Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Started.in Seattle – 60+ Video Profiles of startups in Seattle

seattle.started.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 50 posts

Re: Show HN: Started.in Seattle – 60+ Video Profiles of startups in Seattle

#11

Post by BlakePetersen »

From my experience, working with any vendors from the pacific northwest, they're all MS shops. Is this trend changing considering the added expense of working with any MS Licensed software (where an OSS solution with little or no cost could suffice)? Does MS offer incentives to local startups to build their platform on existing licensed MS products? Or is it more of a Seattle Pride thing? I personally don't feel the MS Business model is one the works well for scrappy young start-ups, yet pretty much every company in the Pac Nor Dub I've worked is completely MS'd out.

I didn't even know there was a MS service called Lync until we did a training with Mercent (FYI, Lync doesn't work on Linux, I was shocked too).

Re: Show HN: Started.in Seattle – 60+ Video Profiles of startups in Seattle

#12

Post by kkamperschroer »

BlakePetersen wrote: post #11

From my experience, working with any vendors from the pacific northwest, they're all MS shops. Is this trend changing considering the added expense of working with any MS Licensed software (where an OSS solution with little or no cost could suffice)? Does MS offer incentives to local startups to build their platform on existing licensed MS products? Or is it more of a Seattle Pride thing? I personally don't feel the…

I think you may be generalizing from your experience. Just looking at some of the openings for these companies they are looking for MongoDB, HTML5, Rails, etc. I didn't see any mention C# or other MS specific things.

Re: Show HN: Started.in Seattle – 60+ Video Profiles of startups in Seattle

#13

Post by smedawar »

canadaj wrote: post #8
smedawar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any time! Many, if not most, of the startups we profile are hiring. Check them out!

Already am! What would be really cool is a map that shows the location of these startups, so that I can easily find ones that are close to where I will be moving! This is really awesome, thanks again!

We'll be launching a jobs board soon. The map will be on there. Also, each profile is tagged with a part of town (e.g. Downtown, South Lake Union, Bellevue, etc).

I'll take this into consideration as we make improvements to the site. Thanks for the feedback!

Re: Show HN: Started.in Seattle – 60+ Video Profiles of startups in Seattle

#14

Post by koji »

BlakePetersen wrote: post #11

From my experience, working with any vendors from the pacific northwest, they're all MS shops. Is this trend changing considering the added expense of working with any MS Licensed software (where an OSS solution with little or no cost could suffice)? Does MS offer incentives to local startups to build their platform on existing licensed MS products? Or is it more of a Seattle Pride thing? I personally don't feel the…

I've worked both in the Valley and in Seattle, and in my experience the startup mentalities have been pretty much the same. There may be a lot of former MS people working at the startup, but they don't seem to have any attachment to it. If iOS or Android are where the numbers are, that's where they go. I've also never met a startup in Seattle solely focused on developing something for MS, although there probably are some that exist. Whatever trend you saw in the northwest previously must have changed, from my limited perspective.

Re: Show HN: Started.in Seattle – 60+ Video Profiles of startups in Seattle

#15

Post by BlakePetersen »

kkamperschroer wrote: post #12
BlakePetersen wrote: post #11

From my experience, working with any vendors from the pacific northwest, they're all MS shops. Is this trend changing considering the added expense of working with any MS Licensed software (where an OSS solution with little or no cost could suffice)? Does MS offer incentives to local startups to build their platform on existing licensed MS products? Or is it more of a Seattle Pride thing? I personally don't feel the…

I think you may be generalizing from your experience. Just looking at some of the openings for these companies they are looking for MongoDB, HTML5, Rails, etc. I didn't see any mention C# or other MS specific things.

Yea, my specific instances may be speaking to too narrow of a sampling of Seattle Start-up scene, and it may be that the vendors we do business with are a bit more mature than what is featured here.

Mainly, I was wondering if there is any sort of outreach by MS to any of these small companies. I know they have a presence in the Valley and have MS Ventures to nurture fledgling companies with start-up capital, but as far as strategizing to keep new companies in their ecosystem long-term, I was curious to see what sort of efforts they are putting forth to address this.

