♔ USA Veteran Business Chess Board
Every state is a square. Every square holds a piece, set by its own data. The clock is the veteran population itself: smaller, older, and handing off ownership faster than new veterans are taking it up. This board shows where the pieces stand, which ones are under threat, and the moves that hold the line through 2040.
Fifty-one squares and Puerto Rico
Tap a square for its dossier. The piece is the state's strongest data position. The bar along the bottom is its threat level — how exposed its veteran business base is to aging, population loss and thin certification.
The trend if no one moves
From 2017 to 2020, veteran-owned employer firms fell 11.5% and their employment fell 9.8% while nonveteran firms grew (SBA Office of Advocacy). Projected forward from Census counts, that pace removes firms and jobs between 2026 and 2040.
- Owners are old. 63% of majority-veteran employer owners are 55 or older; 31% are 65+ (Federal Reserve SBCS, 2024).
- The population shrinks. 18.27M veterans in 2023 fall to about 12.9M by 2040.
- New veterans start fewer firms. Only 4.5% of post-9/11 veterans have started a business.
- Veterans hire veterans. Veteran owners are about 30% more likely to hire a veteran. When a veteran firm closes or sells, that hiring edge leaves with it.
The human capital loss forecast
veteran employer firms have owners who are 55 or older today. By 2040 nearly all of them change hands or close. Inside them: jobs, about of them held by veterans. To hold the line, America needs new veteran employer firms every year. Separating service members produce about .
A × gap. Closing it takes veterans already out of uniform, veteran buyers for retiring owners' firms, and keeping firms veteran-owned at sale.
Model: 2026 firm estimate minus firms whose owners are 55+ today, plus new firms × 14 years. Veteran share of all workers is 4.98% (BLS 2025); veteran-owned firms are assumed to hire at the advantage you set. Firms sold to nonveteran owners keep their jobs but lose the hiring advantage. Assumptions are labeled; change them and the board answers.
Where the veteran population thins out
VBSI cohort projection from VA's VetPop2023 state-by-age table (September 30, 2023), aged forward each year with mortality and about 200,000 new veterans a year, calibrated to VA's roughly 13 million national figure for 2040.
Resilient states hold younger veterans, usually near large installations. They are the natural home of the next generation of veteran founders. Illinois's VetPop2023 figures include an unusually large group of veterans under 35; they are used as published.
The new wave — and the unpromoted pawns
The SBA's VetCert registry holds active veteran-certified firms. 61.6% were founded in 2020 or later; the median certified firm is 5 years old.
The oldest pieces still on the board
Veteran-owned and SBA-certified today, founded more than a century ago. Ownership passed to veterans somewhere along the way — proof that succession, done right, keeps a firm alive for generations.
Who represents the pieces
Congressional districts holding the most active VetCert firms. Northern Virginia and Maryland dominate — the federal-contracting center of the board.
The full table of 450 districts is in the district dataset. 18.6% of certified firms hide their location, so counts are a floor.
What the board has already lost
of the 51 Chicago-area veteran firms certified by the city in 2016–2018 have let that certification expire. 10 (19.6%) — including Semper Fi Veteran Construction, Sergeant Construction and American Veterans Construction — still hold federal VetCert today.
Texas veteran-owned entities forfeited in a single month, February 2024 — mostly 2022 formations that missed required franchise tax reports. Paperwork, not markets.
veteran-owned employer firms lost from 2017 to 2020 while nonveteran firms grew 3.0%. Veterans owned 1 in 8 employer firms in 2014; 1 in 11 by 2020.
The pieces that matter most are people
6,488 veterans died by suicide in 2024 — 17.7 a day, the second straight annual decline (VA, 2026 report). If the 2024 rate held from 2026 through 2040, about more veterans would be lost. Every one is the loss that counts. Measured only in the terms of this board, at the post-9/11 founding rate that would include about people who would have started a business.
The CDC names Strengthen Economic Supports as a core suicide-prevention strategy, and lists financial problems and job loss among risk factors. Ownership, a paycheck and a team are protective ground. Every succession completed and every firm that survives year five is part of the defense.
Rates fell 4.8% among VA-enrolled veterans in 2024 and rose 3.7% among those outside VA care; 62% of veterans lost in 2024 were not in VA care. Connection is the move. Veteran-owned workplaces, which hire veterans at higher rates, are one of the places that connection happens.
Five moves that change the endgame
- Castle the Kings — succession. Match retiring veteran owners with transitioning service members and veteran buyers before they sell. 156,700 firms are in play by 2040.
- Promote the pawns — certification. Move uncertified veteran firms into VetCert and SAM.gov. In Texas alone, roughly 24,000 are eligible to try.
