The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can’t stop using | Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO)

This episode explores the origin story and future vision of Cursor, an AI code editor, with Michael Truell, the co-founder and CEO of AnySphere. Truell discusses Cursor's goal of inventing a new type of programming where engineers function more as logic designers, specifying intent rather than writing code, envisioning a shift towards pseudocode and English-like representations of software logic. Against the backdrop of this vision, Truell shares the counterintuitive lesson of needing to develop custom models for Cursor, highlighting the importance of speed and cost efficiency in tasks like autocomplete, which led to the creation of specialized models. More significantly, the conversation pivots to the company's early days, revealing a pivot from mechanical engineering to AI coding due to a lack of ambition in the existing coding tools, and he emphasizes the importance of dogfooding and building in public. As the discussion progresses, Truell touches on the long-term defensibility in the AI space, advocating for continuous innovation and building the best product possible, and he also shares advice for new Cursor users, recommending a chopped-up approach to tasks and experimenting to discover the limits of the models. Ultimately, this conversation reflects emerging industry patterns where AI tools augment human capabilities, requiring a blend of technical expertise and taste in software development.