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Aman Sanger on scaling Cursor to $100M in revenue in 12 months

The four co-founders started working on Cursor in January 2023.

“It was about 2-4 months of experimenting, trying different things and finding something that fit,” Aman recalls. “Then we shipped it and it had an okay launch.”

The initial version of Cursor got some initial buzz because they shipped it with GPT-4 at a time where very few products were using Open AI’s latest model. But then usage tanked.

The team began to doubt their approach after the failed launch. Aman explains:

“The entirety of that summer was just incredibly slow growth, and that was somewhat demoralizing. The big question in our minds was, ‘Are we being too ambitious?’ We were trying to build this general purpose thing for all engineers, but with this really small team, maybe we should focus more narrowly on some particular use case like tests or bug detection.”

But the fact that they were users of the product gave the team the confidence to keep going down their initial path:

“The really magical thing about this product was that we were users of it. So we could iterate incredibly quickly, and we tried all these different things that summer. Then we found this core set of features that worked incredibly well.”

The two key features were Command K for instructed edit ability and code-based indexing that let you ask questions about your whole code base.

“After we integrated those two features and launched them, growth kind of just took off.”

Aman continues:

“A lot of the work of Cursor has been just experimenting with what is possible. For everything you see in the product, there’s like 10 failed experiments that didn’t work… All of our work for the first 6 months to a year was trying to find new ways to harness these models and make these models better for programming.”

Another factor that contributed to Cursor’s success was their willingness to ship half-finished features:

“We released these half-finished things, which a lot of our competitors refused to do. The first version of Copilot++ and Cursor Tab sucked. But once you release it to the world and see how people react to it, you can improve on it a ton… We biased toward releasing as soon as something shows signs of usefulness to the team.”

Video source: @peakxvpartners (2025)

The most valuable executive trait isn't intelligence or experience—it's the ability to move mountains without making enemies.

Someone who will run through walls and navigate bureaucracy, difficult people, and coordination problems without upsetting everyone along the way.

Usually you get two types of executives:

Type 1: Competent but doesn't want to shake the apple cart:

"I went to this person from the HR team to change this, but they told me it's impossible. What do you want to do?"

This is not helpful. Now I have to figure out the strategy and probably do it myself. They quit at the first sign of resistance.

Type 2: Semi-incompetent and chaotic, but pisses everyone off

"I told them they need to deliver what I asked for by Tuesday or we're going to have a serious problem!"

(Invariably, after they report this, you receive a text from Jerry in HR saying everyone is going to quit if this guy isn't fired.)

This is also not helpful either. Now I have to clean up their mess, and probably fire them otherwise my team will revolt.

What I look for:

Competent but masterful at helping people understand why what they are doing is important and getting them onside, while still being highly assertive.

"The guys in HR pushed back, but I explained why this is so
important and gave them the context. I told them I understood why it's hard for them and that I'm being annoying, but that it's critical and they are going to save the day if they can deliver. They grumbled, but they're going to get it for you by Tuesday"

When the HR guys deliver it, she takes them all out for a steak dinner to celebrate together.

And she did this without me having to give any direction outside of the original objective.

Do you know someone like this?

They are in short supply and I want to hire them.

Tell them to email me and list the three most important books that gave them this skillset :-)