[theyoungceo]

I built my entire startup on .NET because I think the feature set is richer, Visual Studio is a great tool, and speed of development is faster. I've done extensive work in PHP and Java in the past and both were much harder to work with IMHO. I also have backend applicatiosn and mobile devices that run versions of the framework, so the entire solution lent itself very well to .NET. I happily paid windows server and SQL server 2005 licenses as well; money well spent.

Feel free to crucify me now, but remember that customers don't care what you made it in -- just that it works and brings value to them.

[bigtoga]

Ditto. As a startup, MSFT makes it insanely cheap and easy to get started - for $300 you can buy their "Action Pack" which includes Windows Server, SQL, Exchange, Office, etc licenses for up to 10 people. When you get ready to take the next step, it is $1400 per year for the MS Partner/MSDN package which adds full Visual Studio, etc.

[michaelneale]

>Feel free to crucify me now, but remember that customers don't care what you made it in -- just that it works and brings value to them.

Fair comment.