July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

In honor of Veteran’s Day, I wanted to dedicate Startup Spotlight to entrepreneurs with military experience, or who were working on projects to benefit the veteran community. I found a company that embodies both.

Women Veterans Connect is an online community for women who have served in the military. At its core, it is a network where women veterans can connect, exchange stories, engage with peer mentors, and find relevant information. Jo Ann Martinez founded the organization after serving in the Air Force and receiving strong support from an informal group of women veterans. She realized not everyone had the same access to this network and set out to create WVC.

“I have been immersed in the women’s veterans community since day 1,” Martinez said. “These are all women whose stories I know personally, and I realized that we typically don’t ask for help until we are in crisis. I took on project after project trying to figure out what to do, and it finally came down to stopping, looking back at all the reasons why things failed, and doing the opposite. My expertise was with women’s veterans. I wanted to serve that community for all the mentoring they provided me and I wanted to contribute by helping them successfully reintegrate into the community.”  

After multiple unsuccessful attempts to get something off the ground, Martinez met the Katherine Webster, the woman behind TechCentral SF and VetsInTech. That encounter led her to attend the first ever VetsInTech hackathon in March. Up until this point, Martinez taught herself basic elements of front end development and design, but knew that to launch a fully-featured web-based platform, she would need more education and help. Much to her surprise, her team placed third and she found the bridge she needed from the military world into the technology world.

“I think veterans make great entrepreneurs,” she said. “Military personal go through so many leadership programs, it makes sense. Plus, we have all the work ethic and commitment that is involved. The Air Force core values are integrity, service before self, and excellence in all we do. I still apply this win my everyday life.”

Many members of the military also receive extensive training in math, science, engineering, and logistics, which can provide a solid foundation to learn programming. Furthermore, startup life can be a desirable route for veterans who struggle to find more traditional forms of unemployment.

“People getting out of the military can have a stigma,” she said. “We’ve got employers out there that are not going to say this directly, but they might look at you as a liability. Veterans come back after multiple deployments, some with PTSD, to a weakened economy and it can be really really difficult to get a job. This is why entrepreneurship becomes attractive for us.”

Women Veterans Connect is not only about supporting returned military personnel, but also about supporting women. Technology and the military are both male-dominated industries and part of Martinez’s mission is to encourage women to throw themselves headfirst into these worlds, even when it can be intimidating.

“I had my daughter in the same year that this idea was born,” she said. “It is my mission to not just tell her, but actually show her all of the possibilities that we are capable of as women. In my experience, women are always willing to make more out of less, whereas men are asking for more and getting more. What I hope happens down the road is women veterans show up more and there are more women overall in tech community.”

The WVC officially incorporated as a non-profit in April 2012. It currently focuses its efforts on the 167,000 women veterans in California, but the vision is to expand the platform nationwide and hopefully gain some influence at the government level.

While women veterans comprise a relatively small segment of the population, Martinez strives to make the services and her vision relatable to the rest of the country. She wants to honor the accomplishments of women veterans, beyond their military service, and tell stories that not only provide recognition, but inspiration.

For more information about this weekend’s VetsInTech hackathon, click here. 

Startup Spotlight is a new weekly series that features a company with a unique idea or story to tell. If your company would like to be considered, please submit an application at http://venturebeat.com/news-tips/.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Veterans day is coming and what better way to celebrate — by doing a hack-a-thon, of course!  Ok, perhaps this is not your normal parade-and-BBQ kind of thing, but VetsinTech is having a hack-a-thon on the weekend of Veteran’s Day, November 9-11, to get returning vets immersed in the tech community.

There will be two classes on Friday, November 9th. One is an introduction to JavaScript and the other an introduction to iOS programming. So not knowing how to code is no excuse for skipping the hackathon: Take one of these classes, and come to the hackathon the next day!

The VetsinTech origination is focused on connecting newly returning veterans with training, job opportunities, and startup opportunities.

Below is some information from the VetsinTech website.

What: Vets in Tech Startup Veterans Hackathon/Weekend – Co-chair Craig Newmark of craigslist and board member IAVA – Iraq/Afghanistan Veteran’s of America
When: Friday, November 9th to Sunday, November 11th.
Where: Adobe Systems , SF – 601 Townsend Street
Registration Link: click here

100 copies of The Lean Startup book are being donated by Eric Ries to the first 100 veterans who register for this event!

