Siml, founded by high school friends Nurtilek Raimzhanov and Zuhayr Abdullazhanov who started selling hand sanitizer online at age 15 during the pandemic, now runs over 1,000 stores. Meanwhile, Chungin Roy Lee and Neel Shanmugam launched Cluely AI, a controversial startup that raised $15 million from Andreessen Horowitz to help users automate high-stakes digital tasks like interviews and exams.
The tech landscape is increasingly shaped by builders who skipped traditional milestones to ship software at lightning speed. Two distinct narratives have captured the attention of Silicon Valley, highlighting how young founders are leveraging autonomous systems to disrupt both retail e-commerce and professional gatekeeping.
From Pandemic Hand Sanitizer to Automated Retail Empires
Raimzhanov and Abdullazhanov began their entrepreneurial journey when they were fifteen when the pandemic hit. At just 15 years old, they tested the digital marketplace by selling hand sanitizer. That initial experiment evolved into Siml, a company that now runs over 1,000 stores.
Instead of managing inventory, customer service queues, or ad optimization manually, operators leverage Siml’s infrastructure to run digital storefronts at scale. The platform automates the tedious mechanics of modern e-commerce. It reflects a broader shift toward lights-out operations in direct-to-consumer retail, where machine learning pipelines handle everything from product description generation to dynamic pricing adjustments.
Cluely AI and the Controversy of Assistive Automation
While Siml targets retail logistics, another pair of founders is tackling human performance. Chungin Roy Lee and Neel Shanmugam, dropouts from Columbia University, built Cluely AI to challenge traditional testing and interview paradigms, according to reports by whatastartup.substack.com. Cluely’s flagship product, initially developed as Interview Coder, listens in during live coding interviews and feeds answers directly via a hidden overlay.
The startup grew from a student project into a $120 million company backed by $15 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz. Yet, the rapid rise has not come without friction. The tool’s core premise—helping users navigate high-stakes evaluations with invisible AI assistance—sparked intense debate across academia and the tech industry. When Columbia University discovered the software’s use, Roy Lee was suspended, a disciplinary action he met with public defiance on LinkedIn by stating, “I’m completely kicked out of school. LOL.”
What This Means for Software Ecosystems
The parallel trajectories of Siml and Cluely underscore a generational shift in software development. Young developers are no longer waiting for corporate validation or enterprise tenure to deploy capital-backed applications. They are shipping consumer-facing and B2B tools that aggressively blur the lines between automation, productivity, and platform compliance.
Whether automating thousands of storefronts or real-time interview responses, these tools force platforms, universities, and marketplaces to rethink how they verify authenticity in an era of ubiquitous machine intelligence. As venture capital continues to flow into ultra-lean, founder-led startups, the friction between rule-bound institutions and agile AI deployment will only intensify.
