Is Cluely a con? 🃏 Cannes fallout and $1.5 billion for a soap. Here's all the latest brand news.

Weekly Exhale

Rich, handsome, funny, humble. That’s the social media byline of Chungin “Roy” Lee, a 21-year-old who just raised $15m for his AI startup, Cluely, built to help you to “cheat at everything”. The company is valued at $120 million. Its manifesto puts it plainly:

“The future won’t reward effort. It’ll reward leverage. So start cheating, because when everyone does, no one is.”

Naturally, a16z led the round.

So, what is Cluely? It’s a virtual pane of glass over your computer screen. It hears what you hear, sees what you see, and feeds you real-time answers and responses as an overlay. On a Zoom call, the person on the other end is none the wiser. Cluely is proudly undetectable.

Unsurprisingly, Lee has drawn plenty of criticism. By design. The more people hate on it, the more oxygen it gets. There are just two roles at Cluely: engineers and influencers. A team of 50 interns churns out four videos a day each, distributed across more than 100 Cluely-aligned accounts.

Lee is peak hustle-bro, headquartered in a three-story hacker house in San Francisco’s Mission District. The team works 16-hour days and calls work-life balance “a meme.” One video shows Lee making an official announcement after SFPD shut down a Cluely party for “having too much aura.”

But search their content and you’ll find the aura dims: a sprawl of small accounts, low engagement and boosted numbers. Roy Lee’s Instagram hovers at 28k followers. The new CMO, 20-year-old Daniel Min, barely scrapes 50k, despite Lee’s own hiring rule that leadership needs at least 100k. An insider put it best: If Theranos and TikTok had a baby, it would be Cluely.

So is Cluely a fugazi?

I wouldn’t be so sure. While Sam Altman and others pump their valuations by declaring AI as the end of civilisation, Lee’s take is more likely:

“Every time technology makes us smarter, the world panics. Then it adapts. Then it forgets.”

He’s clocked the truth most AI founders are tiptoeing around: Foundation models are commoditised, and access is cheap. Lee’s strategy? Marketing as a moat.

And in that, it’s a brand-building masterclass. Cluely’s living and breathing its message. It’s cheating.

Well, kind of. Behind all the videos, there’s a real, scalable business. In April, Cluely reported $3 million in revenue from a functioning product. If a16z is in, you can bet that number’s climbing fast. The primary customer? That vast, unglamorous engine of the internet: SaaS sales teams. Using Cluely to grab customer-facing information on the fly.

The UX itself might just be the breakthrough. ChatGPT in a separate window is clunky. Why not an Iron Man-style overlay? Its application to smart glasses—where Ray-Ban, Meta, Gentle Monster, Google, Jony Ive and OpenAI are all circling—is obvious.

And half those 16-hour days are being spent DJ-ing their house parties. Which, if you’re in your twenties, is exactly as it should be.

“You’re such a boomer,” my son says to me. A lot. It means: I don’t need you. I don’t want you. You’re irrelevant.

Adolescent egocentrism has landed early. In his head, the entire world is watching him. He’s struggling to distinguish his identity from his peers, whilst also believing that his thoughts and feelings are unique and not understood by others, specifically me.

Hugging is the worst possible offence. Ever. Punishable by a swift shove and a firm “NO”. As if you’re coated in some kind of virus. Love, apparently, is both highly infectious and deeply hazardous.

The funny thing is, those egocentric traits don’t really disappear as we go through life. They evolve and show up in new ways. We still imagine invisible audiences, and still believe our story is singular. Especially under pressure and during key life changes. Like, say, becoming the founder of a company.

Which, at the ripe age of twelve, my son already is. Cube Quests: a platform combining education and retail for speed cubers. Yes, speed cubers. Yes, solving Rubik’s Cubes at ridiculous speeds. (Except no real cuber uses a Rubik’s Cube, their mechanical cores are way too clunky.)

Like any good founder, he’s a practitioner first. A speed-cuber who competes regularly. He’s worked his way up from dead last to mid-table.

Lately, it’s become our shared ground. We travel to competitions together, sometimes three weekends out of four. I drive. He picks the music. We stay over. And if we’re feeling spenny, we upgrade to a suite. He gets the independence his swelling prefrontal cortex demands. I get joy.

Competition hours are gruelling, usually stretched over a couple of days. But there’s always a lunch break. And we have a tradition. He gets to choose the fuel he needs. After all, he’s the champ. It’s usually a beige feast: crisps, pastries, maybe pizza. We find a patch of grass and spread it all out. Just the two of us.

Lately, though, he wants to skip the ritual. He’s found friends. He’d rather be with them. There’s a kind of invisible restraining order now. I’m not allowed in the circle. I just watch from the edge.

And that’s hard. When young people draw the line between who’s in and who’s out, they’re deep in their own storyline. Yours, meanwhile, feels increasingly pointless.

