Varun Mohan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Windsurf, the leading AI-native IDE, which has over a million users and generates over 50% of all committed software across thousands of companies. Prior to Windsurf, Varun graduated with a Master’s in Computer Science from MIT and led a team at Nuro focused on large-scale deep learning infrastructure for autonomous vehicles.
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In Today’s Episode We Discuss:
00:00 Intro
01:28 When to Give Up vs When To Stick at It
03:33 “Never Fall in Love With Your Idea”
07:42 What Founders Get Wrong About Being First
11:10 What Would Windsurf Do If They Had Unlimited Resources
14:40 Will Lovable and Bolt Ultimately Compete with Windsurf and Cursor
17:31 The Product Development Rule That Breaks All Startup Rules
20:26 The Cold Truth About Moats in the AI Era
25:20 Remote vs. In-Person
31:59 Who Actually Counts as an Engineer in 5 Years?
33:54 Will Product Managers Even Exist in 2030?
37:10 Async Agents Are Coming But Most Will Fail & Why?
41:03 The Truth About Agent-Only Workflows
44:26 The One Area of Engineering That AI Will Eat Next
42:54 What Cursor Got Right (That Windsurf Didn’t)
50:28 Are LLM APIs Already Commoditized?
53:31 Should Model Companies Own the App Layer?
59:01 What Does Varun Want to be Remembered For?
01:00:42 Quick-Fire Round
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20VC with Harry Stebbings
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