2 min lesson
Have an authentic point of view on the product
Use "I live in tab prediction" to say what you would do next.
Step 1 of 2
Have an authentic point of view on the productthe cheapest signal to fake, the easiest to catch
This is a company that builds for engineers and expects you to use what you build. Generic praise - "I love how it boosts productivity" - reads as someone who installed it the night before. A specific, lived take on Cursor and its inference cost tradeoffs is the credibility shortcut.
“I live in tab prediction - it needs tens-of-milliseconds latency, so it can't run on the biggest model, which is a real cost-and-quality tradeoff I find interesting. Agent modeCursor's full-capability mode: the AI can read the codebase, write and edit files, move them and run terminal commands. Contrast with Ask mode, which is read-only. Press Enter for the full definition. is the opposite: I'll happily wait longer for a multi-step result and that's where the expensive long-context calls pile up. Those two surfaces have completely different unit economics and that's exactly the kind of thing I'd want to attribute and optimize.”
When a founder or senior leader pushes back on your cost recommendation, treat it as the test, not an attack. Hold your position with the data, then say what would change your mind: "I'd revise this if per-request volume on the agent surface is growing faster than I assumed - what are you seeing?" Defending with evidence while staying genuinely open is the exact behavior the values round screens for.
The agreeable candidate who concedes the moment a senior person pushes back fails the truth-seeking screen as surely as the one who bulldozes. Calibrate to the middle: change your mind on evidence, not on rank.