Verun MohanCo-Founder & CEO

I graduated from MIT in 2017, then worked at Nuro on autonomous vehicles. In 2021 I co‑founded a company building GPU virtualization and compiler tech. We reached a couple million in revenue, but when GPT‑3.5 came out in 2022, we chose to pivot into AI coding tools first Kodium, then our own IDE, Windsurf.

I’m driven by building products in hard technology spaces where the tech isn’t there yet. I love being part of a visionary company working on the future of technology.

Startups are like getting slapped in the face over and over. I actually like failures a lot when something fails, it’s obvious you need to do something new.

The faster you fail, the faster you can decide on something new. If everything works, you’re not betting enough or operating at full potential.

When we decided the old business wouldn’t scale, my co‑founder and I discussed it over a weekend and told the team Monday. We ripped the band‑aid off: everyone shifted to build the new product right away.

Even with revenue and funding, you must be honest if the business isn’t the best. Pivoting can multiply your company’s size more than incremental improvements.

Be humble and honest about idea viability. You must validate quickly and be willing to pivot if it doesn’t work.

It was obvious when inbound interest from companies outpaced what we could handle. Real demand was clear in our conversations with customers.

We listen to pain points but don’t follow every request. Sometimes you need to build transformational features customers didn’t even know to ask for.

We interview every hire for culture fit, practice radical honesty, and keep the same principles whether we’re 10 or 200 people.

We run lean: people should be underwater most of the time. When they’re no longer overloaded, that’s when we add headcount.

Intellectual honesty, transparency with the team, and running the smallest company possible for our level of ambition.

You need irrational optimism to tackle big problems no one else believes in, and uncompromising realism to kill bad ideas quickly.

Don’t bet on today’s tech; build for where models and compute will be in a few years. Short‑term hacks lose value fast as models improve.

Everyone uses Windsurf daily to build the product. That internal feedback loop is rare and keeps us aligned with actual user needs.

We set tractable intermediate goals like a basic VS Code extension and got an MVP out in under two months. Speed lets you validate or pivot fast.

Be honest about your ideas, stay humble, fail fast, validate quickly, and don’t be afraid to pivot when the data says you should.