Life as an active duty soldier can get busy in a hurry. With tasks to perform on base, community commitments and everything else to take care of, active duty soldiers and veterans often don’t have time to put pen to paper on brilliant ideas they might think of during a lull on the base.
Enter Patriot Boot Camp.
The nonprofit, founded in 2012, aims to provide active duty servicemen and women, their spouses and other veterans by providing those groups with mentors, educational programming and a team of experts in order to help this group of people hatch their brilliant ideas.
The organization is led by a veteran and former Patriot Boot Camp participant, as interim CEO Josh Carter served in the Navy and has continued to bolster their programming year over year.
And 2019 will be no different, as Patriot Boot Camp programming will start off with a bang. In partnership with USAA, Patriot Boot Camp will be coming to Austin to host its second tech entrepreneurship program February 8-10.
The event will be held at USAA’s Design Studio, and feature speakers including Meriah Garret, the USAA chief design officer, and Capital Factory founder Joshua Baer. Carter said while the second iteration of the tech entrepreneurship program will look very similar to the first, he hopes veterans get a similar value of it.
Since its inception, Patriot Boot Camp has been a success. More than 800 entrepreneurs have come through the program, generating $70 million worth of funding and creating 1,300 jobs. Not only that, but seven companies have been acquired, most recently GitLinks out of Austin.
Carter credits the success to the mentor-based nature of Patriot Boot Camp.
“We pair veterans with people like Jim Booth, the founder of Sphero and the inspiration behind BB-8 (the droid from Star Wars),” Carter said. “They give founders tangible feedback about their business.”
With three programs in Austin, Seattle and Atlanta and three VetHacks programs in Boston, San Francisco and Chicago, Patriot Boot Camp has cast a wide net.
It has also developed a lot of content and programing for its entrepreneurs. That includes VetHacks, a 3 day builder event, where participants spend the weekend figuring out if their ideas have merit. It’s open to everyone, but the only caveat every team has to have veteran or military spouse on it.
The partnership with Founder Institute has given birth to the Veteran Founder Initiative. The goal of the initiative is develop 100 veteran-led companies in program with the specific objective to find funding for the veterans’ projects.
Carter says the future is still being written for Patriot Boot Camp, but the impact is clear. Naji H. Kelley, Navy veteran and Patriot Boot Camp participant said his experience was valuable and helped him connect with Ray Antonio of PermitZone who became a cheerleader of Kelley’s.
“Patriot Boot Camp is a great program and community aimed at helping veterans build companies," said Kelley, who is also co-founder of BLNDED Media, which has an editorial partnership with Austin Inno. "Their partnership with Techstars is a great way for transitioning veterans to connect with the startup community to learn what it means to build a tech startup and connect with a great community of mentors to make the leap into entrepreneurship tangible.”
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to remove Nate Boyer from the Austin speaker lineup. The spelling of Sphero has also been corrected.
