President Barack Obama’s Startup America initiative reached a couple of notable milestones today:

• Its private-sector counterpart, the Startup America Partnership, held its first board meeting at the White House. This organization announced that 50 businesses have pledged to provide more than $1 billion worth of software, consulting, and other free services to 100,000 startups over the next three years. View slideshow of our favorite new partners here.
• The Small Business Administration issued proposed rules for its new Early Stage Innovation Fund, which will provide $1 billion in capital to private-sector Small Business Investment Companies that invest in early-stage companies.

Meanwhile, the White House announced several new initiatives as part of Startup America, which aims to boost the creation and growth of innovative businesses. It will host an online business-plan contest as a way to accelerate competition in the health care, clean energy, and education sectors. The Department of Education, meanwhile, will launch a National Education Startup Challenge, in which students will prepare a business plan for a new company or nonprofit organization to solve an education problem.

Existing entrepreneurship education programs also are getting a boost. The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship is teaming with the Pearson Foundation to launch Connect, a free online community for teachers. And Junior Achievement is reinventing its program to be more relevant to today’s entrepreneurial climate.

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