[jacquesm]

It means: try to get companies that otherwise would not go for Microsoft products to give it a try through free product samples, and talking down companies not microsoft.

I really wished that companies like Microsoft, Google and so on would not have a 'HN guy' (and would not have non-disclosed HN guys either, Felix is at least above board on that), it can make it a lot harder to figure out what is a genuine user experience and what is product placement.

Unless the Microsoft stack is something you already have experience with you're much better off using non-proprietary stack software. Anything coming out of Microsoft will sooner or later cause a bunch of licenses to be sold somewhere down the line or monthly invoices for metered usage to appear so make sure you know exactly what you're getting into. $50K in freebies will have to translate into $50K more profit somewhere along the line.

[ntakasaki]

Great job on completely derailing the topic here with unrelated flamebait by confusing HN with YC.

Hint: HN is a message board, YC is a startup accelerator. They are NOT the same. And yes, there are plenty of startups that do quite okay on the MS stack and for many it may not be a good fit. Your post adds nothing new to the discussion.

>It means: try to get companies that otherwise would not go for Microsoft products to give it a try through free product samples, and talking down companies not microsoft.

But luckily we have you to talk down Microsoft.

>$50K in freebies will have to translate into $50K more profit somewhere along the line.

And paying $50K for hosting when you have no money can just shutdown a startup instead of increasing its costs by 1% down the line. Hosting is the biggest cost for a startup most of the time, it can't be "free" like founders time.

Anyway, got any thoughts on the Microsoft Band?

[jacquesm]

Right...

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ntakasaki

Every third or so link you posted has 'microsoft' in it.

As for me confusing HN and YC, I'm quite aware of the difference between the two and as far as I know I didn't confuse them in the least. Lots of start-up people frequent HN, YC related founder or not they are better off using what is most cost effective for them. This will rarely translate to 'microsoft'.

Hosting is almost never the biggest cost for a start-up, but it can be the biggest cost for a larger company, which is what most start-up aim to become.

$50K for hosting through 'Azure' or some other cloud company typically translates into a few grand from a dedicated hosting provider, by far the most cost effective hosting solution available to start-ups and successful companies alike.

Thanks for not making this personal.

[ntakasaki]

>As for me confusing HN and YC, I'm quite aware of the difference between the two and as far as I know I didn't confuse them in the least. Lots of start-up people frequent HN

Felix said he's the MS person for YC. You misrepresented it as HN a couple of times. Please read your post again.

>Every third or so link you posted has 'microsoft' in it.

But we do have you to counterbalance me.

>Hosting is almost never the biggest cost for a start-up, but it can be the biggest cost for a larger company, which is what most start-up aim to become.

What? What is the biggest cost for a startup in the initial phase when founders are not taking salaries? Rent for sleeping? Ramen noodles? Which large company has the biggest cost as hosting? Even 50k/yr is like 1/3rd of a Silicon level salary. It's like you got it completely backwards.

Anyway, all this unrelated to the topic at hand and does not belong here. There were numerous HN threads with this discussion and please write your thoughts as a blog post and you'll have my upvote.

Again, got any thoughts on the Microsoft Band? If not, /thread, I am out.

[lhl]

I assume that these days MS is mostly pitching Azure which pretty happily runs Linux VMs. It feels like any YC team (the guy said he's the "the msft dude for YC" not HN) worth their salt will need to learn how to navigate evaluating vendor promises sooner rather than later anyway (not to mention the mentoring/advice they should be getting from YC if they're not so experienced, or the fact that $50K is what, only 25% of a fully-loaded FTE cost anyway?).

[radmuzom]

The "much" better off is an assumption. If I remember correctly, Fogcreek primarily uses a Microsoft stack; so did lot of people who used to hang around in the Business of Software forum run by Joel Spolsky. Most of them had bootstrapped companies rather than use a lot of VC money to buy expensive tools. Most of them did quite well making money with their business. Using open tools is not a criterion for both technical or business success.

[ghshephard]

Joel Spolsky - former Microsoft Product Manager? Yes, it's not particularly surprising that they would use Microsoft Products - their incredible familiarity with the product would offset any downstream licensing costs.

Small business usually get everything for free (or nobody bothers to check in on their licensing status, at the very least, they run on a massive discount using "developer editions").

Very large businesses have so much bureaucratic overhead, that unless their core business is Software/service (I.E. Amazon, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, etc...) - the cost of software licenses is minor, and anything they can save by going with something "Standard and Supported" is worth the offset.

But, anybody interested in trying to run their small-medium business on something like Oracle Enterprise edition on their 16 Core Server will quickly start taking a second look at Postgress/MariaDB once they see what the annual licensing costs for Oracle are. Partitioning and Optimizer are only worth so much...

[jacquesm]

Fogcreek is run by ex microsoft people that had extensive experience with the stack before starting fogcreek, it made excellent sense for them to use what they already knew how to use.

[mattmanser]

You're talking about their business arm as if it were the consumer arm.

To the best of my knowledge, no-one who bought the Zune ended up paying $50k to MS for it.

[jacquesm]

I'm not talking about their consumer arm at all. No idea where the Zune came from, I was talking about their $50K credits for using their cloud platform.

[klausjensen]

I am curious, what is that 50k for Azure hosting program?

The regular Bizspark is 100USD/month.