How to Find/Approach Veteran Owned SMBs

June 20, 2024
by a searcher from United States Air Force Academy in Alpharetta, GA, USA
I am a Veteran (US Air Force) and while I have been in the civilian world for more than 25 years, still lean on my military background when it comes to leadership in my current position. As a Self-Funded searcher, what suggestions do you have to find and approach Veteran Owned SMBs to 1) Learn how they got started and operate their business and 2) Possibly learn if they have any interest in selling to another veteran who will have similar values and leadership styles?
from Harvard University in Boston, MA, USA
Back when SDVOSB certification was run by CVE, getting an instant export of all ~13,000 active registered SDVOSBs was a piece of cake. Now that the program falls under SBA authority, the public user interface is much less "scrapeable." Even so, give https://veterans.certify.sba.gov/ a look. It still allows you to sort and filter by State and NAICS Code. DSBS as mentioned by Chris could be the next-best alternative now. For finding "regular" companies that happen to be veteran-owned, could try something like https://www.veteranownedbusiness.com/ (claims to have a list of 40k),
Back to the govcon world, additional tools you can use for some early stage research and/or diligence would be USASpending.gov and FPDS.gov to look up prime awards to a particular company as well as the competitive history of a particular opportunity (e.g., what set-aside basis was it solicited under, what was total awarded value, how much additional funding got added / initial funding got de-obligated, how much competition was there for the award, etc.)
I've seen a lot of increased interest in this specific idea over the past few years as searchers continue to niche down and find where they can best differentiate themselves. And I do believe there is a significant "win win" opportunity in terms of valuation given all the tricky complications around ownership, management, and control. It's *tough* for owners to sell these designated businesses, so you as a searcher are potentially offering real value. And the market dynamics support a self-funded searcher acquiring a great company at a really great price due to the ceiling on growth and severely limited buyer pool. But it's not some target-rich Nirvana where there are dozens or hundreds of amazing businesses just waiting for you to be the first veteran searcher to cold call and offer them 3x EBITDA.
from United States Naval Academy in San Diego, CA, USA
Since this is a vetaran focused thread, adding a shameless pitch for our Veteran ETA Bootcamp Info Session on 6/24 at 5pm PST. Please sign up below!
https://www.searchfunder.com/event/view/1641