Crailey, an AI startup who has committed to helping people “deceive everything” is putting a big bet on high compensation to recruit the best talent.
Chungin “Roy” Lee, CEO and co-founder of Cluely, wrote on LinkedIn this week that San Francisco startups are offering designers up to $1 million and engineers between $250,000 and $350,000. The descriptions for both jobs are fairly stated.
According to Kruze Consulting's Startup Compensation Guide, entry-level engineers in San Francisco usually start at $75,000, while senior engineers earn up to $235,000. Designer salaries range from $80,000 to $150,000 for junior roles and $100,000 to $172,000 for senior positions.
“The truth about startups I disagree with is that you shouldn't pay for high cash comps,” Lee wrote in a post Thursday.
The traditional startup employment model was to “pay everyone under the market, give them a little equity and sell on a 'mission',” Lee said. However, to win, the startup must be “all elites including the comp.”
It was launched earlier this year as a tool to help software engineers get job interviews. Lee made the headline after being suspended by Columbia University for posting content from a disciplinary hearing.
Cluely then removed references to job interview fraud from its website. It is still positioned as an “undetectable” AI that looks at the user's screen and gives answers in real time.
The startup landed $15 million in the round led by Andreessen Horowitz, which announced in June.
The 21-year-old also wrote in a post Wednesday that he will “review all applications manually.”
“Except for a link to your portfolio, I have deleted all the fields in the recruitment application,” he writes. “I'm just caring about how good your job is.”
“I don't care about school, experience, age, citizenship status, etc., I hope you'll become world class,” he added.
Lee told Business Insider Thursday that the response was “going very well.” He reviewed “1,200/2,000 applications” for founding designers and roughly 3,000 applications for founding engineers.
He said he would spend about two seconds on each portfolio. “As soon as there is something wrong, I will reject them,” Lee said.
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Approximately 1 is cut for every 100 portfolios, and those candidates receive interview requests. “I sent some emails,” he said.
Hire a killer team, although small
In a LinkedIn post Thursday, Lee said the startup “don't need 100 people” but is a “silly fast-moving killer.”
Lee previously said that startups will only hire engineers and influencers, and he has a big bet on the latter to drive growth.
It should be “the biggest” on Instagram and Tiktok, Lee said in an episode of the “Sourcery” podcast released in June. “All big companies are known to ordinary people,” he added.
Lee previously told BI his main goal is to achieve 1 billion views on all platforms.
Some startup founders said they like to keep their teams in vain.
Windsurf founder Varun Mohan said in an episode of the “Twenty Minute VC” podcast released last month that the early stage product team should ideally have three to four people.
A small “opinional” group that moves quickly to prove that the idea is “really good,” he added.
Some of the biggest names in AI are built with small teams, including Anysphere, the coding maker of Copilot Cursor.
With the advent of AI, startups can do less and encouraged some founders to maintain a very lean team.
“We're going to see 10 companies soon come with a multi-billion dollar valuation,” Openai CEO Sam Altman said in February 2024.