- Open the files — the founder pipeline. Raise the post-9/11 founding rate from 4.5%. Every point adds about 2,000 founders a year from separations alone.
- Protect the clock — year-five survival. Texas's veteran tax exemption ends at year five; 2,349 firms hit that line in 2027. Plan for it now.
- Guard the people. Treat economic stability as suicide prevention. Put the Veterans Crisis Line in every veteran business program.
Datasets spawned by this board
CC BY 4.0, with schema.org Dataset markup linking each file to its upstream sources so search engines and data catalogs can index and connect them.
The Veteran Business Record
When veteran businesses were born, how long they last, how they hold up in their local economies, and the human stakes behind every closure. Built from public registries and federal research, and published as open datasets anyone can reuse.
Milestones, 2014 to 2027
Policy, recognition, research and data events that shaped veteran business ownership. Filter by type.
How long Texas veteran firms stay alive
Kaplan–Meier survival of every veteran-owned entity on the Texas Secretary of State list, measured from formation date. Dashed markers show the national benchmark for all new private establishments (BLS, 2013 cohort).
| Years | Veteran (TX) | All new est. (BLS) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 99.3% | 79.6% |
| 2 | 91.7% | 68.9% |
| 3 | 89.1% | 61.4% |
| 4 | 86.8% | 55.3% |
Curves stop at 50 months, where fewer than 1,000 firms remain old enough to measure. Read carefully: Texas counts a registered entity as alive until it is dissolved or forfeited; BLS counts establishments with employees. A dormant LLC can stay "in existence." The gap is real direction, not a like-for-like score.
The five-year cliff
Texas SB 938 exempts new 100% veteran-owned firms from formation fees and franchise tax until their fifth anniversary. Every firm in this registry reaches that line on a known date. That makes 2027 the first real stress test.
| Year | Formed | Forfeited | Dissolved | Still exist |
|---|
The 2022 cohort's dip is one event: 847 forfeitures in February 2024, almost all 2022 formations. That timing matches missed first franchise-tax reports, which exempt firms must still file, rather than businesses failing. A reminder that paperwork, not markets, ends many young firms.
Share of majority-veteran-owned employer firms by age, 2024. Source: Federal Reserve Banks, Small Business Credit Survey, Firms in Focus: Veteran-owned Firms (2025). Veteran ownership fell from 11.0% of employer firms (2014) to 8.1% (2020) as older owners retire (SBA Office of Advocacy).
Where veteran firms hold the line
Share of veteran-owned entities still in existence, by city. Cities next to military installations — Fort Cavazos, Fort Bliss, Joint Base San Antonio and others — keep slightly more of their firms: 94.6% versus 93.5% elsewhere, and 88.1% versus 86.5% at four years.
Cities with the most filings. Gold rows sit next to an installation. Full table of 101 cities in the local-economy dataset below.
Named veteran businesses
Public business records only — no owner names, addresses or tax IDs. Ages update every day you load this page.
Of 305 self-reported NYC veteran businesses, 44.6% hold New York State SDVOB certification and 50.8% hold at least one certification.
Veteran suicide, and why economic strength matters
No business dataset is complete without the people behind it. The numbers below are the latest from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The CDC's Suicide Prevention Resource for Action names Strengthen Economic Supports as a core prevention strategy, and lists financial problems and job loss among risk factors. Veteran business ownership is one of those supports: income, purpose, and a team.
That is why this ledger tracks survival. A firm that lasts past year five is a paycheck, a mission and a community that keeps going.
This page links no individual business, closure or owner to any death. Rates for veterans ages 18–34 are highest (45.5 per 100,000), and fell 4.7% in 2024. Rates among VA-enrolled veterans fell 4.8%; among unenrolled veterans they rose 3.7%. Connection to care matters.
Datasets spawned from this page
Each file is published under CC BY 4.0 with schema.org Dataset markup, so search engines and data catalogs can index it and link it back to its upstream sources.
Jeff Shuford across The Business Journals
One contributor profile. Forty-four metro business markets. On the American City Business Journals network, Jeff Shuford's byline carries a single profile ID — 39778 — that resolves in every market. Change the city in the address, and his profile loads for that metro. The map below plots all 44; click any beacon to open that market's profile.
About the contributor
Jeff Shuford is president of Tech From Vets, a veteran-owned technology company in Jacksonville, Florida. Tech From Vets merges NFL veterans and military veterans in the technology industry and builds websites and mobile applications for clients nationwide.
Source: The Business Journals contributor profile, bio 39778 (“Contributing Writer”). His columns run in the Media & Marketing, Career & Workplace, and Technology sections.
