Pontis and Victor launched Cursor Directory by posting about it on X (Twitter) immediately at release. They were already building in public with a developer-focused following, and one of their launch posts hit 1 million impressions. This initial X post drove the first wave of users almost instantly — Pontis described it as something he had "never seen before," suggesting explosive early organic reach. Simultaneously, they posted on Hacker News and made it to the front page, which drove a significant second wave of developer traffic. The combination of their existing developer audience on X, the HN front page hit, and the open-source nature of the project (all rules publicly merged on GitHub) created strong initial trust and shareability with the exact target audience.
Cursor Directory
A searchable directory for Cursor IDE rules, MCPs, and AI coding resources
8 moves, in order
- Pre launch / BuildRapid prototyping
Built the entire MVP in ~3 hours: Pontis initialized a Next.js project with a hard-coded JSON file of cursor rules while Victor designed in Figma simultaneously. Deployed to Vercel within ~30 minutes of starting. Secured the domain 'cursor.directory' immediately.
Shippable product live within one evening - Launch WeekBuild in public — Twitter
Posted the cursor directory on X at launch. They were already building in public and sharing everything including code. One post alone reached 1 million impressions; multiple posts were made during launch week.
1M+ impressions on a single post; site 'instantly took off' - Launch WeekHacker news
Submitted Cursor Directory to Hacker News. The post reached the front page, driving a major wave of developer traffic.
Front page of Hacker News; significant developer traffic spike - Post launchYoutube coverage organic
Multiple YouTubers independently discovered and covered Cursor Directory in their videos without being solicited. This created sustained awareness beyond the initial launch spike.
Ongoing referral traffic and new user discovery from YouTube community - Ongoing growthOpen source community
Made the entire project open source with all cursor rules merged on GitHub. Community members could contribute rules directly, lowering maintenance to ~3 hours/month and keeping content fresh without founder effort.
Sustained content growth and community trust; 2.2M unique visitors totalUsers 49k users - Monetization — Phase 1Paid job listings
Added a paid job board feature where companies can pay to have their job ads listed on the site, targeting the developer audience already on the platform.
New revenue stream added; specific MRR contribution not stated - Monetization — Phase 2 / Second growth waveMcp directory expansion
When MCPs (Model Context Protocols) emerged, added a searchable MCP section to the directory, allowing users to find and extend their Cursor experience. Featured listings were made available as a paid placement.
Described as a 'huge adoption' event — second major growth spike for the site - Monetization — Phase 3Ai generated tool upsell
Built a tool that lets developers upload their package.json and auto-generate custom Cursor rules tailored to their project stack. Targeted developers who wanted personalized Cursor experiences but didn't know where to start.
Additional paid feature; drove engagement from developers wanting personalized setupsMRR $35k Users 49k users
Pontis and Victor had an established developer following on X from years of building in public, a pre-built design system and reusable component library from prior startups (Midday and others), and strong co-founder chemistry — cutting build/design coordination time dramatically. The "cursor.directory" domain was also noted as a highly relevant, memorable domain that aided discoverability.
twitter_organic_building_in_public
Nothing explicitly called out as a failed channel. The transcript is focused on what worked.
My website makes $35K/month (built in 3 hours)
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