Great Sessions at Web 2.0 Expo and Free Ticket Giveaway!

Sounds Great Sam, though I am a bit confused by what you mean about 'opening up your blog to posts', I am assuming that you meant you want people to comment here in order to win the tickets, so that's what I'm doing.

As a solo entrepreneur of a bootstrapped startup (http://www.HearWhere.com), i've learned a ton in the last few months about doing more with less, and in my case small truly is the new big.
And if I win the tickets, being that I'm solo in this endeavor, that means one ticket could go to another deserving start-up!

HearWhere is live music search. Some people say this is a crowded space. But nobody manages the vast amount of data that HearWhere does. Our competitors have been around longer, in some cases have many millions of dollars in funding, and are established.
Of course, I wouldn't have entered this market had I not seen that the opportunity was still not being addressed. Namely, that live music listings and music discovery had not been easily combined – for the most part this meant you couldn't sample an artists music to hear if they were any good before deciding to go to the show.

So, in the doing more with less, HearWhere leveraged the vast amount of music available online and brought it into a simple interface allowing fans (or soon to be fans) to listen to the music and make valid choices in what bands to go see.

That's actually (and strangely) a significant differentiator between HearWhere and competitors, and not only does it only cost a bit of programming time (and very little at that), but it also is the right thing to do by both artists and fans.

Getting visits is the next step, and while others are spending $$ on marketing, going to conferences (at a corporate cost), etc. HearWhere has focused on the product, and now is proud to announce an API, so partners can get access to the vast amount of data and provide live music experiences to their visitors. So #2, marketing doesn't have to cost money and can/should be a win-win opportunity.

Knowing your business doesn't mean shouting your business model from the roof-tops. When HearWhere was written about on TechCrunch (not sure how I managed that without paid PR, but go back to making a compelling product), TC commented that they weren't sure what the business model was. Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, but at the same time, the business model isn't important to users, its important to investors. So know that you've got a business model is enough, get your messaging right (which is also free), so that people understand what you do, not necessarily how you make money. A restaurant provides great food, that's what they do. If you asked a restauranteur what they did and they responded “we charge you for great food”, that is probably not the best thing, so work on your messaging, and make sure you are serving a need and not a business. Pick up a copy of Curtis Carlson Innovation – Five Disciples for Creating What Customers Want the first 1/3 of the book does a great job on refining the messaging.

And lastly, get free tickets to events! HearWhere was featured at LaunchParty6 in Vancouver, and hopefully will be learning even more at Web 2.0 in San Francisco. When travelling to these types of events, I stay free with friends or family, and fly free on Alaska Airways.

So those are my few bits on doing more with less, creating better with less.
Less means more when you're hungrier, dirtier, and against the wall while the others celebrate their successes and forget to watch their backs for who's coming to eat their lunch.

The free tickets sound terrific

One way to do more with less is to team up. The office incubator idea – where a group of organizations share an office in order to cut down on rent and infrastructure costs – is old hat. Find ways to promote yourself that team up with other organizations. It's the link-back strategy writ large. Combine the money and the skills from even two different organizations and the benefit each organization reaps at the other end can be exponential.

“Doing more with less” usually just means making a better product that will be better for customers. There is a balance, and when you “do less” on your side, it in turn reduces the side effects of “doing more”.

For instance, when you reduce the number of moving parts (read: less code), the result is less bugs, less performance issues, less security issues.

When you reduce the amount of money you're spending, the result is that you can charge less for your product and depend less on misleading advertising. You can also take less investment, and have less outside influence on your decision making process.

Here's a personal anecdote that while not directly related to web 2.0, really illuminates this theme. When I was involved in my high school theater group, our school was accepted as finalists for our rendition of “The Iceman Cometh”, a long and difficult Eugene O'Neill play. When the time came to perform the play for several thousand people and a panel of judges for the state finals, we discovered that a significant number of our costumes were missing.

Rather than improvising costumes for those of us who were missing them, our instructor demanded that none of us wear costumes. Instead, we would all wear matching plain white garb. The audience wouldn't notice, our instructor insisted.

So we didn't wear our costumes, and when we performed there was a noticeable electricity in the air, perhaps because the experience felt renewed, like we were all doing it for the first time.

Needless to say, we won the finals. Several people in the audience commented to me after that they “loved the costumes”.

Doing less with more, indeed. I'm looking forward to the Expo!

Pete – Great post! Looking forward to seeing you in San Fran!

Office incubators are a great way to do more with less – great point! There are some great co-working locations in New York and Jelly is a great concept as well. Thanks Nicole!

This is where Eric’s approach (i.e. customer discovery) proves invaluable. Often when a startup pursues a hyper-adoption business model (think Twitter),

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website design service the marketing efforts are focused on pushing a free version of the product and capturing eyeballs.

Ecommerce Web Design I am opening up my blog for posts on hacks, insights and anecdotes about doing more with less.

Ecommerce Web Design I am opening up my blog for posts on hacks, insights and anecdotes about doing more with less.

Ecommerce Web Design I am opening up my blog for posts on hacks, insights and anecdotes about doing more with less.

website design service the marketing efforts are focused on pushing a free version of the product and capturing eyeballs.

Ecommerce Web Design I am opening up my blog for posts on hacks, insights and anecdotes about doing more with less.

Our competitors have been around longer, in some cases have many millions of dollars in funding, and are established.
Of course, I wouldn't have entered this market had I not seen that the opportunity was still not being addressed. Namely, that live music listings and music discovery had not been easily combined

This is where Eric’s approach (i.e. customer discovery) proves invaluable. Often when a startup pursues a hyper-adoption business model (think Twitter),

website design service the marketing efforts are focused on pushing a free version of the product and capturing eyeballs.

Ecommerce Web Design I am opening up my blog for posts on hacks, insights and anecdotes about doing more with less.