Cursor Directory growth strategy

Built the entire MVP in ~3 hours: Pontis initialized a Next.js project with a hard-coded JSON file of cursor rules while Victor designed in Figma simultaneously. Deployed to Vercel within ~30 minutes of starting. Secured the domain 'cursor.directory' immediately.

Posted the cursor directory on X at launch. They were already building in public and sharing everything including code. One post alone reached 1 million impressions; multiple posts were made during launch week.

Submitted Cursor Directory to Hacker News. The post reached the front page, driving a major wave of developer traffic.

Multiple YouTubers independently discovered and covered Cursor Directory in their videos without being solicited. This created sustained awareness beyond the initial launch spike.

Made the entire project open source with all cursor rules merged on GitHub. Community members could contribute rules directly, lowering maintenance to ~3 hours/month and keeping content fresh without founder effort.

Added a paid job board feature where companies can pay to have their job ads listed on the site, targeting the developer audience already on the platform.

When MCPs (Model Context Protocols) emerged, added a searchable MCP section to the directory, allowing users to find and extend their Cursor experience. Featured listings were made available as a paid placement.

Built a tool that lets developers upload their package.json and auto-generate custom Cursor rules tailored to their project stack. Targeted developers who wanted personalized Cursor experiences but didn't know where to start.