How one profile covers 44 markets
Every Business Journals metro shares the same site structure. The contributor ID stays fixed; only the city slug changes:
www.bizjournals.com/austin/bio/39778/Jeff+Shuford
www.bizjournals.com/seattle/bio/39778/Jeff+Shuford
Swap the highlighted city for any market below and the profile follows.
The national map
Each beacon is a Business Journals market where Jeff Shuford's profile resolves. Click a beacon to open that market's profile in a new tab; filter by region to focus the map and the directory below.
Alaska and Hawaii are shown as insets (lower left). Honolulu carries Pacific Business News.
Market directory
All 44 markets, each linking straight to Jeff Shuford's profile on that paper. Search by city, state, or publication; the region buttons above also filter this list.
Jeff Shuford: nationally syndicated columns
Jeff Shuford's small-business and marketing column ran through More Content Now — the GateHouse Media syndication network — in 2019, and was reprinted across more than 30 daily newspapers from Oregon to Delaware. Every column is below, with where it ran and how to read it.
5 ways to improve your content marketing distribution strategy
How to get your content in front of more people after you publish it.
How to enhance your video marketing strategy for 2019
Why video is the No. 1 way to reach mobile customers, and how to use it.
5 Simple ways entrepreneurs can learn to heighten their chances of a successful business career
Long-term habits that raise the odds of a lasting career.
Ran in 4 newspapers
How to attract more customers to your small business for free
Low- and no-cost ways to bring new customers through the door.
Ran in 9 newspapers
7 skills to turbocharge your digital marketing performance
The skills to raise your digital marketing performance.
Ran in 5 newspapers
6 skills successful entrepreneurs possess
The skills that separate successful founders from the rest.
Ran in 5 newspapers
5 ways to develop a strong small business brand
Building a recognizable small-business brand customers trust.
Ran in 2 newspapers
5 excellent benefits of storytelling for startups
Why startups should not postpone storytelling, and what it does for growth.
Ran in 2 newspapers
5 unique ways small business owners can increase their odds of long-term success
Strategic moves owners can make to improve their long-term odds.
Ran in 2 newspapers
5 essential truths 'wantrepreneurs' must understand before quitting their day job
Hard truths to face before you quit your day job to start a company.
Ran in 5 newspapers
Seven strategic ways to increase attention to your company
Strategic ways to increase attention and leads for your company.
Ran in 3 newspapers
5 super simple ways to improve your franchise business' marketing
Simple ways franchise owners can sharpen their marketing.
Ran in 2 newspapers
Social selling tips to increase lead generation
A social selling plan to increase lead generation.
Ran in 3 newspapers
5 ways entrepreneurs can become better business leaders
How entrepreneurs can grow into respected leaders.
Ran in 1 newspapers
Developing a beneficial brand identity strategy for your business
Building a brand identity strategy for long-term growth.
Ran in 2 newspapers
Why brand positioning should be part of your company's digital marketing strategy
Why brand positioning belongs in your digital marketing strategy.
Ran in 3 newspapers
Read more of Jeff Shuford's work
Durable author archives where his columns and articles are collected.
Where the columns ran
The daily newspapers that carried Jeff Shuford's More Content Now column in 2019.
Compiled by Veteran Business Super Intelligence℠ · Sponsored by National Invest In Veterans Week® · Columns © their respective publishers; originally distributed by More Content Now (GateHouse Media). · veteransuperintelligence.com
Veteran data, open to everyone
Every VBSI dataset in one place: VA disability compensation by county, veteran lending and credit, owner diversity, state relocation rankings, advocacy and the military family. Free to download and reuse under CC BY 4.0. Seventy VBSI datasets are already indexed in Google Dataset Search.
VA Disability Compensation by County, FY 2025
County-level counts of U.S. veterans receiving VA disability compensation on September 30, 2025, for 3,144 counties and county equivalents. Each county carries total recipients, combined service-connected rating bands (0-20%, 30-40%, 50-60%, 70-90%, 100%), age groups and sex, plus SBA-certified service-disabled veteran-owned firms in the county and straight-line miles to the nearest major military installation, with five county rankings. Built from the Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics FY 2025 release. Small counts are suppressed; aggregates only.
All files (11)
- Combined JSON
.json - All CSVs
.zip - All counties
.csv - States
.csv - Outside U.S. counties
.csv - Flyover: largest
.csv - Flyover: highest 100%
.csv - Flyover: installations
.csv - Flyover: SDVOSB gaps
.csv - Flyover: younger
.csv - Flyover: women
.csv
VBSI Sand Table baseline datasets
The baseline behind the VBSI Sand Table: 131 datasets in 13 families covering veterans and the force by state, vetrepreneur firms and owner diversity, business capabilities, the frontier and connectivity, advocacy and legislative support, capital and lending, federal training reach, credit conditions, the military community, military children and the next generation, and military spouses and caregiving. 3,961 rows across the 50 states and national series. Aggregates only; counts under 5 are shown as under 5.
