How Cursor Directory went from a 3-hour build to $35K/month

Executive overview

Most directories fail because they pick the wrong audience at the wrong time. Pontus Abrahamsson spotted a gap mid-flight: Cursor users had no single place to find and share AI editor rules.

He landed, called his co-founder, and shipped in three hours. The site went viral on X and Hacker News, reached 2.2 million unique visitors, and now earns $35K/month at 99.8% gross margins with ~3 hours of maintenance per month.

The fastest way to validate an idea is to ship it before you've had time to talk yourself out of it.

The idea and launch

• Noticed Cursor rules were scattered across GitHub gists and forums — no authoritative hub existed
• Bought cursor.directory domain immediately after landing
• Built with Next.js and a hard-coded JSON file; had something on Vercel in 30 minutes
• Reused an existing design system and components from prior projects, cutting build time dramatically
• Launched on X (1M+ impressions on a single post) and Hacker News (front page)
• Had a developer audience already following their build-in-public work, which seeded initial traction
• YouTubers independently discovered and covered the site, amplifying reach further

Why this directory succeeded

• Solved a timeless discovery problem: people always need to find curated, relevant resources
• Timed perfectly with Cursor's growth — caught a rising wave rather than chasing a saturated market
• Open-source model reduced maintenance to near-zero; the community merges rules via GitHub
• MCPs (Model Context Protocol) launched after the initial release, triggering a second adoption spike
• Beautiful, consistent design made it highly shareable — in an era of AI-generated sites, design is a differentiator

Business model and monetisation

• Job listings: companies pay to post job ads on the directory
• Featured MCPs: paid placement for MCP listings
• AI rule generator: users upload a package.json and receive custom Cursor rules — addresses developers who wanted tailored setups but didn't know where to start
• Operating costs: ~$500/month; gross margin: 99.8%

Tech stack

• Framework: Next.js, TypeScript
• UI: shadcn components
• Email: Resend
• Analytics: OpenPanel
• Auth: GitHub OAuth
• Hosting: Vercel
• Payments: Polar (recommended for European companies as a merchant of record)
• Productivity: Cursor for coding, Notion for product management, GitHub for version control

Designing for competitive advantage

• Simple, consistent design system matters more than ever — most AI-built sites look identical
• Find websites you admire and study their tonality and patterns before building your own
• Reusable component libraries from previous projects cut design time dramatically
• Having a designer co-founder is a compounding advantage across every project

Advice for builders

• Start before you feel ready — commitment creates the dialled-in state where ideas surface naturally
• Low expectations at launch remove the fear that prevents shipping
• Build in public: share code, progress, and learnings to grow an audience that amplifies future launches
• Treat side projects as fast experiments; the goal is learning, not perfection
• There is no failure — the worst outcome is learning something useful