"Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements

Sometimes getting overly fixated on the financial metrics in this environment can leave you with an unsatisfying taste in your mouth. Growth can obscure and blind you to a lot of underlying ills in the business

Now today I'm thrilled to welcome Miles Clements to the show. Miles helps lead Accel's growth investing practice, where he's backed some of the best in the business, including Atlassian, Linear, Cursor, and many more

You can actually be successful in this market investing in consensus. Investing is an art and a science. The science is understanding how to properly value a company, and the art is understanding when to break the rules. Focus on hitting singles and doubles and let the home runs take care of themselves. And what he means by that-

Ready to go? [upbeat music] Miles, we are in person. I love it when you're in town. It's so lovely to see you, man, and it makes it so much more special doing it in person. So thank you for joining me.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's, uh, always fun being here.

Now, I wanna start with the core question that I think every investor's thinking about, which is w- how do we ascertain true value in an AI world where technology seems so transient and revenue seems so endurable?

I think in terms of evaluating these AI categories and companies, there's a pretty useful framework, which is basically trying to understand a company's time to value and then the durability of that value. And so I think that a number of these companies sort of shine on, on different dimensions. If I were to look at, um, you know, legal AI, uh, accounting AI, a company like Basis that we just invested in, I actually think these companies don't have immediately quick time to value. And so when you look at, like, you know, the deployment cycle and, and getting lawyers and, and getting accountants sort of sold on the technology, that can take a little while. But once it is hooked, the durability of that value is, like, transformational to these firms. On the other end in the spectrum, I would take some of, like, the very early vibe coding companies, right? Very quick time to value. Like, you start vibe coding, all of a sudden you have a weekend warrior pickleball app ready to go overnight. Like, you can start using something very quickly, but the bottom just fell out for a lot of these apps because there was no durability of value. The reason that I think coding has become, like, the vertical in AI is because it shines on both dimensions. Like, you can start using Cursor in an afternoon and by that evening, like, you're ten times more productive. The, the time to value is very short, and then the durability of that value compounds as the team starts using it. So Claude Code, Cursor, all of the great products out there, like, I think this is why coding has become the vertical that is the battleground in AI today.