Building a software company with free stuff

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First, you will need to learn how to do some programming and design.  There are a lot of free tools out there to use in building software. 

Free Software

Some of the tools stay free after you start making money and others will charge you when you become profitable.  That may seem like a good thing, but with a few exceptions, people get excited about a free software idea and then suddenly realize that if they spend time on that project, then they are not making money.  So eventually the “community” will support the software and then die down.  Sometimes companies offer free software, like Microsoft, but put restriction on the software.  For instance the Express versions usually only support the current version of the .NET Framework. 

Another approach is for software companies to provide the software for no cost, but expect you to pay when you make a profit.  You might wonder how they will find out and charge you, but the process is easy:

  • When you start making money, to make more money you will need to hire people.
  • If these people are always on your side, the software company won’t find out, this is good for you, maybe not as good for the software company.
  • But when the people you are paying get mad at you, say you fire them, then they will tell the software company that you are using their software and not paying for it.  The software company takes action.

So free software to be successful needs you to participate in the “Community”, or at sometime you need to pay for the software.  It’s pretty simple.  So if you are using free software make sure you understand the license.

Free Stuff, that you can use immediately to be successful

If you are a student at a school in a STEM program you can get Windows 8 for “no cost” through the Dreamspark Premium program at your school!

If you have a “DBA” (Doing Business as), you can sign up for the 3 year BizSpark program, which is a very economical deal, but falls into the type of free software that you pay for when you are profitable.

What to do to start you business for no cost

Build Windows 8 Apps.

More on that later.