I'm looking at developing an application using Microsoft tools (Xbox and Kinect) as it will save time and came across the BizSpark program. Has anyone else looked at this?<p>edit:
forgot to add the url: http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/
What are your questions about it? I know two startups friends did that used it (one I was a part of), and the program is exactly as advertised. All the software+licenses, free for use until you either pass the 3 year (IIRC) mark or several million in revenue. It also now comes with some free Azure time.<p>If you can stand the HN karma deduction of using the MSFT platform, it's a pretty fantastic deal. Oh, and the program administrators are less picky with how "real" you are than, say, becoming a registered iOS developer (having gone through both processes myself).
The ultimate intent of BizSpark is to get you locked into using the Microsoft stack, because chances are, by that time the free license expires in 3 years and your application is a success, you won't migrate to another platform as easily.<p>Not necessarily a good or bad plan, if you're set on using Microsoft technology anyway, you can save licensing costs for the first few years, and minimize some costs should your project not succeed. If you're just testing the waters as to which platform to use, BizSpark will tend to lead you towards incurring additional operational costs in form of Microsoft licensing fees.
It's a big baloon payment. It is not FREE after the probationary period. There are definitely strings attached. There was a big stink about this with a well known open source .NET developer who worked at MS. It would have ended costing his startup a lot more based on the cost of a SQL Server license, etc. He settled on Rails + MySQL. Search for Rob Conery.