The Cluely Viral Growth Playbook, with Daniel Min

Bloom invited Daniel Min, former CMO of Cluely, for a fireside chat. It started with a single Instagram DM. Daniel, whom our founder had followed for a long time, posted a story asking what he should do during a week in Korea, and the meetup was proposed on the spot. Told that 2,000 people had signed up for the last Anthropic ambassador meeting and 1,100 had gathered on the Bloom Discord, the reply came back: sounds good, where is the venue?

Daniel Min designed growth at Cluely, the most viral AI startup in Silicon Valley. Two months after founding, Cluely had raised a cumulative 26 billion KRW from a16z, and what made bigger news than the money was the marketing: language you resent and keep watching anyway. The person who built that virality shared his method in Seoul.

Split the marketing funnel into three layers

Daniel starts by separating the funnel into three clearly distinct layers, each with a completely different job. The top is brand awareness: the official Instagram, cinematic videos, office skits. No conversion is expected here; like Red Bull and the big brands, the goal is imprinting the name without tying it to the product. The middle is UGC video: content aiming at virality and user conversion at once, generating millions of views while getting people to actually try the product. The bottom is paid ads, with one simple rule: if ROAS is not positive, stop immediately. A zone judged by numbers, never by feeling.

The implication for companies is plain. Expect one piece of content to deliver both awareness and conversion and you lose both. Decide which layer each piece of content serves, and only then can you read the results properly.

Quality over quantity: from 100 creators to 70

The first thing Daniel built at Cluely was the UGC program: hire 100 creators, hand them viral scripts, and convert their videos into ads. Early results were mixed. Some videos hit millions of views, and a stream of videos converted exactly zero users no matter how high the view count.

The fix was quality, not quantity. He cut the roster to the 70 creators who actually produced conversions and gave them sharper scripts. At its peak, the system reliably produced 100 to 150 million views per month. His conclusion: hiring influencers beats simply running paid ads by a wide margin.

The Times Square billboard decided in ten minutes

The extreme case at the top of the funnel was the Times Square billboard. When a discounted four-week slot arrived by email, founder Roy and Daniel discussed it for exactly ten minutes, then spent 375,000 dollars on the spot.

The design was radically simple: black text on a white background reading, roughly, hello, my name is Roy, I am 21, please buy my product. The fact that a 21-year-old put his own name in Times Square asking people to buy became the content itself. People filmed the billboard for TikTok, parodies circulated on Twitter, and a small cultural moment formed. Daniel put it this way: if you can recognize a good bet, you do not need long to confirm it. Direct conversion was never measured; the name spreading across the entire internet was performance enough.

Views first, conversion second

The most common audience question: do viral views convert into paying users? Daniel had two answers. First, not every company needs viral marketing. One resume AI company has no Instagram account at all, spends 100 thousand dollars a month on Google SEO alone, and makes 20 to 30 million dollars a year: job seekers search for resume builders, it appears at the top, they pay 30 dollars. Find out where your target users search before anything else.

Second, if you choose organic content, there is an order. Build the muscle for views first, then design conversion. Worrying about conversion rates while posting videos that get 200 views is the wrong sequence. Only when you can guarantee at least one in ten videos passes 100 thousand views does conversion optimization become a real conversation.

Make what does not exist on the internet

His content philosophy fits in one sentence: make what does not exist on the internet. Everything online repeats, but personal experience and the risk you are willing to take cannot be copied.

The flagship example was the open-water swim near Alcatraz: four days of training, then filming the actual swim from near the island back to shore. The tier-list series rating 40 university dining halls follows the same logic: not one or two, but forty, so nobody can imitate it. When a new idea comes, he checks two things: does it exist on the internet, and is it hard to make? If it is hard, others will not do it, and the difficulty itself becomes the moat.

Indifference is worse than hate

Asked whether Cluely marketing is deliberate ragebait, Daniel said half yes. The goal is not to enrage the internet but to choose framing that makes people talk. The principle he stressed: the opposite of hate is not support but indifference.

