Veteran Entrepreneur Overcomes Obstacles to Create Popular Mobile App

CPT Cameron Smith, US Army

Air Force pilot, Gregory Coleman, and fellow MBA candidate, Benjamin Young, realized they faced a problem while they attended the prestigious Wharton School of Business. Both men juggled family obligations, full-time work, and a rigorous academic schedule and had little time and energy to maintain a healthy lifestyle. They needed a solution.

Coleman, a 1995 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and a pilot with over 60 combat and combat support missions, decided to solve this problem with the help of Young’s tech expertise. Together, the men founded Nexercise, a technology company that makes the popular Sworkit mobile app. Sworkit provides a simple way to workout anywhere, anytime with no need for equipment.

But, their entrepreneurial journey wasn’t easy. Coleman and Young graduated from business school in 2009 at the height of the global economic recession. Though their first product gained impressive traction, they wanted to create a breakout app and eventually pivoted their focus to the Sworkit project. Both men worked on the business during nights and weekends while maintaining other careers. In fact, Coleman still served as an active duty pilot in the Air National Guard when the two applied and were rejected from the famous Techstars accelerator.

However, the rejection led Coleman to a sister program called Patriot Boot Camp which targets Veterans involved in technology start-ups.

Coleman was able to attend the three-day Patriot Boot Camp in Washington, D.C. in 2012 and was exposed to a host of mentors and resources. More importantly, the program served as a community and support network for him. Entrepreneurship can often be a lonely journey and through the Patriot Boot Camp, Coleman was encouraged by the camaraderie of Veterans who were on a similar journey.

Armed with the experience and support from the Patriot Boot Camp, Coleman and Young reapplied to Techstars and were accepted to the 2013 cohort based in Chicago. This three-month program was a huge catalyst for their Sworkit app and propelled Coleman to eventually resign his full time role with the Air National Guard to focus solely on the business.

Since then, Sworkit has been a resounding success. In 2015 alone, it has grown from 200k monthly users to over 1.8 million. Today, Coleman serves as the COO of the company and manages execution and business operations. Like many Veterans, he brings valuable skills such as innovative problem solving and perseverance to the founding team. He also credits the great mentorship provided by Patriot Boot Camp and Techstars with providing key ingredients to Sworkit’s success.

Coleman’s story is a prime example of how military members can leverage their skills and “no fail” mentality to solve problems and make an impact. Coleman firmly believes that Veterans make great entrepreneurs, but that “taking the leap” is also where many Veterans stall..

Veterans can’t forget that the roadmap to entrepreneurial success is often marked with setbacks and obstacles. However, resources like the Patriot Boot Camp and finding mentors are essential to becoming a success story like Sworkit.

Visit http://sworkit.com/ to learn more about Sworkit. And if you’re an aspiring Veteran entrepreneur, check out Patriot Boot Camp!

Author: Cameron Smith is a former Army Officer who is taking the leap into entrepreneurship.

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Veterans: That’s NOT As Good As It Gets

CPT Tom Aiello, US Army

During my exit physical from the Army, the doctor at Fort Hood acknowledged my HUMMV rollover and spinal cord injuries.  But when I asked, what do we do to fix it? What do we do to treat it? The doctor just responded, “We’ll that’s as good as it gets.”

It’s funny to me, because we all joined the military with the same idea that “this is as good as it gets.” But we learned that through hard work, teamwork, and advanced technology, we were capable of so much more.  The military puts us through hell to show us what we’re truly able to do.

That’s the irony any time someone tells a veteran “that’s as good as it gets.”  I’ve heard this story repeat time and again for active military and veterans.  The problem with this is that it doesn’t keep up with the veterans who are beating the odds and new medical technologies that challenge those earlier assumptions.

Now, you may not be an injured veteran, but that’s why YOU need to know this.  You realize that veterans are less likely to seek help for themselves, but veterans are more likely to help another veteran.  That’s why you need to share medical advances and examples of veterans re-defining “how it has to be.”

A great example of this is a low-cost arm device that allows veterans to gain mobility and use from their weakened or paralyzed arm.  The MyoPro (hotlink: www.veteran.myomo.com) uses the signals the brain still sends to muscle groups to activate the device and restore upper limb mobility.  The device is being distributed by VA hospitals, medical providers, and even some veteran non-profits.

It’s estimated that 500,000 veterans could use a MyoPro to regain function of their arm and improve their quality of life.  However, at some point after a spinal cord injury, neck injury, or stroke they were told, “that’s as good as it gets.”

