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Cursor Co-Founder on AI Coding’s Next Wave: From ‘Taste’ to 10X Dev Speed "Good people will help you hit this bar, but the truly masterful hit a bar that you can't even see. And that requires taste. You've called it that people need to become logic designers." Y Combinator's... show more

Overlap: Business & Tech

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15,259 views • 1 year ago •via X (Twitter)

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Overlap: Business & Tech1 year ago

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Rainmaker1 year ago

Tracking economic data made easy! Discover how to decode labor market trends with FRED and Python in my latest free Substack post. Gain the tools to make smarter economic predictions today.

Arjun D1 year ago

@ycombinator Spot on—'taste' and logic design are the next big leap. Builders who get this will lead the wave of truly standout AI products.

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Cursor CEO Michael Truell on the future of writing code: “ Our goal with Cursor is to invent a new type of programming.” “It looks like a world where you have a representation of the logic of your software that does look more like English.” “You can imagine kind of an evolution of programming language towards pseudocode. You have written down the logic of the software, and you can edit that at a high level.” “It won't be the impenetrable millions of lines of code, it'll instead be something that's much terser and easier to understand and easier to navigate.” Source: Michael Truell (CEO Cursor) with Lenny Rachitsky on Lenny's Podcast

Cursor CEO Michael Truell on the future of writing code: “ Our goal with Cursor is to invent a new type of programming.” “It looks like a world where you have a representation of the logic of your software that does look more like English.” “You can imagine kind of an evolution of programming language towards pseudocode. You have written down the logic of the software, and you can edit that at a high level.” “It won't be the impenetrable millions of lines of code, it'll instead be something that's much terser and easier to understand and easier to navigate.” Source: Michael Truell (CEO Cursor) with Lenny Rachitsky on Lenny's Podcast

a16z

812,698 views • 9 months ago

Cursor CEO Michael Truell on the future of writing code: "Our goal with Cursor is to invent a new type of programming." "It looks like a world where you have a representation of the logic of your software that does look more like English." "You can imagine kind of an evolution of programming language towards pseudocode. You have written down the logic of the software, and you can edit that at a high level." "It won't be the impenetrable millions of lines of code, it'll instead be something that's much terser and easier to understand and easier to navigate." Michael Truell with Lenny Rachitsky on Lenny's Podcast

Cursor CEO Michael Truell on the future of writing code: "Our goal with Cursor is to invent a new type of programming." "It looks like a world where you have a representation of the logic of your software that does look more like English." "You can imagine kind of an evolution of programming language towards pseudocode. You have written down the logic of the software, and you can edit that at a high level." "It won't be the impenetrable millions of lines of code, it'll instead be something that's much terser and easier to understand and easier to navigate." Michael Truell with Lenny Rachitsky on Lenny's Podcast

a16z

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Thiccy explains why you need to completely change your strategy once you've hit $1-2M in crypto "Going from $0-200k isn't really going to change your life, but $2M with 4% interest is $80k a year. That's like a whole new threshold." "At that point you need to start playing defense and completely change the way you think about things." "You can't just continue thinking 'I'm gonna make the next 10x doesn't really matter if I blow up'. That stuff might help you get from 0 to 1-2M but once you've crossed that threshold it's just not nearly as asymmetric. From there you really need to shift your mindset and try to avoid drawdowns."

Thiccy explains why you need to completely change your strategy once you've hit $1-2M in crypto "Going from $0-200k isn't really going to change your life, but $2M with 4% interest is $80k a year. That's like a whole new threshold." "At that point you need to start playing defense and completely change the way you think about things." "You can't just continue thinking 'I'm gonna make the next 10x doesn't really matter if I blow up'. That stuff might help you get from 0 to 1-2M but once you've crossed that threshold it's just not nearly as asymmetric. From there you really need to shift your mindset and try to avoid drawdowns."

