It was an active week for encouraging more startups in the nation’s
capital. Take Thursday, December 8th. While I participated in a morning
panel discussion on Capitol Hill
with U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and others, U.S. Senators Jerry
Moran (R-Kan.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) introduced the bipartisan Startup Act, the White House announced
that the Obama administration had committed $2 billion in public and
private resources to support job-creating startups, and Startup America
Partnership board members—at the White House for their first official
board meeting—outlined commitments from more than 50 private-sector
partners that amount to over $1 billion over the next three years.
The White House announcement of collaborative measures to facilitate
business growth focused on entrepreneurship education with organizations
like Junior Achievement, the National Association for Community College
Entrepreneurship (NACCE) and the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship
(NFTE), and their private sector partners. Two specific examples from
NFTE include a partnership with the Pearson Foundation to launch
Connect, a free online community for teacher collaboration and training
focused on entrepreneurship education, as well as a partnership with
SuperCamp/Quantum Learning Network to make its BizCamps widely available
to young people across the country.
The Obama Administration focused on expanding access to capital. The
U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) will implement its $1 billion
Early Stage Innovation Fund in 2012, originally announced as part of
Startup America. This fund will provide matching capital to Small
Business Investment Companies (SBICs), particularly early-stage small
businesses seeking private institutional capital. SBA is also proposing a
modification of its rules allowing private funds that invest in early
stage companies to participate in the SBIC program. Learn more about what this means for entrepreneurship
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