So if you know a veteran that has limited use of a weakened arm, have them check out www.Myomo.com/veteran.  And if you know of a veteran who was told “that’s as good as it gets” on anything from their health to employment, help them to see the veterans who are challenging those odds… After all, military veterans love a good challenge.

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About the author: Tom was disabled from a spinal cord injury he received while serving as an Army captain. After graduating from West Point, he served in the 1st Cavalry Division with deployments to Kuwait, Panama, and Korea. Tom’s civilian career includes Kellogg Business School, Leo Burnett advertising, Monster.com, and Sears Holdings. He’s focused on less talk and competing veteran help efforts and more results. Tom has helped employers hire over 50,000 vets and raised $118 million for community programs, helping more than 110,000 military and veteran families.

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Leveraging your Military Experience to be a Successful Business Owner

SGT Marion Townes, US Army

The intangible benefits you gain from serving in the Military are priceless. Work ethic, self-discipline, interpersonal skills, determination, and the ability to work as part of a team are just a few of the benefits. For 3 ½ of the last 7 years, I have worked in a virtual environment.

The office and my manager were 5+hours away; I was entrusted because of my self-discipline, determination, and integrity all from my Military experience. I didn’t have anyone telling me what time to start and end work, no one to tell me what to do every day - I just knew what needed to be done.

One of my responsibilities was to act as a business consultant to small business owners, formally titled Agency Distribution Sales Specialist.  In this role, finding an office location, furnishing the office, assisting with hiring staff, developing a marketing strategy, and reviewing financial statements were some of the things I did on a daily basis. As an entrepreneur, you need to be resilient, productive, focused, disciplined, and a hard worker. These are all skills learned in the Military which is why being an entrepreneur is an excellent option for those that have served our country.

Here are some tips to be a successful business owner:

Hiring the right employee is the first thing that needs to be done. Think of the interview process in the same way as a Promotion Board. Reviewing soldiers’ records is similar to looking at resumes. Pay attention to qualities you are looking for in a team member. Once you have selected who you are interested in, the interview is the next step. The questions asked in the interview should be based on the applicant’s job history, experience, and the qualities you are looking for. During the interview, assess their conversational skills, ability to respond under pressure, question if they coachable, ask yourself if you would want this person on your team, etc.

Once you find the right person, you want to keep them as long as you can. Employees are an appreciating asset because they can become more productive and valuable with time. Compensation is one way to keep someone engaged. In the Military, you promote someone when you want to keep them. As a small business owner, you have the option to create a solid compensation plan. Some ideas to consider are: paying for performance (this will allow someone to make their own raise), paid vacation days, flex time, continuing education fees paid, life insurance, etc.

Now that you have your team in place, it’s important to define success. Determine what the goals are so everyone is on the same page with ‘the mission’ or what needs to be accomplished. In the Military, you kept score. You knew how many pushups needed to be done in order to score 100; you knew how many points you needed to make the cut off for promotion. It’s no different in the business world. One way to keep score is to keep track of where your business comes from. Marketing and advertising are expensive; a review should be done on a regular basis to assess the return of investment for each system. Many small business owners get their business from word of mouth, so having a loyalty or referral program might be something to consider.

Hopefully you will find what I have written useful so you can apply it to your operation. My advice to you as an entrepreneur is based on my experience working with small business owners and salespeople in my organization. Good luck with your entrepreneurial journey!

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Hacking The Job Search By Getting Real Life Practice

Capt Byron Chen, USMC

Don't let the interview with the job you want be the first one you've ever done.

I was confused. I was receiving a call on my phone, but I didn’t recognize the number. I knew it was for a follow up phone interview for some job, but I couldn’t remember which company or which interviewer. I guess I’d be flying by the seat of my pants for this one. Eh, I wasn’t too worried about it. Now how could I be so careless about a potential job offer? 

Well, I was getting this call early on in the transition process. I still had several weeks before I would start my job search in earnest. But I wanted to prepare myself as best I could before I was in a crunch to find my next career. So about a month before, I had submitted my information to one of those recruiting firms that connects veterans with employment opportunities. They have several career conferences throughout the year, and I signed up for the first one I could attend. The nice thing about doing this while you’re still working is that there is no obligation to take a job opportunity. I wasn’t being disingenuous — if I found an opportunity that I liked, I would follow through, but at this point, my priority was to learn as much as I could about the job search process. And I am glad I did. There’s nothing like the real thing to teach you what you don’t know. 

Here are a few things I learned along the way:

There are a lot of jobs out there I didn’t know about.