Kai

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Anthropic Co-Founder Tom Brown: Why Anthropic Models Are The Best at Coding "The benchmarks are so easy to game. All the other big AI labs have teams whose job it is to make the benchmark scores good. We don't have such a team. That is the biggest factor." Anthropic's Tom Brown on Y Combinator's Lightcone Podcast with Garry Tan, Harj Taggar, Diana, and Jared Friedman

Anthropic Co-Founder Tom Brown: Why Anthropic Models Are The Best at Coding "The benchmarks are so easy to game. All the other big AI labs have teams whose job it is to make the benchmark scores good. We don't have such a team. That is the biggest factor." Anthropic's Tom Brown on Y Combinator's Lightcone Podcast with Garry Tan, Harj Taggar, Diana, and Jared Friedman

Overlap: Business & Tech

62,964 views • 11 months ago

Yesterday was a very surreal day in many ways. Waking up to see that SpaceX had acquired Cursor, and then a few hours later, watching Michael Truell deliver his keynote on stage at Compile, Cursor's first user conference, was just incredible. I think this is a truly historic keynote for many reasons, very glad I recorded it, excited to share the entire thing with all of you. What an incredible journey.

Yesterday was a very surreal day in many ways. Waking up to see that SpaceX had acquired Cursor, and then a few hours later, watching Michael Truell deliver his keynote on stage at Compile, Cursor's first user conference, was just incredible. I think this is a truly historic keynote for many reasons, very glad I recorded it, excited to share the entire thing with all of you. What an incredible journey.

Morgan

24,109 views • 1 month ago

Michael Truell (Michael Truell), co-founder and CEO of Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, joined Garry Tan to talk about building one of the fastest-growing startups of all time—and why he's betting everything on a world beyond code. He walks through the early insights that led him and his co-founders to leave a promising AI-powered CAD project and instead chase a bigger dream: reinventing how software is written. From the hard years of false starts and rewrites to Cursor's breakthrough moment, Michael explains what it really takes to build a tool that could eventually replace programming as we know it. He also reflects on their first 10 hires, why taste still matters, and how the decade ahead will unlock a new kind of creativity for builders everywhere. 01:00 - A new way to build software 04:50 - Two ways to view LLMs 05:50 - Bottlenecks to superhuman agents 08:30 - New approaches to coding UI 09:40 - Why taste still matters 12:15 - Niche software opportunities 13:30 - Cursor origin story 16:00 - The first problem they tried solving 17:20 - Why they abandoned the CAD idea 21:00 - Pivoting to Cursor 23:00 - Following the scaling laws 27:00 - Getting to PMF 30:00 - “Dogfooding” 31:00 - First 10 hires 32:50 - How to evaluate great engineers 33:45 - Maintaining the hacker mindset 35:00 - What are the moats for AI coding tools? 37:00 - Looking ahead

Michael Truell (Michael Truell), co-founder and CEO of Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, joined Garry Tan to talk about building one of the fastest-growing startups of all time—and why he's betting everything on a world beyond code. He walks through the early insights that led him and his co-founders to leave a promising AI-powered CAD project and instead chase a bigger dream: reinventing how software is written. From the hard years of false starts and rewrites to Cursor's breakthrough moment, Michael explains what it really takes to build a tool that could eventually replace programming as we know it. He also reflects on their first 10 hires, why taste still matters, and how the decade ahead will unlock a new kind of creativity for builders everywhere. 01:00 - A new way to build software 04:50 - Two ways to view LLMs 05:50 - Bottlenecks to superhuman agents 08:30 - New approaches to coding UI 09:40 - Why taste still matters 12:15 - Niche software opportunities 13:30 - Cursor origin story 16:00 - The first problem they tried solving 17:20 - Why they abandoned the CAD idea 21:00 - Pivoting to Cursor 23:00 - Following the scaling laws 27:00 - Getting to PMF 30:00 - “Dogfooding” 31:00 - First 10 hires 32:50 - How to evaluate great engineers 33:45 - Maintaining the hacker mindset 35:00 - What are the moats for AI coding tools? 37:00 - Looking ahead

