One of the Ivy League dropouts behind a buzzy AI “cheating” app tried to host an illegal party outside the offices of San Francisco’s storied Y Combinator — and the stunt got the attention of the fuzz.
As TechCrunch reports, the “cheat on everything” app Cluely, which is not funded by Y Combinator, drew massive crowds outside of the incubator’s bayside offices following the institution’s star-studded “AI Startup School” event earlier this month.
“We only invited friends and friends of friends,” insisted Roy Lee, one of Cluely’s mischievous young cofounders, in an interview with the website. “It just blew up way out of proportion.”
Still, Lee said his Monday night shindig would have been “legendary” had SFPD not shown up to the scene to disperse the crowd that had at that point stretched around the block and blocked traffic. As the cops busted up the party, the 21-year-old tech founder was heard shouting “Cluely’s aura is just too strong,” TechCrunch notes.
Over the course of this year, Lee and his friend and fellow cofounder Neel Shanmugam have, it seems, done a lot of “legendary” stuff.
After making waves online with their “undetectable” AI that could trick LeetCode — the notoriously difficult software that many tech companies use in interviews with prospective engineers — the pair officially launched the app under the name “Interview Coder” back in February. The computer science undergrads presumed what they were doing was acceptable under Columbia’s student handbook, but as they soon discovered, it very much was not. In response to school suspensions, the pair decided to drop out to pursue “cheating” full-time.
Not long after their grand exit, the boys and their app, which they renamed to “Cluely,” got the attention of Andreessen Horowitz and other investors who helped them raise a cool $15 million for their app, which claims it can help you cheat your way through life by seeing everything you do on your smartphone and offering suggestions along the way.
In the months since, the Cluely crew apparently gained something of a reputation after selling $100 boxes of condoms that said “F*ck Leetcode” — a viral marketing scheme that seems to have given them a taste for notoriety.
Months away from the app’s humble beginnings, however, Lee waxed regretful about what could have been.
“It would have been the most legendary party in tech history,” he told TechCrunch. “And I would argue that the reputation of this story might just make it the most legendary party that never happened.”
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