I received this question today by email and I thought I would share my answer.
Here is my question. We are building a startup and are having to make a technology stack shift for reasons I can explain later. The startup is currently funded but we have a short time to put this together to receive more funding. Based on the skill set of the developers we have, we have chosen to go with .Net MVC 5 for a service layer, Mongo for a db, and knockout on the client side for an MVVM. One of the investors has advised us that .Net could be problematic for us when it came time for VC investors and a possible buyout later. The concern is that such investors or buyers will shy from a .Net based site. My question is simple? Is that true, has that been your experience and do you have any suggestions?
My answer was:
The answer is that yes, SOME investors and SOME acquirers will not be interested in .NET. Then again, some (for example Microsoft) will think it’s great! Don’t make tech choices based on potential exits or investors, make them on your ability to serve your customers. Create value, and things like investors and acquisitions take care of themselves. This is more likely to be an issue in a downside case, where your’e selling the company because you have to – that’s when things like tech stacks get considered as a major part of the equation. When it’s because you, your products, your customers and your data add tremendous value they’ll acquire you even if the code is written in MS BASIC with a BTRIEVE database. 😉
Let me know in the comments if you disagree.
