Cursor’s problem isn't just Cursor's problem (News)

光标的问题不单单是光标的问题(新闻)

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

2025-08-19

7 分钟
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Cursor has a big problem, Alireza Bashiri thinks plaintext beats todo apps, Manish built an offline AI workspace, OverType is a WYSIWYG markdown editor that's just a textarea, and sshrc lets you bring your config with you to remote machines.
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  • What up nerds?

  • I'm Jared and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, August 18th, 2025.

  • The Hacker of the Week award goes to Gabor Nieke.

  • who is running a website off nine NeoVim buffers on his old ThinkPad.

  • Yup, Gabor wrote a NeoVim plugin in Lua that serves HTTP requests from OpenBuffers.

  • It has zero dependencies and runs faster than Nginx.

  • What have you coded lately?

  • Okay, let's get into this week's news.

  • Cursor's problem isn't just Cursor's problem.

  • Based on their usage and growth, which has been astounding,

  • Cursor has product market fit, but have they also found business model product fit?

  • Most likely not.

  • The discrepancy, subsidies.

  • Quote, Cursor has relied on a subscription model that historically allowed for unlimited use.

  • That's a fixed revenue, variable cost setup.

  • Insurance companies are the canonical example and they employ actuaries to accurately price risk and segment users.

  • Hyper growth startups rarely have that muscle.

  • When variable costs scale with intensity of usage, but revenue doesn't,

  • you're not selling software, you're underwriting risk."

  • The question is whether or not cursor can transition to sustainable revenue without losing their users,