Exclusive: Nonprofit announces $330 million in startup aid

Startup America Partnership CEO Scott Case (left) poses with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman at the DEMO Fall 2011 event in Santa Clara, California. Picture taken September 2011.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Startup America Partnership, a nonprofit organization working with the government to fund innovation and create jobs, on Tuesday unveiled a new online platform and $330 million worth of product and service commitments designed to help early stage companies, CEO Scott Case told Reuters.

"We've been listening to startups around the country," said Case, who previously co-founded discount travel service Priceline.com and now runs the private-sector arm of Startup America, a government initiative announced by President Obama in January.

"Startup America is all about helping America's high-growth young companies be successful and create jobs," Case said.

The platform was beta tested by several hundred companies for about a month, said Case, who aims to have more than 100,000 small businesses registered by the first quarter of 2012.

The products and services will be offered for free by 14 providers, among them Dell Inc, Dun and Bradstreet and LeadMaster, he said. Small businesses that register on the site (here) gain access to these and other resources, which to date total about $730 million in value, Case said.

Once approved, registered small businesses will have access to resources in five areas: talent, services, expertise, customers and capital.

The partnership also classifies companies by three general stages of development and helps to filter resources best suited to their specific needs, said Case - no relation to AOL co-founder and Startup America Partnership chairman Steve Case.

"You'll get through very quickly and be able to access all the resources through a really cool dashboard built on top of Salesforce (CRM.N)," he said, referring to the online provider of customer relationship management.

The platform will also help investors such as venture capital firms identify and interact with companies in specific sectors of interest, he said.

This week the program is holding its DEMO Fall conference in Silicon Valley, during which three startups in the healthcare, education and gaming sectors - culled from a starting group of 300 companies - will pitch their business in front of an audience of entrepreneurs.

Biz2Credit, an online aggregator of business lenders and one of the new providers in the Startup America Partnership, is hopeful the new platform will help it meet its target of reaching 110,000 new startups in need of financing in the next year.

"We have been working very closely with Startup America in the last few months," said CEO Rohit Arora, who is offering $40 million of services in the form of a complimentary three-month premium membership, free access to its proprietary BizAnalyzer tool and half off Equifax credit reports. "This is going to open up a lot of opportunities."

(Editing by Jon Cook)