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- [00:00]
A
Today on the podcast, we are talking once again about Clulu. We've talked about this company in the past, but it is, it's one that you just can't get away from. And the thing that just grabbed our attention was that since we last talked about this, Clulee's annual recurring revenue has doubled in just the last week. So a week ago was at about 3 million, $3.5 million. It is now at $7 million in annual recurring revenue. There are some rivals that are coming out of the woodwork to battle them for the space, including an open source free option. So will they be able to survive? We're going to break that down and also how we think you can benefit using a tool like Cluli in your business. There's some interesting use cases. We're going to dive into them. But before we do, Jamie, would you be able to tell us a little bit about the AI Hustle school community?
- [00:48]
B
Yes. If you've ever wanted to grow your business or even just make some money on the side using AI, AI Hustle is the place you want to be. We each week release a brand new bonus content over there and we dive into specific details about how we are making money using AI. So this week we did a really interesting episode. Jaden talked about how he's using Suno AI to generate AI music and he's scaling his already passive income from 2 to $3,000 a month. We'll see what he what he hits by the end of the year, but all just through AI music streaming. So really interesting episode and we cover a lot of other topics as well. So there's over 60 videos now. And like I said, we release a new one each week. It's $19 a month. And if you join today, you can lock that in forever. The price will never be raised on you. So which we will raise the price at some point. So there's over 300 members and it's just a cool, awesome place to be. So check it out. But let's get into Cluli because I think this is a really fascinating story because it doesn't really seem like that complex of an app to me. But like you said, they doubled their annual recurring revenue in one week. Do you know why that is exactly? Was that from some kind of press release or something?
- [02:09]
A
Yeah. So a lot of it came from an enterprise contract they signed, a $2.5 million enterprise contract. They didn't sign specifically call it what company paid for it. But I think this is what I think that Cluley did really well, was. And a lot of people criticized them for this. They focused before they even launched their product on just getting a lot of notoriety. So the founder, he went viral because essentially they called it a. When he first launched, you know, they're really trying to be controversial. So he called it a cheat on everything app. That was like their slogan. I. I think they've changed it now. I'll give you the updated one in a second. But essentially he got kicked out of Columbia University because he built this, like, product that essentially let you use it when you were doing interviews. And I think he might have been, like, letting people use it for, like, school interviews. So if, like, you're getting interviewed to go to come to Columbia, you could use this. It pulls up a panel beside your camera. So while you're talking to the interviewer, the panel on the side is listening, and it's AI telling you how to respond. So. So when they ask a question, it's like, this is, like, what the answer is. So people are sitting there and reading off, and I think it will do eye tracking. So it looks like you're looking at the camera, but you're reading off, kind of like a prompt or a script helping you respond. Now, Columbia didn't like that. They expelled him for it. And when he posted about it, the tweet went super viral. And he got a lot of notoriety for that. And then he was like, heck, you know, I'm gonna make a business out of this. And that was kind of. I guess that was the start. That was his first step, which I think was good. He took like a. I don't know. Getting expelled from school sounds probably not super fun. He took that difficult situation, decided to turn into a business by making it go viral. And then what was really interesting, you know, people thought, well, maybe it just had his one viral moment. His first piece of marketing content with his company, when it first came out, was essentially a highly produced video. He spent, like a hundred grand.
- [04:03]
B
His.
- [04:03]
A
He spent all the money because he raised some seed money, spent all the seed money making a highly produced video that was essentially him. It was like, fake. He was wearing augmented glasses, and there was a side panel. And he's on a date with this girl, and she's asking him all these questions, and he's using this little side panel thing to respond to her. They don't even have a product that does that. But it got the point across. And then the date went horribly wrong because it told him the wrong thing. And she, like, leaves and dumps them pretty much. And so everyone's like, man, what a horrible commercial. It's so bad. Like it's showing your product failing. This is going to be a horrible product, okay? But everybody talked about it. So then everybody knew the company and then they, when they actually launched, now everybody knows it and a lot of people try out the actual product. So I think they harness controversy and sort of like rage bait to actually grow their company and go viral, which I think was a smart move.
- [04:56]
B
So there's another twist of this story, and that is that there is somebody named Pickle, a company that describes itself as a digital clone factory. They built a product called Glass, which is basically an open source, free version of Clulee. So someone basically ripped them off and is now giving it away for free. So I don't know, is this, is this the future for them? Are they going to have to compete with a free version?
