Obama Administration to hold Startup America Roundtable

As part of the White House’s Startup America initiative, on April 6, 2011, senior Obama Administration officials will visit St. Paul, Minnesota to meet with entrepreneurs and hear directly from them on ideas and suggestions for reducing barriers and improving regulations to build a more supportive environment for entrepreneurship and innovation.

Using the input from the roundtables and broader public participation, the Obama Administration hopes to put together a list of the best ideas to streamline and simplify unnecessary barriers to America’s entrepreneurs and innovators. The Administration says these ideas will be incorporated into the agencies’ responses to the President’s Executive Order instructing federal agencies to identify and take steps to eliminate or reduce regulations that are outdated or overly burdensome to entrepreneurs.

Three locations have already hosted Reducing Barriers roundtables (Durham, NC; Austin, TX; and Boston MA).  Including the event scheduled for St. Paul, MN on April 6, there are five more roundtable events scheduled.  After a visit to the Twin Cities future roundtables will be held as follows:

• Silicon Valley, CA: April 15
• Atlanta, GA, date TBD
• Pittsburgh, PA, date TBD
• Boulder, CO, date TBD

These roundtable events are a part of  the“Startup America” initiative.  Startup America is a nationwide effort to increase the number of successful startups and to help promising young companies grow to the next level. The White House is using Startup America as a call to action for leaders in business, academia, the investment community, and the nonprofit sector to do more to support entrepreneurship. Startup America will also infuse up to $1 billion over the next five years in underserved communities and emerging industries through a new Impact Investment Fund, which is ased on SBA’s Small Business Investment Company program.

The core goals of Startup America include increasing the number and scale 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.

More specifically, Startup America is aimed at:

• Expanding access to capital for high-growth startups throughout the country;
• Expanding entrepreneurship education and mentorship programs that empower more Americans not just to get a job, but to create jobs;
• Strengthening commercialization of the about $148 billion in annual federally-funded research and development, which can generate innovative startups and entirely new industries;
• Identifying and remove unnecessary barriers to high-growth startups; and
• Expanding collaborations between large companies and startups.

The Twin Cities event scheduled for April 6, 2011, will run from 9:00am to 12:30pm and will be held at Medtronic, Inc., 8200 Coral Sea Street NE, St. Paul, MN 55112.  Officials attending the St. Paul event include Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office Teresa Rae, SBA Chief Counsel for Advocacy WinslowSargeant, and Deputy Administrator for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Michael Fitzpatrick.  Entrepreneurs and small business owners interested in attending the events can learn more by emailing [email protected].