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Cursor: Past, Present, and Future

cursor.com

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Re: Cursor: Past, Present, and Future

#51

Post by sa46 »

jebarker wrote: post #25

> We’ve grown to a team of over 300 engineers, researchers, designers, and operators That last word, operators, I have seen used multiple times over the past couple of weeks to refer to managers and politicians. Is that the usage here too? If so, is this a new trend in the tech world? I’ve certainly heard of “political operators” in TV shows about Washington DC, but the usage in tech is new to me.

Trickle-down titles? I’m familiar with operator to refer to tier-1 special operations personnel like Seal Team 6 and Delta Force.

Re: Cursor: Past, Present, and Future

#54

Post by dcre »

bko wrote: post #10
nr378 wrote: post #6

> Today, we’re pleased to announce a new round of financing: our Series D of $2.3B at a $29.3B post-money valuation. > We’ve also crossed $1B in annualized revenue A 30x revenue multiple on (presumably) relatively low-margin revenue is certainly punchy. One wonders how much of their $1bn of ARR they're paying straight through to Claude/Anthropic.

300 employees, let's say average salary of 300k? $90m in employee expenses so that's neglible. Prob burning through 200% of revenue which I've seen elsewhere. But they also probably spend a fair amount training their own model. I don't think it's foundation model. But it's pretty fair to assume that $1bn revenue is about $2bn to Anthropic/GPT/Grok

This article claimed they had single-digit monthly cash burn in August, when they had over $500M ARR (so let's say $41M monthly) and 150 employees. If that is true, they are spending way less than 200% of revenue.

"Anysphere runs pretty lean with around 150 employees and has a single digit monthly cash burn, a source tells me."

https://www.newcomer.co/p/cursors-popularity-has-come-at-a

Re: Cursor: Past, Present, and Future

#55

Post by warmedcookie »

verdverm wrote: post #19
mentos wrote: post #12

I love Cursor. I’m greedy to ask but is there a better alternative? Hard for me to imagine. I tried Copilot was no where near as good.

Comments like this remind me how much of the ai/agentic ecosystem is based on people's personal vibes and emotions I've seen very little, meaningful difference. They all have their quirks, things their good at / bad at. The underlying models are very similar as well

Okay, I'll delve deeper. You're talking about one thing, the models, which Cursor has a bunch available to choose from. Yes, I agree practically no difference there in terms of what junk is being spit out.

But code review is really important to me and nothing comes close to Cursor in regards to reviewing the code the LLM generates. I can keep the good parts, modify or throw out the bad parts. I can go back to a checkpoint easily when things get really bad. What solution comes even close to that? Cursor nails this really well. Claude code acolytes tell me to just use git commands. Yeah, no thanks.

Vibe coding? Yes, no meaningful difference.

Re: Cursor: Past, Present, and Future

#56

Post by verdverm »

warmedcookie wrote: post #55
verdverm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like this remind me how much of the ai/agentic ecosystem is based on people's personal vibes and emotions I've seen very little, meaningful difference. They all have their quirks, things their good at / bad at. The underlying models are very similar as well

Okay, I'll delve deeper. You're talking about one thing, the models, which Cursor has a bunch available to choose from. Yes, I agree practically no difference there in terms of what junk is being spit out. But code review is really important to me and nothing comes close to Cursor in regards to reviewing the code the LLM generates. I can keep the good parts, modify or throw out the bad parts. I can go back to a check…

> nothing comes close to X

you lost me here because this is based on your opinion and impressions, not data. How do you know nothing comes close?

The PR experience you describe is available in several options and setups. Different strokes for different folks, your choice is not superior by any meaningful measure other than your own preferences

Re: Cursor: Past, Present, and Future

#57

Post by warmedcookie »

verdverm wrote: post #56
warmedcookie wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I'll delve deeper. You're talking about one thing, the models, which Cursor has a bunch available to choose from. Yes, I agree practically no difference there in terms of what junk is being spit out. But code review is really important to me and nothing comes close to Cursor in regards to reviewing the code the LLM generates. I can keep the good parts, modify or throw out the bad parts. I can go back to a check…

> nothing comes close to X you lost me here because this is based on your opinion and impressions, not data. How do you know nothing comes close? The PR experience you describe is available in several options and setups. Different strokes for different folks, your choice is not superior by any meaningful measure other than your own preferences

I don't. I'm fishing for alternatives.

Re: Cursor: Past, Present, and Future

#58

Post by verdverm »

warmedcookie wrote: post #57
verdverm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing comes close to X you lost me here because this is based on your opinion and impressions, not data. How do you know nothing comes close? The PR experience you describe is available in several options and setups. Different strokes for different folks, your choice is not superior by any meaningful measure other than your own preferences

I don't. I'm fishing for alternatives.

There are better ways to ask for alternative options and experiences

Re: Cursor: Past, Present, and Future

#59

Post by sorcercode »

CactusBlue wrote: post #3

They haven't built their own editor, they haven't built their own models; what have they actually built?

they are building their own editor (granted they didn't do it from scratch); they do build their own models (see composer);

they may not have done a lot of this from scratch but there's still a lot of innovation in what they're doing. they're also building a pretty fantastic product and clearly the leader today in AI innovation for IDEs.

may not be everyone's cup of tea; but i think you might be detracting some of their innovation.

Re: Cursor: Past, Present, and Future

#60

Post by foldr »

warmedcookie wrote: post #55
verdverm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like this remind me how much of the ai/agentic ecosystem is based on people's personal vibes and emotions I've seen very little, meaningful difference. They all have their quirks, things their good at / bad at. The underlying models are very similar as well

Okay, I'll delve deeper. You're talking about one thing, the models, which Cursor has a bunch available to choose from. Yes, I agree practically no difference there in terms of what junk is being spit out. But code review is really important to me and nothing comes close to Cursor in regards to reviewing the code the LLM generates. I can keep the good parts, modify or throw out the bad parts. I can go back to a check…

Cursor’s killer feature is that you can use it to edit diffs or restore a known good version? That is basic version control functionality. I understand what you’re referring to (I use Zed, which also has an interface for partially applying AI-generated code changes), but it’s very weird to me that this basic functionality would be considered some kind of competitive advantage.
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