Y Combinator

337,015 views • 1 year ago

Ansem explains why you need to learn AI right now “AI is going to make everybody 10x more efficient at whatever it is that they’re doing” “If you’re concerned about your job… you need to get up to speed and become an expert at using AI as fast as possible” “There’s going to be people who choose not to do that and people who do. In a few years, people are going to look at AI the same way as being able to use the internet” “Obviously someone who knows how to use the internet is a way better candidate than someone who doesn’t, it’s going to be the same with AI” “Whenever you have these technological breakthroughs happen, you create more jobs that didn’t even exist before. I think AI is going to do that more so than displace people”

Ansem explains why you need to learn AI right now “AI is going to make everybody 10x more efficient at whatever it is that they’re doing” “If you’re concerned about your job… you need to get up to speed and become an expert at using AI as fast as possible” “There’s going to be people who choose not to do that and people who do. In a few years, people are going to look at AI the same way as being able to use the internet” “Obviously someone who knows how to use the internet is a way better candidate than someone who doesn’t, it’s going to be the same with AI” “Whenever you have these technological breakthroughs happen, you create more jobs that didn’t even exist before. I think AI is going to do that more so than displace people”

Market Bubble

19,995 views • 2 months ago

New episode with Michael Truell (Michael Truell), CEO and co-founder of Cursor Cursor is at the very forefront of changing how software gets built, and is one of the fastest-growing products of all time. They hit $100m ARR just 20 months after launching, and recently crossed $300m ARR just two years after launch. In a rare interview, Michael shares: 🔸 His vision for “what comes after code” and how programming will evolve in the next few years 🔸 Their early pivot from automating CAD 🔸 Why Cursor built their own custom AI models despite not starting there 🔸 Why “taste” and logic design will become more valuable engineering skills than technical coding ability 🔸 Why the market for AI coding tools is much larger than people realize—and why there will likely be one dominant winner 🔸 Michael’s advice for engineers and product teams preparing for the AI future 🔸 Key lessons from Cursor’s unprecedented growth 🔸 Much more Don't miss this one. Listen now 👇 • YouTube: • Spotify: • Apple: Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for supporting the podcast: 🏆 @Get_Eppo — Run reliable, impactful experiments: 🏆 Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: 🏆 OneSchema — Import CSV data 10x faster:

New episode with Michael Truell (Michael Truell), CEO and co-founder of Cursor Cursor is at the very forefront of changing how software gets built, and is one of the fastest-growing products of all time. They hit $100m ARR just 20 months after launching, and recently crossed $300m ARR just two years after launch. In a rare interview, Michael shares: 🔸 His vision for “what comes after code” and how programming will evolve in the next few years 🔸 Their early pivot from automating CAD 🔸 Why Cursor built their own custom AI models despite not starting there 🔸 Why “taste” and logic design will become more valuable engineering skills than technical coding ability 🔸 Why the market for AI coding tools is much larger than people realize—and why there will likely be one dominant winner 🔸 Michael’s advice for engineers and product teams preparing for the AI future 🔸 Key lessons from Cursor’s unprecedented growth 🔸 Much more Don't miss this one. Listen now 👇 • YouTube: • Spotify: • Apple: Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for supporting the podcast: 🏆 @Get_Eppo — Run reliable, impactful experiments: 🏆 Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: 🏆 OneSchema — Import CSV data 10x faster:

Lenny Rachitsky

185,928 views • 1 year ago

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part." "And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop." "And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part." "And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop." "And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

illuminatibot

33,052 views • 10 months ago

Asmongold tells a streamer he spent 10,000 hours becoming a failure after the guy called him talentless "A lot of people say that in order to become an expert at something, in order to become truly proficient and great at something, it takes 10,000 hours. For you, it's taken you 10,000 hours to become a failure." "You've invested 10,000 hours into being garbage. You have nothing to show for it. You have accomplished nothing. You've done nothing." "And you're getting mad at me because I recognize that there are other people at companies that are just like you. They're losers. They're failures. And they can't do anything to make people watch."

