1 min lesson
Screen for the segment that answers the question
Work through this: "You're studying why some teams evaluate Cursor and don't adopt it. A teammate suggests recruiting from the Discord power-user channel because they respond fastest. What's the problem?"
Step 1 of 2
Screen for the segment that answers the questionspecificity beats volume
- Language / stack. A Rust systems engineer and a frontend React developer experience the AI differently; decide which one your question is about.
- Team size and setup. Solo dev, small startup and large-org with review gates have different needs from the same feature.
- AI-tool adoption level. Daily Cursor power user, occasional user, evaluator and skeptic each tell a different and necessary story.
- Role. IC, tech lead and platform/DevX owner buy and use the tool for different reasons.
Watch out for sampling bias
Your loudest users and your churned users describe two different products. Recruiting only from Discord or the power-user list gives you a roomful of people who already love Cursor, which is exactly the population least able to tell you why others bounce. If the question is about adoption or retention, you must deliberately recruit the dissatisfied and the departed, even though they're harder to reach.