4 ms·

Why anyone would build a startup on the Microsoft stack is beyond me, but there's a lot about jet.com's strategy that I don't understand. For the time being I'l

Why anyone would build a startup on the Microsoft stack is beyond me, but there's a lot about jet.com's strategy that I don't understand. For the time being I'll warm up some popcorn and watch in amusement as they blow through their investors' wads of cash.

smt88 11y ago
I used to feel the same way, but F# is actually a well-respected language, and (if you have the funding to pay for it) having enterprise support is pretty huge for a small company. Microsoft has also recently open-sourced a lot of their stack and made their dev products free. At the very least, you know that Microsoft products are going to be rock-solid (since they power so many massive companies).
ghuntley 11y ago
Why? How about $600k of free hosting via Azure vs $100k w/AWS in the early days and a large market to hire talent from as you need to grow? You don't even need to be running .NET or Windows - whatever language/operating-system floats your boat. Who? Well here's some pretty amazing global startups based out of Sydney, Australia that use .NET: - http://campaignmonitor.com/ http://campaignmonitor.com/ - http://rokt.com http://rokt.com - http://invoice.2go.com/ http://invoice.2go.com/ - http://ansarada.com http://ansarada.com - http://gofundraise.com.au/ http://gofundraise.com.au/ - http://ozforex.com.au/ http://ozforex.com.au/ - http://sphealth.com/ http://sphealth.com/ If I've left a company out, please share!
- latch 11y ago
  I agree with your parent. The ecosystem on *nix is larger, more robust and cheaper. There's just so many more tools around that you'll end up running a mix-environment, which is obviously not ideal (but certainly not impossible).
  - ghuntley 11y ago
    I'm a UNIX guy at heart actually that works in an mixed-environment. Don't completely agree w/comment about mixed-environment being undesirable - most shops are heading down this path anyway of anything goes with the micro-services route. Completely agree with you on tooling, things are getting better in this department namely http://octopus.com/ http://octopus.com/ && http://getseq.net/ http://getseq.net/ which funny enough are also Aussie. My main concern re: .NET are the attitudes of companies and software developers that use the technology generally are anti open-source by default. That does however make it very easy to become noticeable from an employment perspective vs the nodejs/ruby/python/java community.
- powera 11y ago
  If you expect to actually use the "$600k of free hosting", you should probably be making your decisions based on things more important than a (large) pile of free money right at the beginning. If you aren't going to use that many server resources that quickly, it doesn't matter whose free money you take.

smt88 11y ago

I used to feel the same way, but F# is actually a well-respected language, and (if you have the funding to pay for it) having enterprise support is pretty huge for a small company. Microsoft has also recently open-sourced a lot of their stack and made their dev products free. At the very least, you know that Microsoft products are going to be rock-solid (since they power so many massive companies).

ghuntley 11y ago

Why? How about $600k of free hosting via Azure vs $100k w/AWS in the early days and a large market to hire talent from as you need to grow? You don't even need to be running .NET or Windows - whatever language/operating-system floats your boat. Who? Well here's some pretty amazing global startups based out of Sydney, Australia that use .NET: - http://campaignmonitor.com/ http://campaignmonitor.com/ - http://rokt.com http://rokt.com - http://invoice.2go.com/ http://invoice.2go.com/ - http://ansarada.com http://ansarada.com - http://gofundraise.com.au/ http://gofundraise.com.au/ - http://ozforex.com.au/ http://ozforex.com.au/ - http://sphealth.com/ http://sphealth.com/ If I've left a company out, please share!

latch 11y ago
I agree with your parent. The ecosystem on *nix is larger, more robust and cheaper. There's just so many more tools around that you'll end up running a mix-environment, which is obviously not ideal (but certainly not impossible).
- ghuntley 11y ago
  I'm a UNIX guy at heart actually that works in an mixed-environment. Don't completely agree w/comment about mixed-environment being undesirable - most shops are heading down this path anyway of anything goes with the micro-services route. Completely agree with you on tooling, things are getting better in this department namely http://octopus.com/ http://octopus.com/ && http://getseq.net/ http://getseq.net/ which funny enough are also Aussie. My main concern re: .NET are the attitudes of companies and software developers that use the technology generally are anti open-source by default. That does however make it very easy to become noticeable from an employment perspective vs the nodejs/ruby/python/java community.
powera 11y ago
If you expect to actually use the "$600k of free hosting", you should probably be making your decisions based on things more important than a (large) pile of free money right at the beginning. If you aren't going to use that many server resources that quickly, it doesn't matter whose free money you take.