I took interviews with a variety of companies for a variety of positions; from pharmaceutical sales, to IT network providers, to construction project managers for a national food chain. This was the first lesson I learned. There are actually quite a few widely varying career choices available to me with my military background. As much homework as I had done on the careers I might be interested in doing following the military, there was still a lot I didn’t know, including what was out there. These job interviews were as much about gathering more information about different opportunities as it was about getting hired. 

Interviewers asked a lot of the same questions.

One thing you’ll quickly learn after doing several interviews in a row is that there are common questions you’ll be asked over and over. Sure, everybody asks you to introduce yourself, or to walk him or her through your resume. But I also got asked questions about certain aspects of my background from my resume. That told me two things: either my resume was confusing to them and it was something I needed to fix, or, it was an important aspect of my experience that people were interested in, so I should have a good explanation or story to expound upon it if the question was asked again. Little insights like these are golden for being well prepared down the line.

Storytelling.

Going through an interview is like working on a comedy stand up routine. You throw out a story and then refine it depending on the audience reactions. As I answered similar questions from interview to interview, I would pay attention to how well I was connecting with people. I had worked on dozens of questions in preparation for my interviews, writing out pages and pages of answers, but doing it in person was the best feedback. I could see when the interviewers would nod in agreement, or laugh at an anecdote, or start to get that faraway glaze look in their eyes if I talked for too long. 

Reading the interview.

One of the things you learn from going through the interview process is a better understanding of what the interviewer is looking for. Sometimes, they would dive deep into my experience on managing projects. Other times, it was my ability to grasp technical subjects. And sometimes, it was just to see if I was someone they could get along with. I started to see how little some of the things in my background mattered, and how important others were. Depending on the position or industry, I started to have a good idea of what I might be asked, and this really helped me hone in on the types of answers I would give, and what I would highlight from my background.

All of this experience was invaluable for my next run of interviews about a month later. I was more confident, had well refined answers, and was more prepared to answer questions about my background. With the practice that I had under my belt, I landed a job in the industry I wanted. 

Finally, the issue of that phone call…one more important lesson I got out of all this — I needed a better system to keep track of what my follow up appointments would be.

Comment below or start the conversation here and connect within the military community.

Uvize: How A Navy Veteran Launched A Scrappy Technology Startup

Capt Sean Maday, USAF

Dave Cass is the CEO and Co-founder of Uvize, a technology startup focused on helping military Veterans succeed in higher education. Cass and the Uvize team have been leveraging their military training and experience to build a scrappy technology company in Boulder, Colorado.

After commissioning as a U.S. Navy officer through the ROTC program at Tulane University, Dave Cass became a naval aviator and flew SH-60B Seahawk helicopters. After ten years on active-duty, Cass chose to prioritize his family life and separate from the Navy.

Like many transitioning Veterans, Cass took a job with a large corporation upon leaving the military. Cass joined Sun Microsystems in Broomfield, Colorado and led efforts to craft business strategies for international markets.

While Cass found career success in corporate America, he missed the camaraderie and continual education he had enjoyed in the Navy. It was the desire to rekindle those feelings that drew him to pursue higher education through a graduate program at the University of Colorado. As a graduate student, Cass became passionate about helping other Veterans find success in higher education.

At the University of Colorado, Cass met David Parker, a U.S. Air Force Veteran, who was using the GI Bill to fund his second master’s degree. Parker is an amazing example of educational success for a military Veteran. Parker had earned his bachelor's degree using tuition assistance while on active-duty and knew what it took be successful in academia. In Parker, Cass found someone who could take academic concepts about mentorship and transform them into pragmatic technical solutions.

Cass and Parker aligned on a desire to improve lagging higher education graduation rates among Veterans. This mutual passion led to an idea that would became Uvize. Today, Uvize is a software platform that delivers mentorship, online academic orientation and preparation to military Veterans attending colleges and universities.

The idea for Uvize matured into a true startup in 2012 when Cass and Parker attended the first Patriot Boot Camp in Washington, D.C. The 3-day Patriot Boot Camp program helped the pair hone their startup vision and solidify their co-founder relationship.

After Patriot Boot Camp, Cass and Parker were accepted into the Techstars Rising Stars program - a year long mentorship pairing that extends technology startup opportunities to demographic groups that are underrepresented in the technology startup community (Veterans being the underrepresented population in this case). During their time in Rising Stars, Cass and Parker further refined and developed their idea for Uvize.

In 2013, Uvize applied to, participated in and graduated from the 2013 TechStars-Kaplan startup accelerator program in New York City. Techstars is an incredibly competitive technology accelerator that annually only accepts 1% of applicants to participate. By the numbers, the selection rates for participation in Techstars are more competitive than the admissions processes at some of the most revered U.S. universities. The Techstars accelerator experience gave Uvize seed capital and 13 weeks of intensive business mentorship. The Uvize team stood out among the thousands of tech startups that applied to Techstars in 2013, and joined an exclusive group of companies that can call themselves Techstars graduates.