- [05:24]
A
Now, I think that this will be the ultimate test of how important is marketing, how important is your brand? Because like you mentioned, someone ripped them off. But someone could rip off any company and oftentimes they do made an open source version of it. And on GitHub it already has over 850 stars that's been forked over 150 times. So a lot of people are building cluly competitors. But like, will they actually be able to compete without that brand name, without that recognition? Maybe they'll be cheaper, I don't know. I'm curious to see where it goes. But I think that the brand will get them far. Some of these like marketing stunts, I think you're gonna get them far. They were able right after that because they got so much notoriety to actually raise money from Andresen Horowitz. So they raised, I believe it was $15 million. I could be mistaken on that, but they were, they did go and raise a bunch of money. And now of course, you know, they have over $7 million in annual recurring revenue. They just signed a $2.5 million contract, which is really impressive. One interesting feature that apparently they say a lot of people like is meeting notes. They said meeting notes have been proven very sticky. Very interesting AI use case. The only problem with them is they're all post call, right? So usually when you do meeting notes, like with Zoom or these other things, you go to a meeting, there's AI that will take notes and it'll send everybody an update afterwards. What they're doing over at Cluli though specifically is they say you want to look back at them in the middle of the meeting and that's what we offer. So like, as people are talking, it's transcribing the notes and they're up on the side and you're getting a summary. And apparently people love that. So it's kind of funny because they pegged this as like the cheat on everything app. Like cheat on your job interviews. But like, that only gets you so far. Someone might use it once or twice, a handful of times for some job interviews. Once you have a job, you don't need it for 10 years. They're trying to build tools using the same technology that people use all the time. And so that's kind of where they came up with this, this meeting notes thing. And then one other thing that I thought was funny is apparently after they raised money, they changed. Ah, yeah, they changed their marketing. So they used to be the cheat on everything app and now they changed their slogan. After they raised some money, they're trying to be a little bit more serious. Their new slogan is everything you need before you ask, this feels like cheating. So they're keeping their cheating element, but now it's just like this feels like cheating. So it's, it's a little bit less extreme, which I think when you're trying to sell to the enterprise, like nobody wants all their employees using an app, whatever it is, which the slogan is cheat on everything.
- [07:57]
B
That's funny. So I have a question. You know, moving forward, it sounds like a bunch of people are trying to rip them off, make their own version with the, you know, revolution of vibe coding, now that you don't even really have to know much about coding, do you think this is going to be a trend moving forward? That as soon as something good is, you know, made, that it'll get ripped off a thousand times or. Yeah, where are you?
- [08:20]
A
Okay, 100%, it will get ripped off a thousand times. But there's two things that I think are important to know. Software is actually very complex. And I know we say Vibe coding and it's like, oh man, vibe coding. It's so easy. People can just go like, rip it off or like fork it or make an open source version. I think at the end of the day, if a company's sole purpose, if they've been doing it for years and it's their sole purpose is to do a product. You can clone the basic features of DocuSign or the basic features of some of these apps, but what you don't notice is they've spent five, ten years making all of these tiny little settings, adjustments, building things that you don't know why they build them all of these extra add ons, all of these integrations that just make the product so much smoother. They have really serious security and backend and so enterprise can't go go use one of these open source clients because it's not going to be as secure. It might not be SOC 2 compliant or like there's all these things that I think the main companies will have a leg up on if they've been working on it for longer. That's the first thing. And the second thing is I think distribution is king. Don't underestimate branding. And if Cluey keeps doing like essentially these stunts, like if they've, if the past is anything to go off of, they're going to continue doing these really creative things. And, and so yes, people can compete with them, but they've got to be equally creative, have equally interesting stunts. Like there's a reason they made a name for themselves. There was already a couple other people doing this before they kind of took off. But the reason they took off is because their founder, they came up with some cool stunts and they were able to get their name out there. And the last thing that I will actually give you a little drop of gold is I was on Twitter today and somebody took A screenshot of TikTok and they took a screenshot, they searched For Cluli on TikTok and apparently there is thousands and thousands of TikTok accounts that use like Cluey in the name. And they're like, oh, it looks like TikTok made 10,000 cluey accounts. And they're like, they're just gonna spin up tons of content from that. And the CEO of Cluey Ray actually responded and he was like, yep, 10,000 seems about right. So I think if the passive thing to go off, they're doing all sorts of crazy shenanigans. Apparently they're spinning up 10,000 TikTok accounts right now to go do who knows what. But I think that they're going to continue being creative, they're going to use their money well and they're going to like, inevitably they'll continue to go viral and blow up with some of these strategies. And that I think is what is very hard to replicate when like code might be easy to duplicate. Now these marketing growth hacks and actually pulling them off and going viral, that I think is kind of like the new secret sauce.
- [10:54]
B
Totally. Yeah, I totally agree. It's all about the marketing. Who can, you know, establish themselves, who can be first and also get noticed first. So yeah, Anyways, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave us a review wherever you're listening. We really appreciate those and they help us out a lot. And again, check out that AI Hustle School community. If you want to take it to the next level and learn how to grow your business with AI. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.