First Block: Interview with Michael Truell, Co-Founder & CEO of Cursor

About this episode

Michael Truell discusses the journey of Cursor, an AI code editor, and the lessons learned from their startup experience.

Welcome to First Block, a Notion series where founders from the world’s leading companies tell us what it was like to navigate the many firsts of their startup journey — and what they learned from that experience. In this episode, we spoke with Michael Truell, Co-founder and CEO of Cursor, an AI code editor that has gone from side project to one of the fastest-growing AI tools in the developer world in under a year. Michael shares why they started with a solution in search of a problem, ignored conventional advice, and focused obsessively on product over everything else. From a 4-person founding team to hiring just one person every few months, their unorthodox path laid the foundation for breakout growth. For video, transcripts, and custom Notion Cursor templates, please visit: ⁠https://ntn.so/2yr1lw⁠ To learn more about how Notion is supporting startups, please visit: ⁠https://ntn.so/9ipiek⁠ Timestamps 00:00 : Intro 02:18 : The original spark and false start in mechanical engineering 05:53 : The pivot moment to developer tools 06:45 : The decision to fork VS Code 08:45 : Building AI-native coding tools and the balance between speed and control 12:24 : Cursor's explosive growth…

People in this episode

Host: Notion

Guest: Michael Truell

Topics covered

• startup journey
• AI tools
• founder experiences
• product development
• hiring philosophy

Keywords

• Cursor
• AI code editor
• startup
• founder
• product development
• hiring

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Cursor

Products: AI code editor, VS Code

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