Question: The title should be self-explanitory, but just in case. I am trying to build an angular application which will be hosted on azure. Currently I am having some issues with using kestrel, so I would like to build the application in visual studio but without using any .net code (so no startup.cs or program.cs).
If the answer is plainly no, then I guess I will need to find another IDE that will do what I require.

Answer: 
Yep. Just create a website project instead of a web application project. 

<https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd547590.aspx>

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> Scenarios in which Web site projects are the preferred choice include the following:
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> You do not want to have to explicitly compile the project in order to deploy it.
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If you using node toolings to build you project you may want to try [Node.js Tools for Visual Studio](https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/node-js/)

It does have support for gulp/grunt tasks as well as it has integration with azure. The support is provided via custom project types.