Day: September 4, 2025

• The CEO behind Cursor attributes its success to two things: monk mode and word-of-mouth adoption.
• Michael Truell said an early social media push helped kick-start Cursor, but the team pulled back afterward.
• The AI coding tool is used by YC startups to tech giants like Amazon.

The CEO behind Cursor said the AI coding tool spread from YC startups to tech giants thanks to just two things.

Michael Truell, the 25-year-old CEO and cofounder of the startup behind Cursor, said at a Y Combinator event in June that the company’s growth didn’t come from splashy marketing. After an initial push on social media, the founders went monk mode, shutting out distractions to focus on product improvements. Then they let satisfied users carry the rest.

“We kind of lived like monks in 2023 and just focused on the product,” Truell said in a fireside chat published Wednesday on Y Combinator’s YouTube channel. “And it really just spread from word of mouth.”

The team occasionally debated whether Cursor was good enough and whether it was time to pour energy into growth engineering, Truell said, adding that they even ran short sprints on those efforts.

But the results were negligible compared to the impact they got from simply improving the product, he added.

In the very early stages of launching Cursor in 2023, the team tried to “evangelize” the AI tool on social networks, which helped them build an early user waitlist, Truell said.

“That was helpful getting us kick-started,” he said. “But then after that, we kind of stepped away from that.”

Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere, raised $900 million at a $9.9 billion valuation, the company said in June. The company lists Stripe, Instacart, and Shopify as customers.

Business Insider reported in the same month that Amazon was in talks with Cursor to adopt the AI coding tool internally.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in the May earnings call that Cursor, an AWS cloud customer, was a key driver behind the “explosion of coding agents.”

Big Tech leaders have also been using Cursor to vibe-code. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in June that he has been casually building a custom webpage with the AI coding tool.

Truell and Cursor did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Marketing for AI startups

Not every AI startup thinks marketing is redundant. Some are leaning hard into it.

Viral AI “cheating” startup Cluely is betting on influencers to drive growth.

Cluely needs to be “the biggest thing” on Instagram and TikTok, CEO and cofounder Chungin “Roy” Lee said on a podcast in June. “Every single big company is known by regular people,” he added.

Lee previously told BI that his main goal for Cluely is to reach 1 billion views across all platforms.

Other startups are chasing what’s being called AEO, or answer engine optimization — the next generation of SEO as chatbots increasingly replace search engines.

Business Insider reported in May that dozens of AEO startups and tools have launched in recent months, all promising to help online businesses get surfaced when AI models answer user questions.

“There must have been 30 AEO product launches in the last few months, all trying to do what SEO did 20 years ago,” said David Slater, a chief marketing officer who’s worked at Mozilla, Salesforce, and other tech companies. “It’s absolutely going to be a hot space.”

• A newly announced Ukrainian unit in the 3rd Assault Brigade aims to fight Russia with ground drones.
• Called NC13, it showed off several UGVs mounted with machine guns and a grenade launcher.
• It’s a further sign of how combat UGVs are becoming mainstream in Ukraine’s war.

A Ukrainian army corps has officially founded a company that focuses on fighting with combat uncrewed ground vehicles, further codifying Ukraine’s growing use of such drones in the war.

The 3rd Army Corps announced on its social media channels on Wednesday that it had launched NC13, which it called a “separate unit for eliminating the enemy with ground robots.”

The new unit is part of the corps’ 3rd Assault Brigade, which has recently been fighting in the Kharkiv region.

A video in the announcement showed demonstrations of several uncrewed ground vehicles, or UGVs, mounted with small arms. One appears to be a tracked system with a heavy machine gun that resembles the 12.7 mm NSV Utyos.

Another two are four-wheeled systems. The first appears to be fitted with a 7.62 mm PKT or similar machine gun that can elevate its barrel, while the second looks like it features an AGS-30 grenade launcher.

A small four-wheel drone was also filmed dropping off anti-tank mines.

The 3rd Assault Brigade has already reported deploying UGVs in missions for several months, including for assaults, mine-laying, and evacuating the wounded.

In July, the brigade became known as the first Ukrainian force to compel Russian infantry to surrender to a UGV. As part of its wider drone school program, Killhouse, the brigade also runs courses for piloting UGVs.

NC13’s creation now means the brigade is committing further to combat UGVs.

“Robots evacuate, deliver ammunition, and now we’re bringing them onto the battlefield,” the corps’ statement said.

It’s rare to see a Ukrainian company focusing primarily on UGV assaults. Another Ukrainian formation, the 20th Separate K-2 Unmanned Systems Regiment, formed its own UGV battalion in August, but its announcement said that the unit would also run evacuation missions.

Other Ukrainian units often have UGVs dispersed in their operations, using them to transport munitions or clear mines. Ground drones are particularly useful for assaults because they can carry heavier explosive payloads than many of the uncrewed aerial systems flooding Ukraine’s battlefield.

Kyiv has been fast-tracking UGV adoption in its military over the last year, with its defense ministry touting them as “iron soldiers” that allow Ukraine to hold and attack positions without endangering its strained supply of human troops.

In its statement on Wednesday, the 3rd Army Corps used NC13’s debut to call for recruits.

“This is the new reality of war, where we set the rules,” it wrote. “Robots fight, and you are the one in command.”