At its heart, this is what makes Roy Lee so easy to judge. Easy to mock. Easy to eye-roll at. Because left unchecked, it spirals. Into identity collapse, isolation, addiction, and god-syndrome. Because the billionaire idols of our time embody this behaviour, far more than they outgrow it.

But imagine this: You’re 21, a16z offers you $15m. They tell you you’re the next big thing. Of course, your defences go up. Of course, the sense that you’re invincible and exceptional kicks in.

And who knows, maybe you start making moves others wouldn’t dare. Because innovation, by nature, means rejecting what seems fixed. It means being unimpressed by what your elders insist is right.

Maybe young founders need a different kind of runway. Not the kind that obsesses over future wealth, but one grounded in the belief that they’ll grow. That they’ll evolve. From trying to faking. From faking to becoming. And eventually, maybe, from self to others.

It’s a long shot. Probably unlikely. But some of the more interesting investors I know think more like parents. A wider stake of interests at heart.

Later, back at the hotel, my son and I start to close the curtains on another day on the road. These are the memories I sometimes fast-forward through, worrying about when they’ll end. Then remind myself: They’re happening now. Pay attention.

Lights off, quiet settling in, he murmurs: “Dad...sorry if I ignored you today.”

Throat tight, heart full, and longing for the return of our beige-feast lunches on the grass, I whisper back: “Don’t be daft. I’m here to be ignored.”

And then, from across the aisle of the twin beds, his small arm reaches out and lands gently on my shoulder. A silent, sideways goodnight hug.

Let's rise together with every issue. ♡

Market Moves

Pound touches four-year high against the dollar | BBC

Stock futures rise as S&P looks to add record high | CNBC

U.K. growth confirmed at 0.7% | Reuters

Brand Beat

Grand Prix withdrawn, Cannes Lions pledges better oversight | AdWeek

Brave Bison buys Mark Ritson’s MiniMBA | The Drum

Nike stock soars as CEO says recovery on horizon | CNBC

Stormzy's new Apple collab: Big Man | YouTube

B Corps in new accusations of greenwashing | BBC

Unilever to acquire Dr. Squatch for $1.5 billion | Business of Fashion

How AI is revolutionising the ad industry | The Economist

Multinational marketing budgets come under increasing scrutiny | wfanet.org

Nike’s first-quarter sales decline slows as turnaround kicks in | The Wall Street Journal

Burger King trolls McDonald’s Big Arch burger | Famous Campaigns

Matthew McConaughey’s Pantalones tequila debuts in UK | The Spirits Business

The era of woke brand activism has ended | Wired

Is beer culture turning niche and overly performative? | World of ESO

Hinge mascot meets a messy end in new ad spot | The Drum

Glossier CEO Kyle Leahy steps down as brand enters growth phase | Retail Dive

How much is a brand really worth in dollars? | Offmenu

Droga steps down as CEO of Accenture Song | The Wall Street Journal

Diary of the A24 brand, valuation $3.5bn | Embedded Brands

Why Google bought $100m stake in Gentle Monster | Hypebeast

Costco unveils paid early shopping, deepening two-tier economy | Fast Company

Mont Blanc new brand x Wes Andersen | YouTube

France backs law curbing fast fashion ads | Business of Fashion

New insights into how branded weight-loss drugs affect us | MIT Technology Review

MrBeast ditches YouTube AI feature after viewer backlash | BBC

Starting Up

a16z backs AI start-up with slogan “cheat on everything” | Bloomberg UK

AI startup studio to launch 100,000 companies annually | TechCrunch

Alibaba opens global CoCreate Pitch to UK SMEs | Startup Magazine

Meta eyes acquisition of voice cloning startup Play AI | TechCrunch

Flowstep raises €2.2M for vibe-driven design workflows | EU Startups

Delphi raises $16m from Sequoia to create your digital double | X

Tech Tidbits

Nvidia breakout could push market value past $4 trillion | Bloomberg

Anthropic wins key ruling on AI copyright | Reuters

UK government rolls out new recruitment drive for tech talent | Sifted

Space Forge completes UK’s first in-space manufacturing mission | Tech.eu

Where McKinsey is getting AI wrong | Nate’s Newsletter

Venture Vibes

Gen Z founders give startup funding announcements a TikTok twist | Business Insider

Why 'The Shawshank Redemption' is the ultimate investing movie | Fast Company

VCs dive into maritime tech | Sifted

Palantir backs nuclear power with $100 million startup deal | Bloomberg

A mind-bending conversation with Peter Thiel | New York Times

Design Driven

Zohran Mamdani’s bodega influenced visual system | New York Magazine

Why wearables struggle to turn health into wealth | Financial Times

Six essential skills engineers need to thrive in the AI era | figma.com

Happiness

Happiness doesn't have to be a heavy lift | New York Times

The greatest Glastonbury outfits of all time | Dazed

Celebrating 20 years since podcasts launched with the 20 best podcasts ever | Apple

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