Tools

Search

Explore

Videos Channels Figures

Atmrix

About

Tools

Search

Explore

Videos Channels Figures

Atmrix

About

VM

Varun Mohan

04/20/25

@ Lenny's Podcast

We provided our product entirely for free across all IDEs, which allowed us to optimize workloads significantly and attract a large user base.

Video

LP

Building a magical AI code editor used by over 1m developers in 4 months: Inside Windsurf

@ Lenny's Podcast

Building a magical AI code editor used by over 1m developers in 4 months: Inside Windsurf

04/20/25

Related Takeaways

VM

Varun Mohan

05/02/25

@ Y Combinator

We decided to expand Windsurf to support multiple IDEs because companies have developers writing in many languages, and we didn't want to turn away potential customers.

YC

Y Combinator Cast

12/07/20

@ Y Combinator

Our goal is to offload heavy lifting into the core to facilitate cross-platform development, which we've successfully achieved.

VM

Varun Mohan

05/02/25

@ Y Combinator

Our product is being used for real production large codebases, not just toy apps, and many users have never opened the code editor.

TB

Tikhon Bernstam

09/09/17

@ Y Combinator

We used feedback from our users to improve our product rapidly, which was crucial for our success.

DG

Diane Greene

10/26/13

@ Y Combinator

We launched our product online, supported it via email, and maintained a frugal, cash-neutral operation while reaching an international market from the start.

DG

Diane Greene

10/26/13

@ Y Combinator

We decided to offer our product as a fully functional free beta for 30 days, with a commercial price of $299 for companies and $99 for hobbyists, trusting users to pay based on their usage.

VR

Vivek Ravisankar

03/30/18

@ Y Combinator

Realizing we were selling to students with limited funds, we shifted our focus to building a product for companies to help them identify the right developers based on skills.

BH

Brian Halligan

05/08/19

@ Y Combinator

In the beginning, our software was basic, so we compensated for its limitations by providing customers with valuable advice on optimizing their websites.

VM

Varun Mohan

05/02/25

@ Y Combinator

Our earliest version of Windsurf was materially worse than GitHub Copilot, but we offered it for free, which attracted a lot of developers to use it.