My website makes $34K/month (built in 3 hours) | Starter Story

In a three-hour burst on a trip to France, developer Pontus and his co-founder Victor built a directory for Cursor AI coding rules. That weekend project now generates $34,000 per month with a 99.8% profit margin, requiring only about three hours of monthly maintenance. Pontus joined Starter Story to explain how they spotted the opportunity, why the directory took off, and what other builders can learn from their approach.

The idea emerged from being in the right headspace

Pontus was on a three-hour flight to France, watching technical videos about Cursor, an AI coding editor. He noticed a recurring pattern: developers were sharing "rules" — configuration files that tailor Cursor's behavior for specific projects — but there was no centralized place to find them. "You can Google and find some obscure gist on GitHub or some forums, but no real clear answer," he said. The moment he landed, he called Victor and said, "We need to create a directory for rules, for cursor rules."

The key insight was timing and audience. Cursor was gaining rapid adoption, and developers needed a way to discover and share these rules. The directory solved a "timeless problem" — discoverability — for a specific, fast-growing community. Pontus emphasizes that directories still work in 2025, but only if you build for "the right audience at the right time" and catch a wave of interest.