Aneesh Chopra: Startup America Partnership & DC2VC

And here I'd like to highlight an initiative the President rolled out in January called Startup America. And more specifically, a symbiotic relationship between the public sector and the private sector. The Startup America program begins with a nonprofit organization called the Startup America Partnership, led by the Chairman of the Board, Steve Case, and a recent recruit to serve as CEO, the inaugural CEO, Scott Case, no relation, who had served as one of the founders of Priceline out here in the Valley. And the Startup America Partnership has emphasized new programming to fill the void when it comes to helping entrepreneurs in the various stages that they're in, whether it be in identifying a new idea, getting that idea into a formal business, early growth in that enterprise, and then what they call the speed up phase, when those organizations tend to hit their cycle and hit. Many of us would find that to be a very exciting opportunity, but it requires a different approach. Startup America Partnership has been cultivating privately financed or nonprofit organized and delivered mentorship programs, training and education initiatives, and other support systems so that entrepreneurs at various stages of life and growth have the resources they need to be more successful. In addition, this external partnership, the nonprofit Startup America Partnership, is encouraging larger corporations, we might call this a big co to new co right relationship, to open up their supply chains and invite startups in. And you can see if you visit startamericapartnership.org, just the sheer number of companies that have pledged to expand their relationship with startups. And if you go down the roster, it's the names. You know, it's IBM, it's hp, it's Microsoft and Google and all the rest. And as an example of this concept of cultivating privately financed, privately organized initiatives under the banner of Startup America, not too long ago, in the Research Triangle park community, outside of Duke and UNC Chapel Hill, Blackstone Entrepreneur Network put up $3.5 million to hire Master entrepreneurs to coach young folks in those communities in and around the Research Triangle park to deliver over five years, an estimated 17,000 new jobs. Again, not a nickel of taxpayer dollars, but inspired by the President's call to promote and celebrate entrepreneurship, organized by this external nonprofit. But it's also about us doing our jobs in Washington. There are two components of the Startup America Program that are relevant to the discussion. One is inventorying the regulatory burdens that have been a hindrance to startups. The President signed an executive order earlier this year allowing for regulatory flexibility for small businesses. And we conducted a roadshow around the country and a website reducing barriers.ideascale.com, where entrepreneurs fed us information about where they found barriers so that we might address them in the coming months. But it's also the part that I care the most about, the part that I'm responsible for Startup America, and that is to find ways in which the policymakers in Washington might actually open up new markets, unleash new market opportunities. I was actually here on the Stanford campus in March. That's that picture. I brought the inaugural director of ARPA E, which is our research and development arm for breakthroughs in clean energy. You'll hear about that in a minute. And we came to visit Stanford and had a town hall meeting to hear from entrepreneurs directly. How are our policies impacting the real world? Are they working? Are they not? What more can we do? And these programs we formalized under the banner of DC to vc, coined by Morgan Thaler Ventures. I take no credit for the branding of this initiative. Morgan Thaler did this in the area of health care in the fall, and we've scaled it to energy and education.