This is a great question. Perhaps what I should have said is that this program doesn't appear to have buy-in from other divisions inside of Microsoft. This is

This is a great question. Perhaps what I should have said is that this program doesn't appear to have buy-in from other divisions inside of Microsoft. This is evident from statements from the "About" page like this one: Q: "Should my startup apply to Bing Fund, Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure, and BizSpark? Can we apply to all of them?" A: "Any of these programs could be appropriate for your startup, depending on your stage of development and the kind of resources and support you need." If the Bing accelerator was aligned with, or had buy-in from, other divisions inside of Microsoft, this statement wouldn't be necessary. This is different from BizSpark (for example), which is administered mostly out of the "Server and Tools" division, but has buy-in from every other division inside of Microsoft. So what this means is, if your startup is doing something that aligns very well with the goals of the Bing division, then you should apply to the Bing Fund. If your startup is doing something that aligns best with the goals of another divisions, then, who knows?