cluely got so intense that people began making their own videos about it, without being asked or paid! They'd film reactions, explainers, even critiques, essentially promoting the product insights (and revenue) that could have turned short-term attention into long-term growth.

Viral marketing experts started tracking Cluely's growth and publicly assessed the value of the public campaign for the team. However, some interesting insights were still overlooked such as information on

Which campaigns brought in users (TikTok UGC vs Instagram Reels)
Who stayed, tracking how different groups behaved over time
Which content led to revenue, identifying what actually converted
How their audience is split up, students vs job seekers, and tailor content more precisely.

It’s the kind of viral loop most startups dream of, right? We’ve actually broken down the strategy Cluely used in this guide on setting up a viral TikTok growth engine via a student gen z creator network. Definitely worth a look if you want to create that kind of momentum without relying on luck or controversy.

Cluely got a crazy amount of attention, the kind most teams dream about. Shares, comments, over 1,500 fan-made videos. From the outside, it looked like a huge win. But inside the team, no one really knew what was driving it. They couldn’t see who actually stuck around, which features pulled people in, or whether any of those videos converted. Most of it wasn’t tracked at all.

So when things slowed down, as they always do, they were left guessing. What worked? What didn’t? Could they do it again? That’s where a lot of teams slip. They focus so much on getting attention that they forget to figure out what actually works. And without that, there’s no way to build anything consistent. Platforms shift, algorithms change, audiences move on. If you don’t understand why something worked, you can’t repeat it, and you definitely can’t build a business around it.

What we can Learn from Cluely's Viral Growth

We’ve all been told that more views mean more success, but the truth is, not all views are equal. You can have a video hit a million views and still see zero impact on your business if none of those viewers take the next step. On the other hand, a post that reaches just a few hundred of the right people, the ones who are actually interested, ready to buy, or want to learn more, can completely change the impact. So instead of mainly looking for numbers, it’s worth focusing on what those views actually lead to. And no, you don’t need to post 200 videos a day to grow. The internet already has more content than any of us can ever consume. What it doesn’t have enough of is content that actually matters, content that’s thoughtful and relevant to the people you’re trying to reach. A handful of strong, strategic posts will always outperform hundreds of random ones. It’s about showing up with intention. If you’re posting just for the sake of posting, just to stay visible, then it’s probably not doing much. In fact, without a clear message or purpose behind it, that kind of content just adds to the noise. People scroll past it without thinking twice, because there’s nothing there to hold their attention. But when you take the time to understand what your audience cares about and speak directly to that, your content stops being noise and starts becoming something people want to listen to.

For builders and marketers, the takeaway is simple: start tracking early. When you understand what’s working, you can stop guessing and start scaling with intention.

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