#190: Investing in Military Veteran-Owned Businesses with Derren Burrell and Joshua Weed, USAFA ‘01

<p style="text-align: center;"><em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">“It’s great to get together with like-minded individuals to discuss the things that bring us together and certainly, the vetrepreneur community that we’re part of is something that’s growing and thriving...we wanted to create a fund that addressed the veteran network because we know how veterans have this incredible ability to execute and get things done. They’ve served their country, they continue to serve when they take off that uniform, and want to continue to make that same difference. That’s really the catalyst behind Veteran Ventures Capital. We’ve developed it, we’ve grown it, we’ve had some challenges, but just like a typical veteran, we’ve adapted and overcome.”</span></em></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">- Derren Burrell</span></p> <p> </p> <p style="text-align: center;"><em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">“We all know and believe that veterans make great entrepreneurs for a variety of reasons: leadership, teamwork skills, mission-focused, effectiveness, perseverance and grit...all those things contribute to making the founding principles of good business leaders. And yet, even though we have those data points and even though we see that veterans are overrepresented in the CEO S&P 500...you still have this funding gap. It’s 30% more difficult to get venture capital backing as a veteran. That’s crazy...how do you fix that and how do you make sure the money is betting on the best horse? That’s really our founding rationale and when I heard about what Derren is doing, I said I’ve got to get involved with this.”</span></em></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">-</span></em> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Joshua Weed (USAFA ‘01)</span></em></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Derren Burrell is Founder, President & Managing Partner of Veteran Ventures Capital and a Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. After a 21-year military career that included five de