Smash Notes

How Did Cursor Grow Before It Had a Model?

at 17:20

From the episode: Dylan Field: Is AI Replacing Designers?, Design is the New Code & Democratizing Creativity

Answer

Cursor grew by obsessing over the user and doing the right thing for the customer before it had a model of its own.

Dylan Field says Cursor, by all means, should not have grown the way it did. Frontier labs were chasing Cursor with their own models before Cursor had a model of any kind. The team still had incredible success because they obsessed over the user, strategized, and made sure they were doing the right thing for the customer. He calls the result an example that will be repeated across many different types of companies.

Part of lasting as a software company is being as specialized as possible on a target audience, knowing that audience, and building for them. It is not true that all SaaS companies are fine, and it is not true that all SaaS companies are dead.

Grokipedia·Cursor·Dylan Field

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