.Net is a great platform for startups

1. .Net as an Awesome Startup
Platform
Rudy Lacovara
rudy@hireflo.com

2. A Little Startup History
1998 - Web 1.0
A huge percentage of startups are built on classic ASP.
2008 – Web 2.0
Most startups are built on Ruby/Rails or PHP.
ASP.Net is ignored (and often ridiculed).
Today
We’ll see but it’s looking good so far.

3. What is a Startup?
“A regular company executes on a known
business model. A startup is a company
searching for a business model.”
- Unknown (but I’m sure I stole it from someone)
“Are you ready to jump off a tall building and build your wings on
the way down?”
- Startup Lounge Podcast

4. If you’re even considering launching a
startup, Read this book first

5. Launching Your Startup
1. Signup for BizSpark
2. Publish a Marketing Website
3. Design and Mockup
4. Build your Minimum Viable Product

6. 1. Signup for BizSpark
Go to http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/ and Microsoft will give
you every software product they make for FREE for 3 years if
your company meet these requirements:
• You are developing software
• You are less than 3 years old
• You have less than $1,000,000 annual revenue
• You have some type of website up (even 1 page)
• You can get someone like this guys to nominate you.
– Aaron Stannard, Microsoft Startup Developer Evangelist
aaronst@microsoft.com
http://www.aaronstannard.com/

7. 2. Publish a Marketing Site
• One pages that clearly describes your product
and collects email addresses
• You are testing your idea
Cheap but good looking website design
99 designs ($400 - $1000)
http://99designs.com/
Cheap but solid hosting
Discount ASP.Net ($20/month for web and DB)
http://discountasp.net/

8. 3. Design and Mockup
• Mockup every page in your app
• Fix things
• Show people your mockups
The perfect tool for this is Balsamiq Mockups
http://balsamiq.com/

9. 4. Build Your Minimum Viable Product
Customer data requires better hosting:
($118 - $250/month for cloud server)
http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/

10. What I need in a Startup Architecture
• Speed
– If I’m heading toward the ground I want to build
that parachute as fast as possible.
• Flexibility
– I assume that I’m going to make mistakes. Making
big changes must be fast and easy.

11. HireFlo Architecture
• Asp.Net MVC, no webforms
• jQuery + lots of AJAX
• No Azure!
• No Entity Framework
• Lots of open source

12. HireFlo Server Architecture
• Everything lives on a
single virtual server
running Windows
Server 2008
• Two webapps
• One processor
(console app that runs
scheduled tasks)
• Main SqlServer 2008
database
• A MongoDB document
datastore (in progress)
HireFlo Direct
Webapp
HireFlo IPP
Webapp
Processor
SqlServer 2008
Mongo DB
Document Storage
Single multitenant
database
Rackspace CloudServer

13. HireFlo Code Architecture
• Common – code
needed across
multiple layers
• Core – contains both
business logic and data
access logic. Core is
the only library that
connects to a DB.
• All application layer
code, like the webapps
and the processor, is
built on top of Core.
Common
Web App
Core
SqlServer
Database
MongoDB
Document
store
WebAPI Processor

14. We are in a Startup Renaissance!!
(and Boulder / Denver is a hot spot)
• newtech Meetup – About 4 tech startups present in Denver and Boulder every month. The
Denver meetup meets at Mapquest. The Boulder meetup has free beer!
http://www.bdnewtech.com/
• Denver Founders Network – Best startup meetup in Denver. Takes place every month down
at Uncubed, a pretty happening coworking space in a sketchy part of town.
http://www.meetup.com/Denver-Founders-Network/
• TechStars – One of the first Y Combinator style accelerator programs for early stage startups.
http://www.techstars.org/
• Open Angel Forum – Angel Investors meet in Boulder about twice a year to hear pitches from
early stage startups and possibly fund them.
http://openangelforum.com/
• StartupDigest – Weekly email digest by Tom Markiewicz (tom@thestartupdigest.com) that
tracks startup related events in the Boulder / Denver area.
http://startupdigest.com/

15. We’re Done
Get the slide deck at :
http://rlacovara.blogspot.com
Rudy Lacovara
rudy@hireflo.com
http://hireflo.com