Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI
- Daniel Min explains how he got into the viral AI 'cheating' startup Cluely straight out of college.With no coding skills, the Wharton grad leaned on his edge in social media and distribution.He says creating his own path in marketing was actually one of the least risky moves he could make.
This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Daniel Min, Cluely's chief marketing officer. Min graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in 2025. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I got rejected from every single internship I applied to last summer — consulting, finance, tech, and entertainment.
At the very end, I settled for a role at a startup called RecruitU as a social media intern.
I grew their Instagram from 0 to 100,000 and my own account from 0 to 50,000. I also grew the company's user base by 400%. I was pretty much their only distributor.
I learned how to make content by just making content. I flopped for four years making content. Not a single video was successful until last summer. Once one video did well, everything else followed.
Roy, Cluely's founder, saw what I was doing and was a fan. He reached out and was like, "Yo, would you be interested in joining Cluely?"
I flew out to film a YouTube video with him, and I had no intention of joining Cluely. I just wanted to do the video and get to know him.
But he was very convincing. He showed me the grand vision. I was like, that's pretty cool, and then we just went from there.
Got into Cluely with zero coding skills
I have zero technical skills. If you gave me a line of code, I wouldn't even know what it meant.
I knew my edge is in distribution. You can create your own luck in the social media world.
There are very high expectations for everybody here at Cluely. We have very bad sleep schedules. I'll be up until about 4 or 5 a.m., but it's expected that you'll work from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed.
This is probably the only time in my life where I'll be able to do something like this — sleep, eat, and breathe this office.
I do enjoy it for now, but I know it's not sustainable for me forever.
You'll learn incredibly quickly at a startup
The nice thing about working at a startup is that it cuts through all the BS.
At a job where it's like a 9-to-5, a big corporation, you can kind of get by. Like, I don't really know what I'm doing, but I can do what I'm being told to do and figure it out somehow.
But at a startup, everyone is expected to know what they're doing or at least learn very quickly what they need to do.
If you are thrown into that environment for three different summers throughout your school time, you will learn incredibly quickly.
It probably would have been beneficial to work at a big company to see how they run, but I've only ever worked in startups throughout college.
Grades aren't important — hustling is
Grades weren't important at all. Starting a social media club at Penn was very important. I realized that everyone wanted to do banking —there's no space for people who want to do marketing.
I posted about the social media club I started on LinkedIn, and that was how I got my internship last summer.
The thing I wish I had done differently then was to go deeper into content. I wasn't sure if this could turn into an actual career, so I was deep into consulting, crypto, and all these random industries I didn't care about because I thought it would be safer.
If I had honed these skills since the beginning, it would have been an insane power law. I didn't do that, and it's fine because the best time to start was yesterday, and the next best time is today.
College students should focus on building a skill that makes them irreplaceable. Proving themselves at a different startup while they're in school is probably the best way to get into a startup postgrad.
Taking a risky bet is the least risky thing to do
You might think I took a really risky bet by joining Cluely. It's literally one of the most de-risk things that you can do, especially when you create your own path. I had multiple job offers at my old company, and I still get job offers today.
I created my own demand because right now, distribution is very hot. This is way safer than if I were to have gone into consulting and gotten laid off.
Marketing and social media have become so valuable. It's a matter of who has the best brand perception.
Do you have a story to share about working at an AI startup? Contact this reporter at cmlee@insider.com.
