The BoxGroup Investor Who Found Cursor Is Now Scouting College Campuses for the Next Big Bet

Claire Smilow, a partner at the venture firm BoxGroup, was the investor who first identified Cursor as a bet worth making — a call that has since turned into one of the firm's biggest paydays. BoxGroup wrote an initial $750,000 check to Cursor co-founder and CEO Michael Truell, followed by two additional investments, a position now expected to return roughly $1 billion to the firm.

A relationship that started at Harvard

The connection dates back to 2019, when Smilow was taking a break from BoxGroup to attend Harvard Business School. She interviewed Truell, then a sophomore at MIT, for the student-run Dorm Room Fund and came away convinced he was unusually promising. That early read on a college-age founder has become a template for how she now spends much of her time at BoxGroup.

Smilow has shifted much of her focus toward scouting college campuses directly, looking for the next founder who might be building something significant before most of the venture industry is paying attention. The approach reflects a broader instinct at BoxGroup, built around identifying talent early and staying with it through multiple funding rounds, rather than waiting for a startup to prove itself with later-stage traction that's already attracted competing investors.