The example was crisp. Say exercise is good for you and nobody reacts. Frame the same message provocatively and the comments explode. The real meaning of the Cheat on everything slogan is simply: use AI for everything, expressed provocatively. Calculators and the internet were both called cheating at first, and AI will walk the same path. Keep the substance of the message, and use framing to start the conversation.

A three-step framework for growing a company account

The method Daniel used to gain 75,000 followers in four months at a previous company is worth borrowing for any brand account. Start with competitor analysis to find the format nobody is doing. Then define your ideal viewer to an extreme: he narrowed the target to literally one person, an 18-year-old freshman at a specific university who wants to work at Goldman Sachs, and tuned every video to that one viewer. Last, apply a viral format. He built a street-interview format asking finance professionals for advice, and 90 percent of the people he approached refused. That difficulty was the entry barrier and the reason nobody copied it.

For Korean companies entering the US

Daniel left Cluely after about seven months and founded Mints Media, a marketing agency that works with only two or three companies at a time. The ideal client is Series A to B: funded enough to move, not yet bureaucratic, still fast to decide.

For B2B, he recommends focusing on LinkedIn and Twitter. In finance and enterprise, sales cycles are long and internal introductions are decisive, so the quality of your network matters more than follower counts. And for Korean companies entering the US market, the first job is unambiguous: make English content. Penetrating the US market while marketing in Korean is impossible.

Film a video tonight

The last topic was execution. Daniel used himself as the example: watching 100 tutorials and making zero videos for 60 days, mistaking thinking about ideas for progress. The most common beginner question is how to start, and the answer is to film and post one video tonight. Right after a talk, inspired, is the moment of maximum motivation; by tomorrow it becomes let me prepare a bit more, forever.

The closing 30-second pitch session embodied that spirit. Tell a room to network freely and most people hesitate and quietly leave. Tell them: you get 30 seconds on stage, and pitching in front of Daniel is free publicity, and people walked straight up. A European founder building AI marketing agents, an education startup in seven countries, a service connecting Gen Z creators with beauty brands, and a creator who made 10 million views with vibe coding memes all took the mic. Give people structure, and they move.

Good events come from relationships

How this meetup came together was an insight of its own. The speaker was booked but familiar venues were full, and with three or four days left, renting was nearly impossible. Then a marketing community leader who had attended the first Bloom event pitched her own CEO directly, framing it as a good chance to announce their AI transformation, and the CEO said yes immediately. The Han River view space at Parc1 turned out to fit a fireside even better than the original plan. Daniel speaks only English, which was another challenge, until a team member secured a free sponsorship from a real-time AI interpretation service, and attendees praised the interpretation all night. Good events come not from perfect plans but from accumulated relationships and fast execution.

What companies can take away

Translated into working language, four things remain. One, assign each piece of content a funnel layer: awareness or conversion, decided upfront. Two, build the views muscle first; conversion optimization comes after one in ten videos can clear 100 thousand views. Three, invest in content that cannot be copied; difficulty is the moat competitors cannot cross. Four, US entry starts with English content, and for B2B, build network quality on LinkedIn and Twitter.

From Silicon Valley to Seoul

A remark from our founder compressed the spirit of the event: a conversation with a Silicon Valley friend, written up as a blog post, became the starting point of this community, and without that post this room would not exist. Make content as fast and as often as you can. Nobody knows where the viral moment will come from.

FAQ

What is Cluely? A Silicon Valley AI startup that raised a cumulative 26 billion KRW from a16z within two months of founding, known as one of the most talked-about AI startups for its provocative viral marketing.

How is the Daniel Min marketing funnel structured? Top: brand awareness (official videos and skits). Middle: UGC videos aiming at conversion. Bottom: paid ads judged purely on ROAS. Each layer has a completely different job.

Does every company need viral marketing? No. If your target users arrive through search, Google SEO can be more efficient. The views-first strategy applies only when you choose organic content.

What should a Korean company do first when entering the US? Make English content. Marketing in Korean cannot penetrate the US market, and for B2B, network quality on LinkedIn and Twitter comes first.

Scenes from the night

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