It's always been the cost of licenses. Startups trying to bootstrap themselves sometimes have barely enough $ to cover payroll, let alone expensive licenses for

It's always been the cost of licenses. Startups trying to bootstrap themselves sometimes have barely enough $ to cover payroll, let alone expensive licenses for Windows, Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc. I'm not a hater, C# is one of my favorite languages. I started using it literally the moment it was released at the PDC in 2000. Did that for years, but moved on when I migrated to mobile platforms. They didn't have the footprint in that space that they do now, which is still pretty dismal. If you are determined to use .Net, look into the bizspark program. MS will do it's best to get you on their platform and give you a ton of tools and licenses for a relatively small price. They cater to ISVs and love to help them. That community also has a bunch of great programmers to reach out to if you need help. e.g. Scott Hanselman, Jeff Atwood, Scott Mitchell, Scott Guthrie .. I could go on and on. Those are just off the top of my head.