6 ms·

Don't worry about suitors - worry about hiring people. Team matters much more than Tech. But, as perspective, MS Dev tools cost about $10K per dev + $3K per y

Don't worry about suitors - worry about hiring people. Team matters much more than Tech. But, as perspective, MS Dev tools cost about $10K per dev + $3K per year per dev after the first. Engineers costs $100K+ per year. +10% productivity covers the tools. If it costs you a month to retool or saves you a little on salary or lets you hire a little easier, you have paid for the tools. So what matters are things where you get x3 productivity or x3 better ability to hire. Also, I think you are asking the wrong question. The problem you are trying to solve drives the platform decision and language (even DB) are only a small part of the equation. Amazon works just fine with C#/.Net and it is cheap to free at first. To get a fair comparison at scale, you need to include the price of EC2 instances against a dedicated self-hosted database server. Depending on your application, you'll get very different answers. In your shoes (based on limited info), I would try to get into the BizSpark Cloud program. It is free MS software plus a big credit on Azure for three years. Then count on the price war between Amazon/Google/Azure to keep prices in line.

frostmatthew 12y ago
> +10% productivity covers the tools That's a bold claim to say using MS Dev tools are sure to increase productivity by 10%. Have anything to back that up? [e.g. studies, not your opinion or anecdotes]. And +10% productivity compared to what? Using C#/.Net without MS tools? Or compared to using a different stack (which seemed to be the OP's question)?
- germano 12y ago
  I'd say the assertion was under the assumption that the devs in question know the .Net stack well enough to gain at least a 10% productivity gain over using a stack they are less familiar with.
JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Still salary is paid out over time. Tools cost up-front. In a lean startup that could sink you?
- plorkyeran 12y ago
  The tools are free for a few years via BizSpark. A lot of companies find the bill at the end of the BizSpark period pretty painful, but you should usually at least be out of lean startup mode by then.
- bnjs 12y ago
  >lean startup You mean a bootstrapped startup? http://steveblank.com/2009/11/02/lean-startups-aren%E2%80%99t-cheap-startups/ http://steveblank.com/2009/11/02/lean-startups-aren%E2%80%99... http://practicetrumpstheory.com/2010/03/bootstrapping-a-lean-startup/ http://practicetrumpstheory.com/2010/03/bootstrapping-a-lean...

frostmatthew 12y ago

> +10% productivity covers the tools That's a bold claim to say using MS Dev tools are sure to increase productivity by 10%. Have anything to back that up? [e.g. studies, not your opinion or anecdotes]. And +10% productivity compared to what? Using C#/.Net without MS tools? Or compared to using a different stack (which seemed to be the OP's question)?

germano 12y ago
I'd say the assertion was under the assumption that the devs in question know the .Net stack well enough to gain at least a 10% productivity gain over using a stack they are less familiar with.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

Still salary is paid out over time. Tools cost up-front. In a lean startup that could sink you?

plorkyeran 12y ago
The tools are free for a few years via BizSpark. A lot of companies find the bill at the end of the BizSpark period pretty painful, but you should usually at least be out of lean startup mode by then.
bnjs 12y ago
>lean startup You mean a bootstrapped startup? http://steveblank.com/2009/11/02/lean-startups-aren%E2%80%99t-cheap-startups/ http://steveblank.com/2009/11/02/lean-startups-aren%E2%80%99... http://practicetrumpstheory.com/2010/03/bootstrapping-a-lean-startup/ http://practicetrumpstheory.com/2010/03/bootstrapping-a-lean...