Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Roy Lee (Chungin “Roy” Lee) was born in 2003 into a family that ran a college prep business helping students get into Ivy League schools. The irony of what would happen next wasn’t lost on anyone.
As a high school senior, Roy was the definition of success: captain of the math and debate teams, accepted early to Harvard University, seemingly destined for investment banking. But everything changed during a school field trip.
Harvard rescinded its offer after he snuck out during a high school field trip and then got caught by a police officer, with Lee recounting that he tried to outrun the officer. He posted on X about it being a “dumb move.”
On that pivotal moment: “I knew I wanted to start companies, and I thought this was like a sign from God. I got the acceptance and showed to myself, my parents, that I could do it. But I got it taken away to sort of like push me towards building companies”.
The Isolation Year
Devastated, Roy spent a year in isolation, gaining 40 pounds, coding obsessively, and grappling with a burning need to prove everyone wrong. He recalls: “I got this gigantic chip on my shoulder”.
His philosophy evolved: “I might as well just quintuple down on every single crazy belief, thought I have, and just live the most interesting life ever”.
Rather than going to Harvard, he enrolled at Diablo Valley College with plans on transferring to UC Berkeley. This experience humbled and shaped him. He posted on X: “I TA’ed a community college class in Oakland that was >50% homeless people. You have no idea how unfortunate their circumstances are. If I was raised in their shoes, I would be homeless too”.
During his time at community college, he discovered “a very surprising untapped density of extremely high IQ people at community college”.
Columbia and the Second Expulsion
Roy eventually transferred to Columbia University, where he met co-founder Neel Shanmugam. They started with an AI sales agent for liquor distributors that went nowhere. As Roy put it, it failed because it “had nothing to do with me as a founder”.
Then came Interview Coder. Roy didn’t just build it—he used it brazenly, recording himself using it to land an Amazon interview, then posting it online. The video went viral, Amazon blacklisted him, and Columbia expelled him.
On that moment: “While it was challenging at the time, it forced me to step outside the traditional path and burned all other bridges except entrepreneurship, which was both necessary and helpful for me”.
“Virality protected me from further punishment. Once you cross a certain threshold of attention, institutional backlash becomes neutered. The internet had his back”.
Core Philosophy and Worldview
On virality as engineering: “If you post something that deserves to be seen by millions… it will be seen by millions”.
On ego and ambition: “I value ego in the sense of declaring a big goal and working hard for it”.
“Winner’s effect. One win makes the next win easier. Take action until you get the first clear win, then double down”.
On distribution: “Distribution is a scarcity”, and “Generally, if you’re not in deep tech, then you need to low-key deep focus on distribution”.
On modern reputation: “Reputation is sort of a thing of the past. You can try to be the New York Times and guard your ironclad reputation, but realistically you’ve got Sam Altman on the timeline talking about hot guys and you’ve got Elon Musk going bats— crazy”.
“You just have to realize that the world is trending to a different place, where you have to be extreme, you have to be authentic, and you have to be personal”.
On content creation: “If you’re any good at engineering, you’re probably not funny and you’re probably not going to be a content creator because you don’t have it in your blood. Realistically, most of these people have no chance of going viral”.
The “Cheating” Philosophy
On embracing controversy: “If the world says that is ‘cheating,’ then I might as well embrace it. Saying ‘we are not a cheating app’ while users do it anyway is worse. Owning it gives us a marketing edge”.
“We say ‘cheat on everything’ because, ironically, we believe this is the only path towards a future that is truly fair”.
“To be honest, in two years, nobody’s gonna think this is cheating”.
On the future: “Everything as we know it in society is about to be changed in the next five to ten years, including, I mean, the entire social order, entire economic systems will collapse. And nobody knows what the future is going to look like”.
“The future you fear of AI sort of coming, taking jobs, and displacing people, it’s not just coming, it’s already here”.
“You can call it cheating. You can call it whatever you want. But I mean, the future is now. If you’re not with the program, you will get replaced by someone who uses AI extremely quick”.
Team Culture
On their work environment: “Humans are biologically primed to live in a group, hunt with each other, and work together. We wake up, and we’re all excited to hunt down the king of the jungle”.
“We try to keep it as fratty as possible”, Lee said of their SoMa building.
Lessons Learned
On launching: “I can’t say if it’s a mistake, but maybe we launched too early. The whole idea [was] let’s launch something that barely works, and if we can get enough initial users, they will find out the use cases for us”.
On sharing metrics: “If you’re doing well, nobody is going to talk about how well you’re doing, but if you’re doing poorly, then everybody will only talk about how poorly you’re doing”.
“I’ll say we’re doing better than I expected, but it’s not the fastest growing company of all time”.
The Bigger Vision
Roy’s ambitions are enormous. He wants to “directly compete with ChatGPT.com”, believing Cluely’s translucent overlay represents the future of AI interaction.
Lee envisions a future in which everyone has Cluely chips inserted into their brains.
Roy Lee embodies a new archetype: the founder who turns every setback into fuel, who treats controversy as currency, and who believes authenticity—no matter how polarizing—beats playing it safe. At just 21, he’s built a company that challenges not just how we use AI, but how we think about success, ethics, and the rules we’re supposed to follow.
