Michael Truell on June 17th, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco.
At 25, Michael Truell has already built Cursor into one of the fastest-growing companies in AI coding, hitting $100M ARR in just a year.
In this fireside chat with YC General Partner Diana Hu, he shares the lessons that came from years of failed projects with his co-founders, why he believes programming is still essential even as AI changes how we code, and how Cursor is taking on GitHub Copilot with the conviction that all of software development will flow through models.
Chapters:
00:38 – PG essays & first code
02:36 – Games, robots, and hacking ML as a teenager
06:54 – From Hemisphere to Cursor: first startup attempts
09:54 – Pivoting hard when nothing was working
12:04 – Taking on GitHub Copilot
13:10 – Shipping the first Cursor editor
15:24 – Early lessons: features, feedback, and VS Code shift
16:26 – Codex, custom models, and pragmatic bets
17:58 – Wandering in 2023
20:00 – Breakthrough: $1M → $100M in a year
22:46 – Word of mouth and wildfire growth
25:24 – The future of coding and advice for students
