Monday, January 31, 2011

White House Launches Startup Effort

The White House announced a new effort to spur high tech innovation and growth this morning, called the Startup America Partnership. The new effort will be chaired by AOL's Steve Case, with funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Case Foundation, Intel Capital, and IBM. According to the partnership effort, it is looking to "dramatically increase the development, prevalence and success of innovative, high-growth U.S. firms." The new effort follows last week's call by President Obama to spur economic growth through innovation. Intel Capital has committed $200M of new investment in U.S. companies as part of the partnership, and IBM said it will invest $150M in 2011 to fund programs promoting entrepreneurship and new business opportunities in the United States.