The Transaction

TT - DD - 002 - Cursor Raising Their Series C
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Craig Rosenberg: [00:00:00] All right. So this is, the second. Episode of the direct deposit.

A quick hit from the, uh, guys from the transaction​

before I keep going. I, I do want to leave, uh, leave everyone with a quote from Robert Koehler on our last direct deposit.

Matt Amundson: yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Love the direct deposit, good value in a tight five minute timeframe. Please post additional AI generated PO pictures from Paul of you eating in wild situations. Um, the second part, not as important as the first part.

Matt Amundson: can I drop a quote?

Craig Rosenberg: yeah.

Matt Amundson: All right. Here we go. I got a text message. This came not on LinkedIn, but directly from. The text message. Here we go. Hey Matt. I was talking to Jack Veronin yesterday and was thinking about the old crew. That's EverString, then your podcast with Craig popped up on my LinkedIn feed.

Love the direct deposit. Now I want to see [00:01:00] Paul Rosenberg's other paintings. Ha ha.

Craig Rosenberg: Paintings.

Matt Amundson: the gen. That's from the Genie. Steve Perini.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh man. Okay. We could clarify in the next direct deposit that they're not paintings, but I, I absolutely love that he called them paintings.

Matt Amundson: Yeah, me

Craig Rosenberg: my favorite thing. Nothing better has

Matt Amundson: some watercolor.

Craig Rosenberg: Well, we'll have to work on it. Okay, so you're up today. I got five questions for you.

Matt Amundson: Not the continent but me.

Craig Rosenberg: Right. Question one

Matt Amundson: Mm-hmm.

Craig Rosenberg: uh, what's fresh on your mind?

What do we wanna talk about today?

Matt Amundson: I can't stop thinking about Cursor and their growth. for those of you who haven't been paying attention, cursor took their series C $900 million round, I. Uh, this came on the heels of their series B in December, which came on their series A, which was, uh, four months prior. So I guess that means August.

Uh, so in less than two [00:02:00] years, or in less than one year, they've taken three rounds and they are at $500 million in a RR.

Craig Rosenberg: Jesus.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: th this question I had written down, it may sound weird considering your last sentence,

Matt Amundson: Okay, go.

Craig Rosenberg: actually I know how to frame it. I figured it out. So, for the transaction audience, the Go-To-Market audience, what makes this so interesting?

Matt Amundson: Okay. A couple of things. One, I was on their LinkedIn today. I was looking for marketers. They don't have any. Number two, when I was doing research, they have never served an ad. On LinkedIn or Google, and they have never sent a marketing email. In March, their a RR was $200 million in June at the time of their series C 500 million or 300 to 500.

So they grew $200 million in a quarter. It's a 2-year-old company.[00:03:00]

Craig Rosenberg: Okay. Um, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. All right. So, Well, this is interesting. This one is so complicated. It's the growth is explosive, but, but are there, are there takeaways for the Go-To-Market audience?

Matt Amundson: I'm struggling to find what they are other than the fact that like what they've done is they've basically mimicked, the way that you purchase most, uh, LLMs, be it. open AI or anthropic, which is, they have, you know, very inexpensive pricing tiers, that start for free and go all the way up to, $200 a month.

But like, their most popular package, I think is $20 a month. Uh, so it is very, very easy to adopt as a single user. Um, they do also have enterprise pricing plans, but. It just, they just made the product so incredibly easy to purchase. That to me is probably the biggest takeaway and the fact that we're now starting to see more and more of these AI companies adopting this pricing [00:04:00] model and this acquisition model is something worth noting.

Craig Rosenberg: you know, it's funny, I'll just add this. I think that is a huge takeaway.

Matt Amundson: Mm-hmm.

Craig Rosenberg: Um, and everyone says, I want to do product led. This is product led.

Matt Amundson: Yes,

Craig Rosenberg: The product leads at all. It's not about giving them free access. Everyone assumes that's product led. No, this is, the product is leading. Okay. That's excellent.

Matt Amundson: I will say they do have, they do have their own Reddit uh, subreddit. Uh, and they do have 72,000 members in the cursor, sub Reddit.

Craig Rosenberg: Okay. So that, that sounds very, uh, DevOps type, you know, that's a good play there. All right., so do you hire a classic Go-To-Market team? And, and when.

Matt Amundson: I don't think you hire a classic Go-To-Market team here. I think you hire something more akin to a B2C marketing team. I think the way to. Grow where they are today is through brand [00:05:00] awareness, and through really clever marketing. I don't think that you run like a traditional B2B acquisition marketing function because they've got acquisition nailed two at.

Just nailed. but I do think like there's gonna be moments where, they're gonna want to have something, for analyst relations. they're gonna obviously launch new products, and so they're gonna need a team responsible for helping them launch products. But, you know, I, I can't see them bringing in somebody to say like, Hey, let's run ads better, or Let's, let's make sure our website converts more.

I don't know how much more. You can get Right. this is taking the amplifier up to 11. I don't think it's possible.

Craig Rosenberg: Okay. Question five. Final question of the direct deposit. You ready?

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Go

Craig Rosenberg: What's your favorite movie of all time?

Matt Amundson: big trouble in little China.

Craig Rosenberg: Wow,

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: that you said that fast.

Matt Amundson: Yeah, I own it on every format. V-H-S-D-V-D, Blu-Ray, and I think I own it on every single streaming service. I pay the premium

Craig Rosenberg: Kurt Russell. There he [00:06:00] is. Jesus. All right, well that's a great way to end the direct deposit from the transaction.

Matt Amundson: That's right.

Craig Rosenberg: Boom. There you go.