Cursor Head of Design Roasts Startup Websites

Cursor Head of Design Ryo Lu reviews 8 YC startup sites and identifies the recurring clarity, branding, and UX mistakes killing conversions.

• The single most common failure: visitors cannot answer ‘what is this?’ within 5 seconds — Velvet had only 6 descriptive words on the page.
• AI-generated sites share tell-tale slop markers: purple gradients, massive shadows, inconsistent tokens, misaligned elements — avoid all of them.
• Every scroll should have exactly one primary CTA; Klavis AI had 6+ competing buttons above the fold.
• Use user language for problems, not internal jargon — nobody says ‘progressive discovery’; they say ‘I have too many MCPs to manage.’
• YC logo prominence backfires: on several sites the YC badge read as the company logo, burying the actual product identity.
• For LLM wait states, show every tool call and action in progress rather than looping generic spinners — idle spinners feel slower, not faster.
• Freya (voice AI) was the standout: clear headline, immediately playable demo, and obvious target customer — the bar others failed to clear.
• Vibeflow gated users behind sign-in before showing any output; letting users run 2-3 free prompts before sign-up would sharply reduce drop-off.

2025-11-20 · Watch on YouTube