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Cluely
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Researched profile. Starter Story's AI research system compiled this page from 66 public sources — the founder didn't write it. Automated research can misread or misattribute a source, so treat figures as best-effort. How this works →
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How Cluely Grew

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How did Cluely grow?

Summary of the sourced claims below

Cluely grew by creating a large volume of short-form videos, following a '100 to 1' rule where 100 videos are made to produce one viral hit. They employed many interns to produce hundreds of videos daily, effectively industrializing virality. Their marketing strategy included framing the app controversially to gain tens of millions of views and leveraging mass short-form user-generated content as an effective approach.

Channels

15 channels · grouped by how Cluely grows

  • Memes

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “you intentionally layer in a video of you on a date with the language cheat on it. ... And that's what went mega viral on Twitter.”
    high
    Show 1 more quote
    “Strategic use of meme pages for 24-48 hour visibility spikes”
    high

  • Brand Videos

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “And from now on, we just spent $100,000 on a camera. We’re gonna do this all in-house. We’re gonna have like an in-house film studio almost. And now every single, maybe two, three weeks, every time we launch a feature, we’re not just gonna launch it with like a explainer video. We’re just gonna l...”
    high
    Show 1 more quote
    “Their secret was a content factory that operates on what they call the "100 to 1" rule: make 100 different videos, and one will go viral. Then repost that viral video across 100 accounts, and 20-30 of those will also go viral. The operation is staggering in its scale:50 interns creating 4 videos ...”
    high

  • Course

    · 1 mention
    “If you're an app founder and you want to use the exact marketing strategy that Roy just mentioned Click the first link in the description below I put together a free 30-minute video breaking down how you can use mass short-form UGC for your app This is the growth hack right now guys...”
    medium

  • Find Bloggers & Vloggers

    · 1 mention
    “our marketing team's all influencers. We have so many interesting characters here that it's very realistic for us to just make a Cluely universe and just create skits about like random things that happen.”
    high

  • Controversial Marketing

    · 1 mention
    “But because we framed in a way to be controversial, we're able to get way more views. ... Cheat on everything, it's another thing that we do just to be more viral, and be more controversial, and be more sticky in people's heads.”
    high

  • Brand collaborations and giveaways

    · 1 mention
    “We just need to get a bunch of them at our house, sell them on the idea of Cluelean. This would be like the strongest recruiting funnel ever. But as the intention behind the after party, every other company is hosting some lame PC like networking event bullshit. We're the only ones that are going...”
    high

  • Influencer partnerships

    · 1 mention
    “Every single influencer I reach out to makes like a, like they can't even make a living even though they have like 200,000 followers and they're the hottest algorithm in the world. ... You pay like whatever retainer fee it takes to get the 150K follower college kid with extremely hot alga pool at...”
    high

  • Video content

    · 1 mention
    “like we made this great video, like super cinema quality video, rented out like this very nice camera and a party bus to film like a super hype video ... It's you like you're like the face of this stuff”
    high

  • Twitter

    · 1 mention
    “We were literally the front page of tech Twitter for probably like a full day or two, just cause the absurdity of the situation.”
    medium

  • Create Demand

    · 1 mention
    “But in reality, if you frame it like 50 interns, then people will be like, what the fuck? They'll repost it. They'll view it. They'll be in your comments hating on it. And it captures mindshare.”
    medium

  • Create TikTok Marketing Videos

    · 1 mention
    “Mass short-form UGC is hands-down the most effective marketing strategy for app founders out right now...Clearly even used it to get to. $6 million ARR, and it's what we do at WAP. In our first 60 days of doing mass short-form UGC, we got over 10,914 videos posted, 72 million views, and over 500,...”
    high

  • TikTok User Generated Content

    · 1 mention
    “You guys do more like UGC creators that you have on Retainer. ... for short form, for UGC, this is our entire marketing strategy, yeah.”
    high

  • Word of mouth

    · 1 mention
    “you also end up getting like maybe like a hundred thousand people going around to all their friends saying, hey, have you seen this thing?... And eventually once everyone has a strong reaction about you this is a lot more powerful than just someone having seen one of your videos.”
    medium

  • Video Ads

    · 1 mention
    “The launch video was a big one, ... the launch video showed a demo ... But because we framed in a way to be controversial, we're able to get way more views. And the views are way more powerful and stickier in people's mind.”
    high

  • Organic social media

    · 1 mention
    “We made this demo, but the demo did pretty well on LinkedIn. It did like 500,000 impressions.”
    high

How 2,827 businesses grow

Of businesses with mapped growth channels, the share using each — Cluely’s highlighted.
  • Referral/Word-of-mouth
    68% ◀
  • Social media
    61% ◀
  • Search/SEO
    57%
  • Email
    48%
  • Community
    36%
  • Content/Inbound
    34% ◀
  • Partnerships
    33% ◀
  • Events
    25%
  • Paid ads
    24% ◀
  • Press/PR
    18%
  • Outbound/Sales
    18%
  • Marketplaces/App stores
    10%
  • Podcasting
    3%
  • Influencer partnerships
    2% ◀
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