I noticed that both examples of companies he didn't want to compete with talent for (Tumblr and Etsy) are NY companies, so I wasn't surprised to see his company

I noticed that both examples of companies he didn't want to compete with talent for (Tumblr and Etsy) are NY companies, so I wasn't surprised to see his company is in Hoboken (just across the river from Manhattan). The reality of course is in NY you're always competing for talent --- not just with the hot startups of the moment (Etsy, Tumblr, Foursquare, etc etc etc) but with the banks which are still paying big salaries for developers and solid benefits and bonuses. The truth here - whether the author thinks the technology or not matters - is that he isn't competing at all for programming talent. He is competing for the kind of people who want to work at a hot startup, and have that mentality, versus a small one man shop. His statement "Hiring quality coders on a bootstrapper’s budget is easier for ASP.NET than it is for anything open source. It just is. " is telling. Of course, its a completely unqualified unbacked statement. But understanding the reality of what your talent shortages are caused by is important. I get the feeling that he went with the first technology he could hire people for cheap enough with.