In early 2025, a 21-year-old Columbia University student used a hidden AI tool to cheat his way through job interviews at Amazon, Meta, TikTok, and Capital One, and got offers from all four. Then he filmed himself doing it and uploaded the evidence to YouTube. Within months, that decision cost him his internship offer and his spot at Columbia, and earned him roughly $20 million in venture capital.
His name is Roy Lee. And the wildest part of his story is that the punishment never mattered.
Key Takeaways
- The stunt: In early 2025, Roy Lee used his hidden AI tool Interview Coder to pass technical interviews at Amazon, Meta, TikTok, and Capital One, then posted the recorded Amazon interview to YouTube.
- The fallout: Amazon pulled his offer, and Columbia escalated his punishment to a one-year suspension after he secretly recorded his February 17, 2025 disciplinary hearing. Lee dropped out instead.
- The payoff: Cluely launched on April 20, 2025 with the tagline “cheat on everything,” announced a $5.3 million seed round the next day, and closed a $15 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz in June 2025.
- The lie: Lee told TechCrunch that Cluely hit $7 million in annual recurring revenue; in 2026 he admitted on X the real figure was about $5.2 million.
- The pivot: By late 2025 the “cheat on everything” branding was scrubbed, and Cluely repositioned as a standard AI meeting assistant in a crowded market.
Who Is Roy Lee, the Founder of Cluely?
Roy Lee is a 21-year-old former Columbia University student who turned academic disgrace into a venture-backed startup, and whose résumé of punishments started long before Cluely. Lee grew up in Atlanta in a Korean-American family; his mother runs an admissions consulting business. He was good enough to get into Harvard, until a high school volunteering trip went sideways. He and classmates snuck out after curfew, police were called, Lee was arrested, his school suspended him, and Harvard rescinded his admission.
Most people would call that a catastrophe. Lee later described it as “sort of like God calling me,” a sign he wasn’t meant for the traditional path. He enrolled at Diablo Valley College, a California community college, then transferred to Columbia. Within months of arriving at one of America’s most prestigious universities, he was building his next stunt.
Interview Coder: Filming the Crime
As a second-year student, Lee and a classmate built Interview Coder, a desktop app that sat invisibly on screen during video calls, read the coding problem being asked, and fed back answers in real time. Undetectable by the interviewer.
Lee didn’t just build it. He tested it live, in real interviews at Amazon, Meta, TikTok, and Capital One, and says he received offers from all four. He recorded the Amazon interview and posted it on YouTube. The video went viral, Amazon pulled the offer, and Columbia opened a disciplinary case.
The stunt hit a real nerve. Since ChatGPT’s launch in late 2022, tech recruiters had watched remote coding tests become quietly unwinnable for honest candidates, and by 2025, major employers including Google were reportedly reintroducing in-person interview rounds to make sure candidates could actually code. Lee didn’t invent the problem. He filmed it.
At the virtual hearing on February 17, Lee secretly recorded the administrators and posted the clip on X. Columbia escalated his probation to a one-year suspension. His response, in a tweet:
“I’d rather rage bait Columbia admin, get expelled, and milk the clout.”
He dropped out. He left without a degree but with something Silicon Valley values more: millions of people knew his name.
What Is Cluely and How Does It Work?
Cluely is an AI assistant that sits invisibly on screen during video calls, meetings, and interviews, reading the conversation and feeding its user real-time answers nobody else can see. Three weeks after dropping out, Lee launched it on April 20, 2025. The rebrand was deliberate. Interview Coder only helped with coding interviews; Cluely promised to help with everything. Sales calls, Zoom meetings, exams, even dates. The launch film showed Lee wearing AI glasses on a date, faking knowledge of art and wine while the tool fed him lines. People compared it to Black Mirror. That was the point.
The numbers came fast, and so did the money.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Early 2025 | Interview Coder video goes viral; Amazon pulls Lee’s offer |
| Feb 17, 2025 | Columbia disciplinary hearing, which Lee secretly records |
| April 20, 2025 | Cluely launches with the tagline “cheat on everything” |
| April 21, 2025 | $5.3M seed round announced (Abstract Ventures, Susa Ventures) |
| June 2025 | $15M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz |
| 2026 | Lee admits his claimed $7M ARR was a lie; real figure was $5.2M |
Seventy thousand people signed up in the first week. Lee told TechCrunch the company passed $3 million in annual recurring revenue within weeks of launch. By June, Andreessen Horowitz, the backer of GitHub, Airbnb, and Coinbase, led a $15 million Series A. According to Lee, a16z showed up after seeing Cluely go viral and the whole process took about two days.
The Product Was Never the Product
Here’s what got buried under the outrage: journalists who tested Cluely found response delays of 5 to 90 seconds and generic answers that didn’t match the conversation. Lee himself admitted the product launched in “a really raw state.”
Then came the quiet confession. Lee had told TechCrunch that Cluely’s annual recurring revenue hit $7 million. In 2026, he admitted on X that the real number was $5.2 million. The CEO of a company built on helping people lie had lied about his own revenue, and the money kept flowing anyway.
By late 2025, the “cheat on everything” tagline had vanished from the website. References to cheating on exams and interviews were scrubbed. Cluely began repositioning as a standard AI meeting assistant, competing with Otter.ai and a dozen other note-takers. The rebellion became a SaaS pitch. The controversy was the marketing; the software was almost incidental. It is the same story-over-substance dynamic that keeps investors falling for the Theranos playbook decades after they swore they’d learned.
Andreessen Horowitz has made this kind of bet before. In 2022, the firm reportedly put $350 million into Flow, the residential real estate startup from Adam Neumann, the founder whose previous company, WeWork, vaporized $47 billion in value chasing a story. In the attention economy, a founder the internet can’t stop discussing is the asset; the product is a detail to be patched later.
Track the pattern across Lee’s own career and the machine becomes visible:
- Harvard rescinded his admission after a high school arrest; he climbed back through community college to Columbia.
- Amazon pulled his internship offer after the video of the interview reached millions.
- Columbia suspended him; he dropped out into a $5.3 million seed round within weeks.
- He admitted lying about $7 million in ARR, yet the investors stayed and the company kept selling.
Lee said it himself at TechCrunch Disrupt: distribution beats product, content beats code. In an industry where attention can justify a $44 billion acquisition, he wasn’t wrong.
The Critical Choice
The decision that made everything else inevitable wasn’t building Interview Coder. It was uploading the video. When Lee filmed himself cheating on an Amazon interview and published the evidence, he made a calculated trade: torch every conventional path (the internship, the degree, the résumé) in exchange for attention. Every consequence that followed (the pulled offer, the hearing, the suspension) became free marketing for the product those consequences were punishing.
Once that trade paid off, the rest was mechanical. Venture capital in 2025 didn’t fund the tool; it funded the noise around it. Lee understood before most founders that in modern big tech, the founder who goes viral raises faster than the founder who builds better.
Where Things Stand Now
As of 2026, Cluely has raised approximately $20 million and operates out of New York City, having left San Francisco after a zoning dispute over employees living and working in a residential property. The manifesto is scrubbed, the cheating angle downplayed, and the company now sells itself as an AI meeting assistant in a crowded market.
Roy Lee is 21, has no degree, admitted his flagship revenue figure was a lie, and still holds backing from one of the most respected venture firms in the world. At every stage the consequences didn’t stick, because the system he operates in doesn’t punish this behavior. It writes checks for it.
