Last week, when President Obama gave his State of the Union Address, I was delighted to hear so many positive references to the importance and benefits of information technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. These mentions made me very hopeful – because this is how I personally feel about our country, our community, our school, and our students. And I was wishing that these were not just passing sentiments, but that we would see some definite actions to back them up.
Now that Obama’s StartUp America Partnership has been unveiled, I feel more assured that we will see action! StartUp America is the President’s initiative to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the US by empowering “an ever-greater diversity of communities and individuals to build great American companies”. 
This partnership is led by folks such as Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, along with Carl Schramm of the Kauffman Foundation. The Kauffman Foundation is responsible for the award-winning Syracuse Campus Community Entrepreneurship Initiative, that in turn funded the highly successful Student Start-Up Accelerator, in which student teams move from idea generation in the What’s the Big Idea? course, to prototyping business plans in From Idea 2 StartUp, to a summer residence in the Student Sandbox with mentoring from community experts to launch new entrepreneurial ventures.
I became even more optimistic after spending time over the last two days in several sessions with the extremely successful entrepreneur & author of ‘Do More Faster’, Brad Feld, who was here in Syracuse as part of a 3-city swing sponsored by Upstate Venture Connect. Brad, himself has been working with the White House on the StartUp initiative and was at the announcement on Monday. In fact, Brad’s experience with the power of accelerators as evidenced by his TechStars LLC, where mentor groups share their experience to guide new rounds of start-ups, provided the model behind StartUp America.
What can we expect to see now from both StartUp America, and Brad’s new TechStars Network, which is part of the StartUp agenda? Working from their common model, our country will see a wider spread of mentor communities, where those with experience pitch in to support, guide, and prod entrepreneurs of all ages, genders, and races. And, as Brad expressed it, these networks of start-ups need to be based on the ‘mentorship model’, where the community of local mentors function as coaches for the start-ups vs. the ‘guru model’. And mentors stepping up is exactly what Center State NY needs, given that one of our greatest natural resource is college students – bright, eager, fearless young folks who are excited by the opportunity to bring their big ideas to realization and success. We have here in abundance what is most important for entrepreneurial success – talent. Now what is needed is broad mentorship support. We have some terrific mentors now, but we need a larger community. The local folks who attended Brad’s events today will be spreading the word of the opportunity that awaits. I hope that many of the folks I know who have wisdom, experience, and a strong caring for the community, will step up and become mentors. And I mean this even for our students, who can mentor those who are just a little bit less experienced than they are. I will, and I hope you will join me.
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