Dayton Daily News: Helping veterans start businesses is the mission at new Wright State office

The Small Business Administration (SBA) officially opened a Veterans Business Outreach Center office at Wright State University’s Millett Hall Wednesday morning, the first office of its kind in Ohio, SBA officials said.

The need for the new center has been evident, supporters said. Since January 2021, the nation has seen more than 19.8 million new business applications nationwide, including over 556,000 in Ohio. The SBA recently released data showing it backed $1.3 billion in loans to veteran entrepreneurs in fiscal year 2024.

The new office is the result of two years of conversations between Wright State and the SBA, said Seth Gordon, director of Wright State’s Veteran and Military Center.

There was a feeling that a similar center in Michigan wasn’t serving Ohio residents, Gordon said in an interview. And the presence of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — one of the nation’s largest Air Force bases — and the Dayton area’s concentration of defense contractors and veterans provided a natural center of gravity when thinking about where to locate an Ohio office.

“It’s a huge, big deal,” Gordon said. “To add this means that we’re expanding our reach from just serving the students at Wright State University, to serving the veterans in the state of Ohio.”

“I think entrepreneurship is about taking a leap into the unknown,” he added. “We know that the more prepared you are, if you talk to veterans … they always talk about going back to their training.”

The new center hopes to provide some of that training not only to veterans but to military spouses inclined to explore the possibilities of starting a new business.

Read the complete article at daytondailynews.com.