This 22-year-old college dropout just proved every marketing team is obsolete.
He raised $15M in 10 weeks with zero traditional marketing.
His secret? An army of TikTokers that costs less than one Super Bowl second.
Here's how he's destroying the $600B marketing industry:🧵
Meet Roy Lee (@roylee0705).
Got rescinded from Harvard. Blacklisted from Big Tech.
Built a tool to cheat on coding interviews that went viral with 250M views.
Then he realized something every CEO is missing...
"Twitter is 2 years behind Instagram and TikTok."
While companies pay millions for Super Bowl ads...
Roy gets the SAME reach for $20,000.
His weapon? 60 contractors making 10-second TikToks.
The math is staggering:
• Super Bowl ad: $7M for 30 seconds
• Roy's strategy: $20k for 1 BILLION views
• Cost per view: 350x cheaper
But here's where it gets wild...
Cluely has only 2 types of employees:
1. World-class engineers building the product 2. World-class influencers with 100k+ followers
No middle management. No traditional marketers.
If your CMO doesn't have 100k followers, fire them.
The results after just 10 weeks:
• 1 billion+ views across platforms
• $1M+ in enterprise revenue
• Zero paid advertising
• Product built AFTER going viral
They tested market fit through memes before writing code.
Here's the genius part:
Traditional companies: Build product → Find customers
Cluely: Go viral → Let customers tell you what to build
"When you have distribution, users literally tell you what product to create."
The old playbook is dead:
❌ Focus groups
❌ Market research
❌ Ad agencies
❌ Brand consultants
The new playbook:
✅ Make content
✅ Go viral
✅ Listen to data
✅ Build what spreads
Roy's prediction shocked me:
"In 5 years, every successful company will have more creators than engineers."
Distribution beats product.
Virality beats perfection.
Speed beats strategy.
The numbers don't lie:
• Interview Coder: 250M views in days
• Cluely launch: 1B+ views in 10 weeks
• Conversion: Viewers → $1M revenue
All from a translucent AI overlay nobody asked for.
Until they saw it.
The future Roy sees:
• Every company becomes a media company
• CMOs replaced by Chief Virality Officers
• Products launched through TikTok, not boardrooms
• Authenticity beats professionalism
Controversial? Yes.
Wrong? Look at the results.
The biggest shift:
Before: Spend years perfecting product, then market
Now: Go viral first, build what people beg for
Roy wrote his first line of code 10 weeks ago.
He's already beating YC companies in revenue.
The death of traditional marketing starts here.
But finding creators who can execute this playbook? That's the real challenge.
Smart companies have a secret weapon...
While your competitors burn millions on Super Bowl ads, the smartest companies are building creator armies through Oceans Talent.