Asmongold tells a streamer he spent 10,000 hours becoming a failure after the guy called him talentless "A lot of people say that in order to become an expert at something, in order to become truly proficient and great at something, it takes 10,000 hours. For you, it's taken you 10,000 hours to become a failure." "You've invested 10,000 hours into being garbage. You have nothing to show for it. You have accomplished nothing. You've done nothing." "And you're getting mad at me because I recognize that there are other people at companies that are just like you. They're losers. They're failures. And they can't do anything to make people watch."

Asmongold Updates

86,118 views • 1 month ago

"People refuse to believe there's at least a probability that in 50 years people are still watching humans create content." "Yes, [AI short form is] kind of slop-y. Sort of Infinite Jest-y. But there's the possibility that it's just not popular... It's possible the 'slop trough' just doesn't taste good, and people will actually want something else." "I'm not saying there isn't a possibility that Meta Vibes becomes so addictive you can't turn it off and it destroys your life... I would say it's a couple percent, that that happens. And that would be bad." "But there's also the possibility that people just are like, 'Man, I'm not into it.'" The guys wade into the recent timeline turmoil over AI short form video:

"People refuse to believe there's at least a probability that in 50 years people are still watching humans create content." "Yes, [AI short form is] kind of slop-y. Sort of Infinite Jest-y. But there's the possibility that it's just not popular... It's possible the 'slop trough' just doesn't taste good, and people will actually want something else." "I'm not saying there isn't a possibility that Meta Vibes becomes so addictive you can't turn it off and it destroys your life... I would say it's a couple percent, that that happens. And that would be bad." "But there's also the possibility that people just are like, 'Man, I'm not into it.'" The guys wade into the recent timeline turmoil over AI short form video:

TBPN

59,261 views • 9 months ago

DO YOU GUYS REMEMBER THIS ONE BFB OST THAT NEVER WAS USED ON THE SHOW. It’s called places and it sounds so good I need more people to know this song Michael is an amazing composer

DO YOU GUYS REMEMBER THIS ONE BFB OST THAT NEVER WAS USED ON THE SHOW. It’s called places and it sounds so good I need more people to know this song Michael is an amazing composer

Olli‼️

19,749 views • 1 year ago

this is truly the best time to build. proves you can build anything you can imagine with just 1 person. - new companies should be at least 80% driven by AI (marketing, ops, engineering) to move as fast as possible. - the last 20% is all taste/creativity/direction: you're still selling to humans even if AI drives the company. you still need to delight them - when you believe there's something you can't do, try solving it with AI even if it seems hard so you can learn and automate most of the processes - limitations: models will become more generalist but still need to have narrow scope to perform well today. Polsia itself has agents that report bugs/feature requests when talking with customers, then a PM agent that decides priorities, then an engineering agent that builds it. no excuses. lock in

this is truly the best time to build. proves you can build anything you can imagine with just 1 person. - new companies should be at least 80% driven by AI (marketing, ops, engineering) to move as fast as possible. - the last 20% is all taste/creativity/direction: you're still selling to humans even if AI drives the company. you still need to delight them - when you believe there's something you can't do, try solving it with AI even if it seems hard so you can learn and automate most of the processes - limitations: models will become more generalist but still need to have narrow scope to perform well today. Polsia itself has agents that report bugs/feature requests when talking with customers, then a PM agent that decides priorities, then an engineering agent that builds it. no excuses. lock in

