Florida State University is set to welcome 18 caregivers of veterans who have suffered disabilities related to their post-9/11 military service, family members of active duty military, as well as to survivors of those who lost their lives from across the country to its 2014 Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans’ Families program, scheduled for Sept. 10-18.
The participants will spend an intense week in classes, workshops and breakout sessions and hear from industry professionals on best practices that will help them start a business or take their current business to the next level.
Now in its third year at Florida State, the boot camp integrates training in small-business management with caregiver and family issues, positioning the family member to launch and grow a small business in a way that is complementary to other family responsibilities. The generosity of sponsors such as the Student Veterans Center,The Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship, located in FSU’s College of Business, Scott and Holly Bodenweber, The Hudson Family Foundation and the Institute for Veterans and Military Families, among others, allows the EBV-F program to be offered free to participants.
In addition to three Floridians who will take part in this year’s boot camp, participants hail from Connecticut, Georgia, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
Participants recently completed the three-week online portion of the program to prepare for the upcoming group session in Tallahassee, where they will be immersed in the basics of entrepreneurship. Florida State and Syracuse University are the only two universities in the nation that offer the program for veterans’ families.
This year a key topic will focus on the business model canvas, an alternative to business plan development, which helps startup businesses invest time into building products and services based on the needs of early customers. In addition, other key topics to be addressed in the program will include opportunity recognition, business concept development, profit models, resource acquisition strategies, venture launch methods, guerrilla marketing approaches, deal structuring and negotiation, valuation, entrepreneurial finance and unique funding opportunities for veterans with disabilities, operations and operating models, service delivery, risk management, human resource management, and legal and regulatory challenges.
About the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans’ Families
This educational training program is only offered through the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University and the Florida State University College of Business. The program leverages the flexibility inherent in small business ownership to provide a vocational and economic “path-forward” for military family members who are now caregivers to a wounded warrior — or for the surviving spouse of a military member who gave his or her life in service to our country.