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As we enter a new millennium, we find ourselves in the Age of the Startup. Everywhere, it seems, people have a new idea that they want to turn into a business, a new business model that they want to turn into a company -- or an old company that needs a new idea. If you're not incubating a startup, you're starting an incubator.

Which prompts us to ask a question: How do you navigate your way through this new era of startups? Whether you're launching your own "dotcom" or starting the restaurant that you've always dreamed of opening, how do you make the right decisions? Should you hold on or let go? Find the right partner or go it alone? Stay small or learn how to grow?

Here are tools, tips, and time-tested tactics from 17 advisers, founders, and professional managers, all of whom have made startups work. Each has soared -- and each has hit some bumps along the way.

Hey, you wanna start something?

Esther Dyson

Chairwoman
EDventure Holdings Inc.
New York, New York

Good people are in short supply. Whether you're an investor, a company owner, or someone strategically trying to figure out what to do in a business, you need to pay more attention to employee motivation and human relations.

The challenge is to find great people and then to inspire and empower them. The skills that it takes to start a company are not the same skills that it takes to keep a company going. In the beginning, you need to inspire a small team of people to meet deadlines and to deliver results. You need to micromanage -- because a lot has to happen, and you're responsible for all of it.

Later on, as the company gets bigger and the strategic challenges get broader, you have to be able to delegate. You need to bring in lots of good people, to give them responsibility -- and then to leave them alone.

Ultimately, in the world of startups, most consolidation occurs less for financial reasons than for management reasons. You'll hear a lot of people saying, "We've got this absolutely great company, with a great product, but there's no one to run it." There's an important point here: Consolidation doesn't necessarily mean failure. It's part of the natural order of things.

My biggest mistake? Believing too much in the power of a brand name or an alliance, and thinking, "We'll get a better CEO later."

EDventure Holdings (www.edventure.com) publishes "Release 1.0," a monthly newsletter that tracks developments in information technology. It also sponsors PC Forum and EDventure's High-Tech Forum, and manages EDventure Ventures, a fund that invests in technology startups in Central and Eastern Europe. Esther Dyson (edyson@edventure.com) also sits on the board of the advertising giant WPP Group and is the interim chairman for the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers.

Regis McKenna

Chairman
The McKenna Group
Palo Alto, California

The key to a successful startup is networking -- both personal and professional. Money is just money. Who invests is more important than how much is invested. The questions that you should ask are all about networks: How connected is the investing company? Does it have connections with large companies, sources of money, or channels of distribution? Have the founders maintained relations at their old companies? Do they have the right connections with companies that can provide talent? Leveraging other people's assets is important when launching a startup. Look at how Yahoo! depended on Netscape. That alliance happened early.