Let me just share with you a recent experience with Bizspark, a great Microsoft program for entrepreneurs.
For those of you who don’t know about Bizspark, it is a program dedicated to help entrepreneurs with free access to MS software, mostly for developpers, with great networking capabilities and with potential exposure for your startup. It’s team is dedicated, easily accessible and quite helpful.
I interviewed a few months ago her representative in France, Lubomira Rochet. My company, Idaos, which develops projects around the social web, is part of Bizspark.
Let me also say that I have never feared, or bitched against Microsoft. I have run Corbis France and EMEA for 4 years, a Gates company, have had the opportunity to meet once with Bill at his home, am grateful to MS for all they have done since i first used MS DOS 30 years ago and have quite a few friends who love working at MS.
But i have switched to MAC OS the day Windows 7 was released. And i went to Bizspark to download a simple Office Suite for Mac OS. And guess what, I couldn’t. You have to use Windows OS to get your free copy of the Office Suite. If you use Windos OS, you get your free lunch. If you don’t, you starve.
Well, i guess some guys in Redmond still operate under 1980’s marketing wisdom and vision. Too bad really.