How Microsoft BizSpark Is Doing With Startups, and How It Can Do Better | Hacker News Reader

How Microsoft BizSpark Is Doing With Startups, and How It Can Do Better

xconomy.com

8 pointsgthuang7 comments

I've been working on a web app for the past year, and, I am a BizSpark member. Getting in to the program was a bit of a pain because a couple of their partners never got back to me.

My Dev box is Windows 7 + Python/Django courtesy of BizSpark. I use a WAPP stack (Windows, Apache, Python, PostGres) for production. And, for office stuff, I get to use Office 2007 Ultimate which is really very shiny. The MS office suite is really nice software.

Even if you're a primary Mac user, why not get the BizSpark membership and run whatever Microsoft OS you want on Parallels, just for Microsoft Office? It costs a hundred bucks after 3 years. What do you have to lose?

I button holed (read: stood up and asked a question of) Dan'l Lewis, the big muckety-muck at Microsoft in charge of the program, about BizSpark. The question was: "we're a LAMP shop, what do we get out of BizSpark?" His answer: "we can help you move to Microsoft tools when you have scaling issues. That's what we did for MySpace."

More fail: http://www.sachinagarwal.com/microsoft-bizspark-is-a-joke

To be fair, what did you expect him to say? Your question might as well have been, "We don't use your products and have no interest in doing so. What can we get out of you offering your products for free?"

Wrong - I absolutely have an interest in using any tool that would be helpful to my business. I was asking for help to identify how best to use the toolset that BizSpark provides.

My question can't possibly be the first time he's heard that; I was astonished that he didn't have a pat answer that was productive. When we have scaling issues, we'll have all the traction and revenue we'd need. BizSpark doesn't help us at that point.

there are 12 000 startups in BizSpark. most of them are doing web facing software apps. do you think they are all wrong ?

What did you want him to say? They know how to scale IIS and Asp.net. If they are going to help you, that's what they are going to help you do. If you don't want to use that tech, then don't.

But the key point you seem to be missing is that not all startups are web apps. I agree that if you are a Lamp stack web app -- or most any web 2.0 startup -- Bizspark probably can't offer you much. But what if you write Windows desktop software?

There are entire business (some quite large) which build nothing but Office plugins. Never mind the wide range of vertical applications for businesses that almost exclusively run windows. Microsoft's ecosystems is huge and very capable of sustaining quite a few startups. These startups need Windows, Office, and Visual Studio licenses. Of course they will include IIS and Asp.net in their list of benefits. Besides, Asp.net really isn't all that bad of a choice if you just need a company homepage or some kind of low volume or limited access web service.

Lots of market-speak, but it does show that Microsoft is changing from the rigid, closed organization it used to be.

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