Atlanta -- Jeff Levy knows what it's like to get hatched. In 1996, he founded RelevantKnowledge Inc. under the auspices of the Advanced Technology Development Center, a business incubator affiliated with Georgia Tech. After leaving that supportive nest, the company grew rapidly, and in November 1998 it merged with Media Metrix Inc. Levy, 37, stayed on board as vice chairman until last spring, when Media Metrix went public. (He still serves on its board of directors.) Today, though, he is putting his eggs into eHatchery LLC, a new business-incubator company that focuses on helping Internet companies get through their pre-venture-capital phase. While I was in Atlanta, Levy gave me a tour of his company's new, then-under-construction office space, located in a 70-year-old former dairy factory. He also gave me a quick primer on what it takes to get a technology startup through the gestation period.

Offer more than just cheap rent.

'Unlike many incubators, eHatchery doesn't just provide free conference rooms or cheap office space. We invest actual cash in the companies that we're incubating. We offer in-house legal counsel. We offer financial-services support. We offer a shared IS staff. We host Web sites and provide email. Step by step, we've thought through everything that happens during incubation -- from the time an entrepreneur walks through our doors to the time a company gets venture capital and leaves our nest.'

Find the market; then find the technology.

'Another big difference between eHatchery and other incubators is that traditional incubators take a technology and try to find a market for it. At eHatchery, we start with a marketing idea and then find a technology that can deliver on it. We want to incubate technology-enabled companies, rather than technology-led companies.'

Lead by cultivating leaders.

'When we choose which companies to bring into eHatchery -- and we get 100 applications a week -- we look at both the strength of the idea and the talent of the entrepreneur.

We look for founders who convey a sense that they're going to make their business happen. Especially in the Internet environment, a founder needs to have an aura that resonates with new hires, key fund-raisers, and other important people. Our hope is that eHatchery will become a company of companies, each of them with its own strong leader.'

From: December 1999 issue