Cursor CEO says Discord users helped staff the AI coding company
Michael Truell said Cursor hired many people from its user Discord as the AI coding startup grew into a SpaceX acquisition target.
By Maya Lindqvist · Senior Technology Correspondent
3 min read
Cursor CEO Michael Truell said the AI coding company turned its user Discord into a source of early hires, making the product’s most engaged users part of the team building it. The approach shows how some fast-growing software companies are treating user communities as recruiting channels, especially as demand for AI engineering talent rises.
Fortune reported that SpaceX agreed to buy Cursor for $60 billion, a deal that put Truell, 25, among Silicon Valley’s most prominent young founders. Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere, began in early 2022 with Truell and three other programmers, according to Fortune.
In a keynote at Cursor’s first Compile conference that was published Monday, Truell said the company’s founders were initially unsure there was room for another AI coding tool. He said large technology companies and AI labs were already working on similar products, and the four founders spent much of 2022 pursuing other projects.
Truell said the group later returned to the product they wanted to use themselves: an AI-powered development environment for programmers. According to Fortune, Truell has described the first version as a hurried prototype built in about two weeks near the end of 2022 and released at the start of 2023.
Early users became candidates
The first reaction was not encouraging, according to Truell. He said the first two users disliked Cursor, and some early testers rejected it sharply.
A smaller group stayed with the product and used it regularly, Truell said. That gave the company a loop of feedback from developers who were reporting bugs, testing changes and sharing how they worked with the tool.
That user activity eventually moved into Discord, where the company’s community gathered around product issues and workflows, according to Fortune. Truell said at Compile that Cursor hired many members of that Discord server.
Fortune reported that Cursor now has more than 300 employees. The publication also reported that Cursor is used by 67% of Fortune 500 companies and generates about 150 million lines of enterprise code a day.
Truell framed the hiring path as part of the company’s identity, saying Cursor was built by developers for developers, according to Fortune. Many of the people who joined the company had first participated as users who were testing features and discussing the product in Discord.
Community hiring beyond Cursor
Fortune cited Notion and Figma as other examples of software companies that drew on engaged user communities. Camille Ricketts, Notion’s head of brand and communications, told Decibel that Notion saw people on Twitter and Reddit sharing tips and helping other users while the company had a small marketing team.
Claire Butler, Figma’s first business hire, told First Round that Figma invited closed-beta users who liked the product to meet the team over pizza. Fortune reported that Figma later brought in designer advocates who were already active in design circles.
VerityAI research cited by Fortune said some startups are looking beyond LinkedIn and job boards to Discord servers, Slack groups and specialist forums. According to that research, those groups can reveal candidates through their actual contributions rather than only through résumés and cover letters.
Cursor is also working on more advanced AI agents, according to Fortune. Truell said the company is training a larger model using 10 to 20 times more compute than it has used before, with the goal of creating agents that can take on broader software engineering tasks.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.