The Largest-Ever Study on Veteran Businesses and Their Owners Needs Your Help

Veterans are, at heart, an entrepreneurial group of Americans. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, vets are 45% more likely to start their own business, and one out of 10 small businesses in the U.S. are veteran-owned. That’s around 2.4 million businesses.

Even with that entrepreneurial spirit, there are significant barriers for veterans entering the marketplace on their own.

One veteran resource center has fielded a survey to find out what barriers there are and learn about other factors that might be affecting new veteran business owners and what keeps separating service members from pursuing entrepreneurship.

The National Survey of Military-Affiliated Entrepreneurs is one of the largest qualitative studies ever conducted in the area of veteran business, according to officials at the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University. The study seeks to “capture the motivations, challenges, and barriers for all military-affiliated individuals who have started a business, currently own/operate a business, or are interested in entrepreneurship,” it said in a release.

With this data, the IVMF hopes to help capture a picture of the veteran entrepreneur and use it to help other businesses, financial institutions, nonprofits, corporations and basically anyone with an interest in veteran business ownership learn about what motivates and helps this small but potent group of Americans.

In 2016, the IVMF conducted one of the largest studies on veteran entrepreneurship, called Operation: Vetrepreneurship. It went a long way toward identifying key problems that keep some vets and their dream businesses from materializing.

The more people who participate in the survey, the better those results will be. Veterans, military service members, members of the National Guard and Reserve, and military family members are all encouraged to answer the survey here: The National Survey of Military-Affiliated Entrepreneurs.

Read the full story from military.com.