Our mission is to automate coding. The first step in our journey is to build the best tool for professional programmers, using a combination of inventive research, design, and engineering. Our organization is very flat, and our team is small and talent dense. We particularly like people who are truth-seeking, passionate, and creative. We enjoy spirited debate, crazy ideas, and shipping code.

About the role

We’re hiring a Startups Growth Lead to own how Cursor wins the startup ecosystem.

You’ll focus on the highest-leverage distribution motions: top accelerators, founder communities, and the networks that shape developer tool adoption. This is not traditional growth. You’re building the distribution engine from zero: driving adoption across founders, startups, and VCs, and turning that into compounding usage and retention.

This is a high-agency operator role. You’ll set strategy, build the motion, and ship and iterate relentlessly, making Cursor the default for founders and startup engineering teams. You’ll work cross-functionally across Growth, Product Marketing, Brand, Community, DevRel, and Product, with full ownership and a bias toward speed, leverage, and measurable impact.

What you’ll do

• Own Cursor’s startup distribution motion: define who we are prioritizing, why, how we win, and then translate that into a focused roadmap.

• Build and evolve the startup program strategy: launch and iterate programs and motions that drive adoption, retention, and advocacy in the ecosystem.

• Develop strategic partnerships: build and manage relationships with accelerators, funds, communities, and platforms that compound Cursor’s distribution and credibility.

• Drive community-led and social growth: create repeatable loops that turn ecosystem presence into sustained awareness and product pull.

• Find unconventional, high-leverage channels: identify and test new distribution wedges that help Cursor become the default in the ecosystem.

• Measure impact and prove incrementality: define success metrics, set up tracking, and evaluate what worked, why it worked, and what to do next.

• Operate with strong prioritization under constraint: stay focused on the highest-leverage work even as inbound requests and partnership opportunities pile up.

• Partner cross-functionally to ship: collaborate with Brand, PMM, DevRel, Community, and Growth to execute quickly without creating drag.

What success looks like

• Cursor becomes a default choice in key startup communities and cohorts.

• We have a clear, compounding ecosystem engine: repeatable programs, scalable partner motions, and durable community loops.

• Partnerships translate into measurable product adoption and sustained usage, not just logos or “nice-to-have” relationships.

You may be a fit if

• You’re a former technical founder, or have deep experience working directly with technical founders and developer communities.

• You have strong ecosystem credibility and a track record of driving growth outcomes, not just maintaining relationships.

• You can build from scratch: strategy → roadmap → execution → measurement → iteration.

• You have excellent judgment about where to spend time for compounding leverage (and where to say no).

• You communicate clearly and can align cross-functional teams through crisp plans, narratives, and results.

• You’re energized by high ownership, ambiguity, and moving fast.

Experience that helps

• Experience building for developer audiences and understanding of how founders and engineers evaluate and adopt tools.

• History of building partner motions or programs that have clear metrics and durable flywheels.

• Comfort with measurement and experimentation, including working in imperfect attribution environments.