VBSI Open Data Vault, FY2019-2024
Fourteen datasets on U.S. veteran entrepreneurship: SBA 7(a), Express, 504 and Microloan lending to veterans and average loan sizes, USDA farm lending, federal training program reach, Federal Reserve credit conditions for veteran-owned employer firms, Census ownership change by industry, FINRA financial resilience, SBA-certified firms by congressional district, capabilities by certification, profile activity, veteran AI and SI firm projections, military installations and the SI Desert Index. 927 rows in all. Aggregates only; counts under 5 are shown as under 5.
All files (16)
- Combined JSON
.json - All CSVs
.zip - sba-loans
.csv - sba-average
.csv - usda-farm
.csv - training
.csv - sbcs-veteran
.csv - finra
.csv - abs-change
.csv - districts
.csv - cap-cert
.csv - activity
.csv - structure
.csv - ai-si
.csv - installations
.csv - desert-index
.csv
Veteran Founder Relocation Index
Ten datasets ranking the 50 states for aspiring veteran entrepreneurs on the density of fellow veterans, certified veteran-owned firms, business momentum, defense demand, household broadband, state taxes, rural reach and official National Invest In Veterans Week support, combined into a balanced relocation index. Includes military spouse capability, childcare and caregiving measures and a Montana spotlight. Aggregates only.
All files (12)
- Combined JSON
.json - All CSVs
.zip - index
.csv - comrades
.csv - vobs
.csv - rural-broadband
.csv - support
.csv - spouses
.csv - evidence
.csv - capabilities
.csv - montana
.csv - presets
.csv
Veteran Owner Diversity Datasets
Five datasets on the diversity of certified veteran business owners in the United States: Black American, women, Native American, Hispanic and Asian American ownership across SBA certification, the Federal Reserve credit survey, Census ownership change and FINRA financial resilience, by state and congressional district. Connects certification data with employer-firm survey data that is rarely compared side by side. Aggregates only; counts under 5 are shown as under 5.
Vetrepreneur Intelligence Advocate Tracker
A tracker of elected officials and public figures who have supported National Invest In Veterans Week and whether they were reelected, including the 124 South Carolina sponsors of House Resolution 3825 and advocates such as Montana Governor Greg Gianforte and the Douglas County, Oregon commissioners. Includes reelection rates, votes won and a statistical test of whether supporting the week is associated with reelection. Aggregates and public election records only.
How to use this data
Each dataset is free to use, share and build on under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Please credit Veteran Business Super Intelligence. Figures are aggregates; counts under 5 are suppressed, and no personal information is included.
- Formats
- Every release offers CSV files and a combined JSON file; most also offer a zip of all CSVs.
- Finding it in Google
- Seventy VBSI datasets are already indexed in Google Dataset Search, published on veteranbusiness.si. This page carries structured metadata for each featured release so Google can index these as well. The button at the top shows the full set; each card links to its own result.
- Sources
- Primary U.S. government and research data: the Department of Veterans Affairs, SBA, the Federal Reserve, the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Defense and others. Each dataset's page lists its sources.
- Updates
- Datasets are rebuilt when a new source release is published. The version and update date appear on each card.
Veteran Business Super Intelligence℠ · Sponsored by National Invest In Veterans Week® · Data CC BY 4.0 · veteransuperintelligence.com
Our Team
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Retired U.S. Army First Sergeant Kevin D. Shoun
Senior Advisor | Civic Leadership and Policy Development
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President Angel Shuford
Chief Financial Officer (CFO) | Army Veteran
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Sara Pomposo
Chief Advisor | Audience Growth & Strategic Syndication
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GRAMMY Hall of Famer | Brand Ambassador
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Pastor Ron Henson
Social Impact Advisor | Navy Veteran
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LTC Rickey L. Pope USA, Ret.
CO-FOUNDER | Retired Army Veteran, Retired Firefighter
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CO-FOUNDER | Iraq War Veteran & Military Spouse
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CO-FOUNDER | NFL Veteran & Military Brat
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Trademark Attorney | Veteran IP Advocate
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Advisor | Retired Army Veteran
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Legacy UX/UI Designer | Army Veteran
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Mike Bicek
Creative Director | Army Veteran
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Private Jewel
Co-Founders Pup | Biewer Terrier
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Lonnell McCall I
Sr. Spokesperson | Retired Navy Veteran
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Celeste Everett
Legacy IT Consultant | Army Veteran
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Lonnell McCall II
Jr. Spokesperson | Military Brat
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Christopher B. Mueller
Lead Video Spokesperson | Veteran Advocate
