Building Momentum | Application Preview
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General Information
Business Registration Number: 471245344
Location: Alexandria, VA, United States
Length of Operation: 1-5
Number of Employees: 26-50 Employees
Annual Gross Income: $1M to $10M
Annual Gross Expense: $1M to $10M
Open to Loans: NO
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Funding Usage
Building Momentum proposes to provide free skills training to veterans twice a month in technologies like welding, 3D printing, coding and electronics, soldering, laser cutting, CAD/CAM, and woodworking while providing an environment and a community where veterans feel safe and enabled to talk through issues like PTSD, suicide, divorce, careers, and other life challenges. As a SDVOSB and owner with PTSD I have found the veteran gatherings to be healing, but they are few and far between. This skills training provides veterans with actual high-tech skills but in a relaxed, informal, and community-first environment in our workshop. To date, we have taught over 9,000 active duty service members all of these skills but have never focused on veterans. I want to use this grant to pilot this concept of gathering plus learning in a place where active duty service members have been getting trained for years. The grant funds would cover my/staff time, prep time, consumables like 3D printer filament and welding gas, and any food/beverages for sessions that will go from 1900-2200 on Tuesday nights at our prototyping facility at 5380 Eisenhower Ave Bldg C in Alexandria, VA. Building Momentum will provide usage of all 3D printers, welders, laser cutters, wood working tools, and any coding resources like computers, microcontrollers and sensors.
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Business Plan
Building Momentum training for active duty service members is growing every year as our technology problem solving training is directly in line with the Force Design Plan of 2030 as mandated by the Marine Corps and echoed by SOCOM and other services. But growing our veteran training from this pilot may be accomplished in a few ways: 1) Skill Bridge programs may leverage this training to prepare service members leaving the military to get technology based jobs thereby growing the offering. 2) Industry struggles to hire veterans with the requisite skills in tech sectors and may fund technology training for future veteran employees thereby reducing the time and financial strain on the hiring process for companies. Building Momentum's relationships with industry can be instrumental in this pilot program. 3) The Veteran's Administration might see value in the mental health effects of having a community-centric skill building offering and underwrite the training as a mental health treatment. 4) Veterans may fund the training themselves. The pilot program will optimize the expenses and determine the price per student per class cost to veterans and interviews will generate data on whether the price point is palatable. Building Momentum has been training military service members for nearly a decade with an extremely high level of quality and a second-to-none reputation of having the best real world training in the DOD. Our Innovation Boot Camp has been featured in TV shows, network news broadcasts, and was instrumental in the winning of the Best Veteran Owned Small Business in America (US Chamber of Commerce). Now we want to bring this training to veterans who need a supportive community and want to learn new skills. The year-long pilot program will generate significant data via interviews to see if a larger program is viable or needed. This training is low risk with a very high potential return (better mental health for vets, better jobs, supportive community, safe space for dialogue, mechanism for industry to source better employees) and since Building Momentum already has all of the infrastructure and classrooms the funding is minimal and will mostly pay for staff time to teach.
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Self Identified Competition
We have been told by SOCOM/JSOC/USMC that there is no one else that teaches technology in the hands-on real-world approach that we do. We have not found competitors in this particular space and since I frequently visit battlefields and disaster zones to see how current and emerging tech will help solve real world problems our training is always relevant to reality. In addition to the aforementioned, the Building Momentum staff is very comfortable training service members and understand the challenges veterans face, from PTSD to financial strain and other life challenges. Our staff also works with under-served communities and children thereby appreciating the diversity veterans bring to gatherings.
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