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.