In this two-day event the tech community in SF will come together to support our returning Iraq/Afghan veterans.  Teams of approximately 5-10 people will be formed with a variety of skills -the vets can have the idea, help with business plan, marketing or just sit in to audit/participate for educational purposes – coding skills are NOT required.  Our tech community is encouraged to come (and to code) and recognize the unique perspective our returning veterans will have to offer.

What is it:

The Vets in Tech Startup Veteran weekend is a two-day business and app development competition. The event’s goal is to invite returning veterans to be part of a team focused on building successful startups around the next generation social, mobile, gaming, ecommerce, health or other applications and to foster a community of (veteran) entrepreneurship.  Our veterans can add a unique perspective to many of these types of applications.

Registered idea generators are given 1 minute to pitch an app concept to a tech audience on day one. Attending veterans, engineers, designers, marketing and business people as well as our team of glorious mentors preselect the best ideas that will be developed into applications during the weekend. Teams are formed around the most promising projects and the competition begins.

What to expect:

• Expect to find the complimentary skills that help you to connect in the tech community. Be open, share your ideas and don’t hold back – “Ideas without actions are usually called dreams”
• Expect to meet super talented and inspiring people, to work under time pressure, to sleep little, and to dedicate the whole weekend!
• Expect to gain valuable feedback and insight not only from your teammates but also from other participants and the all-star panel of Judges.
• Expect, apart from seeing your project turning into a shiny demo, to win prizes that will help you get that sexy app out the door.

Tentative Agenda:

Friday November 9th

• 6:00 Basic Training – Introduction to iOS Programming
• 9:00 Networking

Saturday November 10th

• 9am – 10am Breakfast, Networking, Team Building
• 10am-10:45am – Keynote speakers
• 10:45am – Break
• 11am – 12:30pm 1 minute pitches – voting and team formation
• 12:30pm – Lunch
• 1:30pm – Teams start work!!
• 5:00pm – Dinner Break and Keynote

Sunday November 11th

• Teams work until 5pm when presentations begin!
• Break for judges to vote and then return to award prizes

Register Now!

While I’m proud of my family’s service to Uncle Sam, veterans do need better ways to transition from military to civilian life — and the military isn’t very good at offering those tools.

To help veterans get into civilian careers faster and more smoothly, today both Google and LinkedIn announced new job-search tools just for current and former military personnel. Google has unveiled a new job search engine for vets, and LinkedIn is earmarking job postings that might be better suited to veterans.

Currently, around 850,000 military veterans are unemployed — that’s around 12 percent of post-9/11 vets. After their service to the country, many vets feel they’re left high and dry when it comes to civilian employment.

Former Marine Scot Ellison II has a typical story to share. He told us via Twitter, “There were required classes from the Marine Corps in transitioning out. But once I was out, I was on my own and had no help. I was jobless for the first two months of being out before I got work. And the work wasn’t desirable; it was enough to pay bills and support my family. Technically still struggling after four years.”

Google and LinkedIn hope the new tools will alleviate both the pressures of a military-to-civilian transition, and to ease the current jobs crisis.

LinkedIn announces, “We’ve joined forces with the White House to tag job postings on LinkedIn that could be filled by veterans. These tagged job postings will be accessible to the White House’s newly launched Veteran’s Job Bank and across veterans-oriented federal websites to make it easier for veterans to source opportunities relevant to them.”

Later this week, the company will be launching a microsite for veterans to find tips and tools for getting new jobs. And this Friday, which is Veterans’ Day, LinkedIn will be hosting a Veterans Hackday at its Silicon Valley headquarters.

As for Google, the search giant is working with the National Resource Directory, a special listings service for veterans, to create a customized job search engine for veterans. This engine will “identify veteran-committed job openings” on job sites around the web.

Finally, the White House itself is getting involved with the launch of MyNextMove.org, a site where vets can find their dream jobs, explore new career options, or even find a job similar to the work they did in the military.

This site uses data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) system, which the White House says is “the most comprehensive source of information on the knowledge, skills, abilities, work tasks, tools, technology and other important requirements needed to perform work for over 900 occupations covering the entire U.S. economy.” So far, more than 40,000 businesses and 150,000 workers have contributed data to O*NET’s collection.

Image courtesy of trevorsnyder.