By being accepted to Techstars, Cass and Parker achieved a sort of elite status in the technology startup community, and ultimately dispelled several false notions about the nature of technology entrepreneurship - the same notions that may be keeping other military Veterans from jumping into technology entrepreneurship.

Popular culture often portrays technology company founders as young university students who wear flip flops and come from non-traditional professional channels. These stereotypes can make many military Veterans feel too old or too institutionalized to even attempt a technology startup.

Military Veterans who are interested in launching their own technology startups can look to Dave Cass and the Uvize team for inspiration and a general roadmap for success! Today the Uvize platform has 29,000 online participants and is realizing Cass’s dream of helping Veterans be successful in higher education. The future for Uvize looks bright as they expand their mentorship platform to support entrepreneurship accelerators and corporate organizations.

The triumph of Uvize is a testament to how hard work, resolve and execution of a plan can bring success in business. Uvize stands as a shining example of Veterans leveraging their military training and personal perseverance to build technology companies of scale and impact.

This is the first profile in a three-part series to highlight successful Veteran-led technology companies. This series is a partnership between RallyPoint and Patriot Boot Camp.

Comment below or start the conversation here and connect within the military community.

Bringing Veterans into the Technology Business

Capt Sean Maday, US Air Force Reserve 

The average American today is surrounded by technology. The smartphones in our pockets, the individual apps on those devices and the fitness monitors on our wrists are just a few of the artifacts symbolizing how technology has permeated into our everyday lives.

What is missing in all of this technology is the collective influence of U.S. military Veterans in the business and engineering efforts behind modern software and hardware. The most successful technology companies in the United States today were not founded by Veterans and are not currently led by Veterans.

There are certainly Veterans involved in the technology business, but there is a noticeable void of Veterans on the executive teams that are building the contemporary technology industry. Veterans are not shaping the technology market or leading the cadre of businesses building modern enterprise and consumer tools at companies like Google, Apple, Samsung, Uber, Facebook, LinkedIn, Evernote and Twitter.

I have seen the drought of Veteran influence in the technology industry first hand as a member of both the military and technology tribes.

When I left the active-duty Air Force in 2009, I went to Silicon Valley and took a sales engineering position at Google. After a few years I was promoted to a product management role. As I immersed myself deeper in the technology industry, I began to seek out other Veterans. The scarcity of peers and mentors in Silicon Valley with military experience was notable.

At Google, a company of over 30,000 employees when I resigned in 2014, there were only around 300 U.S. military Veterans. Many technology companies have recognized the need to recruit underrepresented communities and include Veterans in their diversity and inclusion strategies.

All too often though, the positions generated by these efforts are simply aimed at selling software, hardware or services to the government. These are not the coveted engineering and product management roles that are charged with designing complex software systems, leading development teams and creating new products.

When Veterans are able to join large technology companies, they are relegated to individual contributor roles or mid-level management positions. There are certainly exceptions where Veterans have  achieved more in technology companies, but the frequency of these successes is largely anecdotal.

There is a better way! The world is full of interesting problems that have not yet been solved, and Veterans are keenly equipped to meet these challenges. Rather than joining large technology companies and fighting their way to the top, Veterans can become technology entrepreneurs, start businesses and change the world on their own terms.

There has never been a better time to grow an idea into a scalable technology company. Developing a technology startup does not necessitate an MBA, it simply requires having an idea, creating a vision, sustaining motivation and investing hard work. These are character traits that many Veterans already possess.

There are Veterans out there right now forging this entrepreneurial path, and there are programs expressly aimed at helping others along the way. If Veterans invest a bit of time to learn the language, understand the processes and connect with the right mentors, they can build the next generation of great technology businesses.

In an effort to highlight the connective pathways linking Veterans to technology entrepreneurship, Patriot Boot Camp and RallyPoint have partnered to publish a series of profiles on successful Veteran-led technology companies.

Stay tuned for great startup stories, amazing personal transformations and a lot of raw entrepreneurial motivation!

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Sean Maday is a director at Patriot Boot Camp, an intensive 3-day event that seeks to help Veterans become technology entrepreneurs. The program is free for U.S. military Veterans and/or their spouses. The next Patriot Boot Camp event is in New York City on April 17, 2015. Follow their RallyPoint group page here!: http://rly.pt/patriot-boot-camp

Comment below or start the conversation here and connect within the military community.