Cluely’s 21-Year-Old CEO Is Beating You at Marketing. It’s Time to Innovate
We’re shifting from the era of positioning to the era of attention, one dominated by evangelist CEOs. Positioning still matters, but it’s meaningless without attention. You can’t convince a buyer you’re better than The Trade Desk or DV360 if they don’t even know you exist.
This was always true, but the acceleration of direct, abundant information — and the rise of personality-driven distribution — makes it existential. Today, a 21-year-old like Cluely CEO Roy Lee can build a $100M brand overnight. Most startups will remain invisible because they don’t get this.
The importance of attention isn’t new, but the range of attention-based business outcomes — and the speed with which high performers can make progress — is. So, you need to understand modern distribution, and it should factor into your go-to-market approach.
Attention Matters Most
Cluely just raised $15M from a16z. The partner who drove the deal has said that distribution was the first reason for the investment. In short, Lee can generate attention, and his product (critically) converts that attention into revenue. The combination works.
For those who don't follow Silicon Valley personalities on X, Lee has gone viral for Cluely's launch video, which touted the ability to use AI to cheat on exams or interviews as well as a video demonstrating the use of Cluely on a date. The 21-year-old also went viral for a video showing him getting a lap dance.
When asked if his viral stunts are generating pushback from the enterprise customers driving most of Cluely's revenue, Lee said, "Almost none. The only reason I have contracts is because the enterprise decision makers have seen my Twitter and think I'm funny and are rooting for me. … I'd never have these contracts if I were just some lame posting about a translucent liquid glass screen overlay. If that's all Cluely was — just AI sales calls — I would not have any of these contracts. But I have the contracts because I'm willing to take risks, be polarizing, and some people support me.”
While the degree of bombast, irreverence, and in some cases childishness is not for everyone, Lee gets the fundamentals right. You’d rather have 100 people thinking about you, even if 50 disagree, than have five thinking about you. This is the correct way to think about startup marketing.
Yet most companies, especially in adtech, are terrified of being provocative. They think the biggest risk is offending someone. It’s not. The biggest risk is being ignored. And the reality is that most adtech startups are essentially invisible to their potential customers.
I’m not recommending you engage in needless provocation or immorality. But if you’re at a 1 on the provocation scale and Cluely is a 10, you should ask yourself, “What if we took it to a 6? What would that look like?”
How to Compete in the Attention Economy
Even if you buy into the attention thesis, most don't know what to do. LinkedIn posts? Hero/villain storytelling? Provocative OOH ads in Times Square? Great — but those are table stakes. Think bigger.
Cluely is 11 people: 4 engineering, 7 growth. Lee: “Only two roles here. You’re either building the product or making it go viral.” Their marketing budget is about 80% of investor capital. And Lee says he’s not worried about tracking the impact of each dollar. Why? Because you can’t quantify the impact of getting it in front of the right person in Silicon Valley. This is, again, the right instinct — not that you should spend literally all your money on marketing but that you should be less worried about scrutinizing each dollar and more bullish on big bets.
Consider that, by contrast, most adtech companies spend <10% of revenue on marketing — and most of that goes to blog posts, bland messaging, forgettable event activations, and internal enablement assets that could be created faster and cheaper with AI.
There are some adtech companies (including, of course, my clients) who have bought into the modern distribution playbook. Scope3 CEO Brian O’Kelley is generating millions of impressions on LinkedIn. AdLib backs a legion of adtech creators. Viant’s Tim and Chris Vanderhook and tvScientific's Jason Fairchild are driving industry discourse cycles with provocative posts.
But I’d argue that we’ve still yet to see anyone go all-in on the modern marketing playbook, which includes at least the following four pillars:
Invest in the CEO as chief evangelist
The CEO should post daily across channels. Someone senior owns this, not an intern. They should probably also do a newsletter and podcast (if not them, someone else who can represent the company should). The CEO should devote at least an hour per day to being the face of the company. If you’re big or well funded by adtech standards and you can’t spend $200–300K/year to enable this, don’t expect to grow aggressively.Challenge the status quo
Your customer is the hero. Your entrenched competitors are the villains. Get specific. “Inefficiency” is not a villain. If you’re not publicly pissed off on your customer’s behalf, you can’t expect to earn their attention.Go all in on owned/shared channels
Blogs are dying. Newsletters, podcasts, and social are how your customers consume content. Hire people who can grow and scale audiences on those channels.Partner with creators and influencers
Unilever is 20x’ing the creators with whom it partners. There are 10–20 real influencers in adtech. Figure out how to partner with them or — even more ambitiously — buy/hire them.
The Big Swing: Buy Creator-Led Media
Want to take this to the next level? Follow HubSpot’s playbook with The Hustle. Buy creator-led media.
Buy Marketecture. Leave it mostly alone. Run house ads. Sponsor a few things. Launch a CEO-led pod/newsletter under the same brand. Leverage the team and audience.
Ari Paparo bought Adtech God and turned the meme page into a revenue-generating platform. The person behind Adtech God has also doubled down on his craft since then. Ari, Jeremy Bloom, and ATG are now doing the same with other undervalued adtech creator properties. They are essentially creating the best example of a modern, attention-oriented, creator-first adtech distribution engine.
Ari shouldn’t be the only one making real financial investments in this space. There are companies with much bigger corporate development budgets that could make huge gains by formally partnering with or even buying creators to conquer modern distribution and get in front of their customers (brands, agencies, and publishers).
The way you build companies through attention has changed. The way adtech companies approach marketing should, too.
Burn the boats. Maybe buy a new one. Put the CEO at the helm. Make sure they have a strategic first mate. And find yourself a crew of creators.
Corporate marketing is dead. Creator-driven marketing is rising. Get on board, and dominate an industry that is still clinging to the past.