Re: Show HN: Started.in Seattle – 60+ Video Profiles of startups in Seattle

#16

Post by vyrotek »

BlakePetersen wrote: post #11

From my experience, working with any vendors from the pacific northwest, they're all MS shops. Is this trend changing considering the added expense of working with any MS Licensed software (where an OSS solution with little or no cost could suffice)? Does MS offer incentives to local startups to build their platform on existing licensed MS products? Or is it more of a Seattle Pride thing? I personally don't feel the…

I thought I would throw out a counter-example using my own startup. We're a 4 year old profitable company with a handful of full-time engineers and sales employees. We're located in Utah. We're based on .NET and host everything using Windows Azure. We leveraged the BizSpark program a few years ago which gave us access to a lot of free software and services.

It helps that we're a B2B company with decent and predictable revenue. I imagine it's a bit harder to afford things if your company is some new free photo sharing mobile app. I have no problems investing money in technology and tools if it accelerates our development and has a good ROI.

I also personally love the C# language.

Re: Show HN: Started.in Seattle – 60+ Video Profiles of startups in Seattle

#17

Post by BlakePetersen »

vyrotek wrote: post #16
BlakePetersen wrote: post #11

From my experience, working with any vendors from the pacific northwest, they're all MS shops. Is this trend changing considering the added expense of working with any MS Licensed software (where an OSS solution with little or no cost could suffice)? Does MS offer incentives to local startups to build their platform on existing licensed MS products? Or is it more of a Seattle Pride thing? I personally don't feel the…

I thought I would throw out a counter-example using my own startup. We're a 4 year old profitable company with a handful of full-time engineers and sales employees. We're located in Utah. We're based on .NET and host everything using Windows Azure. We leveraged the BizSpark program a few years ago which gave us access to a lot of free software and services. It helps that we're a B2B company with decent and predictabl…

Great feedback. Thank you!

Re: Show HN: Started.in Seattle – 60+ Video Profiles of startups in Seattle

#18

Post by BlakePetersen »

koji wrote: post #14
BlakePetersen wrote: post #11

From my experience, working with any vendors from the pacific northwest, they're all MS shops. Is this trend changing considering the added expense of working with any MS Licensed software (where an OSS solution with little or no cost could suffice)? Does MS offer incentives to local startups to build their platform on existing licensed MS products? Or is it more of a Seattle Pride thing? I personally don't feel the…

I've worked both in the Valley and in Seattle, and in my experience the startup mentalities have been pretty much the same. There may be a lot of former MS people working at the startup, but they don't seem to have any attachment to it. If iOS or Android are where the numbers are, that's where they go. I've also never met a startup in Seattle solely focused on developing something for MS, although there probably are…

You are probably correct in that the trend has changed. My feeling is that it may be that the companies we do business with are a bit more established and they may still be subject to the decisions made during a trend-phase that doesn't really make financial sense to step away from and build again from scratch, but if those decisions were made now, it may be taken in a different direction.

But the fact that they no longer have such a strong foothold in their home turf is a bit concerning for MS I'm sure. That's why I was curious to see whether there was any effort on MS's part to change their approach and invest more in grassroot business building that will establish those long lasting relationships with brands that will be both valuable and recognizable in the future.

Re: Show HN: Started.in Seattle – 60+ Video Profiles of startups in Seattle

#19

Post by kkamperschroer »

BlakePetersen wrote: post #15
kkamperschroer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be generalizing from your experience. Just looking at some of the openings for these companies they are looking for MongoDB, HTML5, Rails, etc. I didn't see any mention C# or other MS specific things.

Yea, my specific instances may be speaking to too narrow of a sampling of Seattle Start-up scene, and it may be that the vendors we do business with are a bit more mature than what is featured here. Mainly, I was wondering if there is any sort of outreach by MS to any of these small companies. I know they have a presence in the Valley and have MS Ventures to nurture fledgling companies with start-up capital, but as f…

As someone else mentioned already, BizSpark: http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/

Re: Show HN: Started.in Seattle – 60+ Video Profiles of startups in Seattle

#20

Post by gurgeous »

BlakePetersen wrote: post #11

From my experience, working with any vendors from the pacific northwest, they're all MS shops. Is this trend changing considering the added expense of working with any MS Licensed software (where an OSS solution with little or no cost could suffice)? Does MS offer incentives to local startups to build their platform on existing licensed MS products? Or is it more of a Seattle Pride thing? I personally don't feel the…

This is simply not true. Most of the startups here (including mine) run on linux and all the engineers have macs.
Post reply on HN