After Code: How Cursor Is
Redefining Software Development

Michael Truell

Co-founder & CEO, Anysphere (Cursor)

2024

The Vision

After Code: The Next 10 Years

"Being an engineer will start to feel like being a logic designer. It will be about specifying your intent for how exactly you want everything to work, less about the how, more about the what."

Move away from formal programming languages (TypeScript, Rust, C)
Evolve toward pseudocode and English-like logic representation
Keep humans in the driver's seat with complete control
Enable fast iteration loops, not weeks of waiting

The Path

From Boring to Ambitious: How Cursor Found Its Moment

Started wrong: Spent 4 months on mechanical engineering tools
Realized: Weren't passionate about the space, didn't have domain expertise
Pivoted right: Noticed existing AI coding tools lacked ambition
The lesson: Don't chase boring industries if the hot space has obvious flaws

The real opportunityEvery major category has a high ceiling when AI is involved. Look for gaps in ambition, not gaps in competition.

starting point

$100M

ARR in 20 months

$300M

ARR at 2 years

Inflection point

Growth has been consistent exponential. Early, the numbers feel slow. By year 2, it's undeniable.

The Architecture

The Stack: Ensemble of Custom Models

Expected: Use only large foundation models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini)
Reality: Every magic moment in Cursor involves a custom model
The trick: Don't reinvent the wheel, focus on foundation model weaknesses
The wins: Massive speed gains, cost efficiency, specialized use cases

Autocomplete: The 300ms Model

Code is predictable. When you edit one part, you know exactly what else needs changing. We built models that predict across multiple files in under 300ms.

Search + Fill Architecture

Small models search the codebase to find context for big models. Big models think high-level. Small models fill in the detailed diffs at speed.

Flavor Change

Taste > Carefulness

As AI gets better, being careful (finding every bug) matters less
Taste, having the right vision, matters more
Taste applies to logic AND visuals, not just design
The future engineer: logic designer with strong taste, less debugging perfectionist

The skill shiftEngineers will spend less time catching mistakes and more time envisioning what should be built. Taste isn't vague, it's having the right idea.

Contrarian Truths

What Everyone Gets Wrong About Cursor & AI Code

✗Coding will stay text editing foreverINSTEAD →✓ In 10 years, pseudocode and intent-driven UI replace traditional code entirely.

✗Just use big foundation modelsINSTEAD →✓ Custom models for specialized tasks unlock speed, cost, and quality at scale. Ensemble beats monolith.

✗Moats don't exist in AIINSTEAD →✓ Moats are fragile but real, they come from relentless product ambition and continuous leapfrogging, like search in 1999.

✗You either hire fast or you failINSTEAD →✓ We hired too slow early on, and it worked out fine. Hiring slowly with intention beats hiring fast and iterating.

Based on Michael Truell's episode on Lenny's Podcast. All ideas on this page are from the episode.Watch on YouTube Follow @mntruell on X

GO DEEPER IN THE EPISODE

04:20 What comes after code 08:32 The importance of taste 12:39 Cursor’s origin story 18:31 Why they chose to build an IDE 22:39 Will everyone become engineering managers?24:31 How they decided it was time to ship 26:45 Reflecting on Cursor's success 32:03 Counterintuitive lessons on building AI products 34:02 Inside Cursor's stack 38:42 Defensibility and market dynamics in AI 46:13 Tips for using Cursor 51:25 Hiring and building a strong team 59:10 Staying focused amid rapid AI advancements 01:02:31 Final thoughts and advice for aspiring AI innovators

Every sketch here began as a transcript.

Send us yours and we’ll draw it. $1 a transcript.

Sketch mine →

0:00