The White House Partners With Steve Case, Facebook, Intel, And Others To Jumpstart Entrepreneurship

Leena Rao

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Monday, January 31st, 2011

As part of a White House effort to promote job creation, entrepreneurship and private-sector investment in startups, President Obama is announcing a new initiative today, called Startup America Partnership, to foster growth in the startup world and jumpstart job creation. The Partnership will be chaired by AOL co-founder Steve Case and will be partly funded by the Kauffman Foundation and the Case Foundation.

Startup America’s core goals are “to increase the number of new, high-growth firms that are creating economic growth, innovation, and quality jobs; celebrate and honor entrepreneurship as a core American value and source of competitive advantage; and inspire and empower an ever-greater diversity of communities and individuals to build great American companies.” And the campaign will work with both the White House and a number of technology companies, universities, and entrepreneurs to help achieve these goals.

As part of the initiative, Intel Capital plans to commit $200 million of new investment in U.S. companies; IBM will invest $150 million in 2011 to fund programs that promote entrepreneurs and new business opportunities in the United States; and HP will be investing more than $4 million in 2011 in the HP Learning Initiative for Entrepreneurs (HP LIFE).

Facebook will be launching Startup Days, a series of events around the country that helps provide entrepreneurs with engineering and design support to build off the Facebook Platform.

Google is partnering with Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), a nonprofit that provides entrepreneurship education for at-risk high school students from low-income communities, to offer a number of NFTE’s lessons and curriculum plans to Bay Area students. And startup incubator TechStars is rolling out “The TechStars Network,” which encourages and promotes regional organizations that operate start-up accelerator programs with models similar to the incubator.

The initiative sounds like a impressive effort if the White House actually does in fact take part in the campaign. In terms of sponsorship, there seems to be a good amount of non-profit, and private sector involvement but it’s unclear how involved the White House plans to be with implementing Startup America’s goals.

You can watch a livestream of the actual announcement of the initiative at The White House at 11 am ET here.

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