KACHARAGADLA

When money gets tight, find solutions that don't cost jobs. For the first time in its brief-but-bountiful history, Silicon Valley is  pumping the brakes . In response to an increasingly conservative investment climate, major startups such as Evernote, Jawbone, Hootsuite and Snapchat are cutting staff. That may work for powerhouse tech startups, but what about entrepreneurs? When funds run thin, can you afford to chop the one and only staff developer or the account managers? With a limited budget and a small team, the best solution may be to limit production costs. But how? Entrepreneurs can’t be like  Apple , which leverages volume discounts to offer pixel-perfect screens and stainless steel hardware at low costs. And they don’t want to be like streaming service Grooveshark, which launched in 2006, the same year Spotify was developed. It didn’t pay for licenses from rights holders and was forced to reactively juggle legal battles while Spotify soared. The key is to be