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In June of last year, Cluely co-founder Roy Lee got on a call with a TechCrunch reporter and told her his company was doing $7 million in annual recurring revenue.
It was $5.2 million.
His own PR team set up the conversation. A premeditated, camera-ready, press-kit-approved interview with one of the biggest tech publications on the planet. When Lee confessed on X in March, his explanation was a masterpiece of casual indifference: "I got a random cold call from some woman asking about numbers and told her some BS."
The reporter wasn't random. Nothing about the interview was cold. And the BS was worth $1.8 million in fabricated revenue.
