This reads like an advert more than anything. Bizspark is nice and all for the first three years but good luck after that when you get hit by those licensing co

This reads like an advert more than anything. Bizspark is nice and all for the first three years but good luck after that when you get hit by those licensing costs. There is a reason there are hardly any successful Microsoft stack startups. It isn't exactly a secret that RoR can be a pain in the ass which is why there are so many stories of startups switching from RoR to something else when they hit "the wall". As you said he could easily have solved this problems by switching to Java instead. Also good luck getting support from Microsoft in the long term using MongoDB instead of SQL Server. Microsoft will say and give you anything to get you hooked but once you are "in" they don't give a shit. edit: Also he said that RoR developers in SA are hard to find and that it is mostly C#, Java and C++. If he already knew RoR would be a hard environment to work with due to a lack of talent then he should never have even brought it into the equation. Sounds like he should have gone with Java and stuck on Linux.