Andros

13,130 views • 5 months ago

🚨BIGGEST ANNOUNCEMENT OF MY LIFE: I've been working on something big these last few months It's called Creator Buddy, and it's the best AI content tool you'll ever use It's an AI content coach that will help you create WAY better content on X It's jam packed with awesome AI tools that will help you create content that attracts you a massive audience: • AI coach that reviews all your old content to let you know what's working • AI content repurposing tool that helps you take a tweet and turn it into videos, blogs, and other forms of content • Brain dumping tool that takes what's on your mind and turns it into content • A bookmarking tool that's like X bookmarks except actually useful This is the most important project of my life and I can't wait for you to try it out The biggest challenge I see for content creators on X is they struggle to find their voice. They struggle to figure out what their niche should be or what they should talk about Creator Buddy solves this It's not an AI tool that creates you content. It's an AI tool that helps you discover who you are and what makes you unique and interesting. I'm launching Creator Buddy in the next month or so and want you to test it out. Beta testing begins in the next week and the first wave of users will be my subscribers on X I'll also be choosing 10 random people who like/RT this post to beta test it early Second wave will be through my newsletter (link in bio) Third wave will be to my reply guys (make sure to reply early and often) Creator Buddy is going to be the single greatest AI content creation tool and I can't wait for you to use it!

🚨BIGGEST ANNOUNCEMENT OF MY LIFE: I've been working on something big these last few months It's called Creator Buddy, and it's the best AI content tool you'll ever use It's an AI content coach that will help you create WAY better content on X It's jam packed with awesome AI tools that will help you create content that attracts you a massive audience: • AI coach that reviews all your old content to let you know what's working • AI content repurposing tool that helps you take a tweet and turn it into videos, blogs, and other forms of content • Brain dumping tool that takes what's on your mind and turns it into content • A bookmarking tool that's like X bookmarks except actually useful This is the most important project of my life and I can't wait for you to try it out The biggest challenge I see for content creators on X is they struggle to find their voice. They struggle to figure out what their niche should be or what they should talk about Creator Buddy solves this It's not an AI tool that creates you content. It's an AI tool that helps you discover who you are and what makes you unique and interesting. I'm launching Creator Buddy in the next month or so and want you to test it out. Beta testing begins in the next week and the first wave of users will be my subscribers on X I'll also be choosing 10 random people who like/RT this post to beta test it early Second wave will be through my newsletter (link in bio) Third wave will be to my reply guys (make sure to reply early and often) Creator Buddy is going to be the single greatest AI content creation tool and I can't wait for you to use it!

Alex Finn

337,313 views • 1 year ago

this is huge news from Cursor, they've pulled of the impossible and turned their ai-wrapper into a in-destructible moat sam altman literally called it cursor's ai agent harness is available for anyone to build on, which means ai models are now a commodity > 1-time install and now anyone can run cursor's agent locally or via cloud. use any model (e.g. gpt 5.5) but with the added cursor harness that makes it 10X better. > its so good that 3 of cursors biggest competitors are embedding it into their products. > now cursor DOESN'T DEPEND on anthropic or openai. their own model (composer 2) competes directly! yesterday sam altman said the ai model and harness are one and the same and today cursor turned their harness into a self-owned moat fucking masterclass (coming from a former cursor / ai wrapper hater)

this is huge news from Cursor, they've pulled of the impossible and turned their ai-wrapper into a in-destructible moat sam altman literally called it cursor's ai agent harness is available for anyone to build on, which means ai models are now a commodity > 1-time install and now anyone can run cursor's agent locally or via cloud. use any model (e.g. gpt 5.5) but with the added cursor harness that makes it 10X better. > its so good that 3 of cursors biggest competitors are embedding it into their products. > now cursor DOESN'T DEPEND on anthropic or openai. their own model (composer 2) competes directly! yesterday sam altman said the ai model and harness are one and the same and today cursor turned their harness into a self-owned moat fucking masterclass (coming from a former cursor / ai wrapper hater)

Ejaaz

950,091 views • 3 months ago