Claire Smilow helped BoxGroup make a roughly $1 billion return on Cursor. Now she’s scouting college campuses for the next generation of founders
Source: Fortune ·
BoxGroup partner Claire Smilow delivered a massive return for her firm after betting early on Gen Z-led company Cursor. She’s scouting the next big thing at Havard and MIT.
From the source
Claire Smilow has spent years scouting talented people before they become the next big thing in tech. That instinct paid off in 2019, when she was blown away by a sophomore at MIT who already had a strategic and commercial vision. Smilow played the long game in seeing his talents through—and it led to a billion-dollar payoff. The investor first met Michael Truell while conducting case study interviews for her student VC firm, Dorm Room Fund. At the time, Truell hadn’t founded a company; but three years later, the venture capitalist persuaded her firm, BoxGroup, to invest in the Gen Z engineering savant’s adolescent business. The firm poured $750,000 into the recent graduate’s little-known start-up: an AI coding company called Cursor. And a couple follow-on checks and a few years later, Cursor swelled into an industry sensation, with SpaceX eventually acquiring the business for $60 billion in 2026—a deal estimated to drive $1 billion in returns to BoxGroup. That bet cemented Smilow as…