Mentoring program aims to help vets with business startups

Wisconsin vets who are starting businesses will get help with the launch of Bunker Labs @ Wisconsin, a 14-week mentoring program that’s spreading to cities across the U.S.

Bunker Labs, which started last year in Chicago, announced at the University Research Park yesterday that it would expand its offerings to Wisconsin, with the help of $10,000 from AT&T Wisconsin.

The program aims to help the 25 percent of veterans who want to start companies and hopes to boost entrepreneurship numbers to post-WWII figures. That’s when 49 percent of veterans came back and started a business, said co-founder and CEO Todd Connor.

“This is the legacy of the military veteran, to come back and grow the local economy,” Connor said.

Bunker Labs will also provide a national network of veterans for its members, helping an agribusiness company to move to Wisconsin if the state is a better fit or a Wisconsin entrepreneur get connected to Silicon Valley, for example.

Gov. Scott Walker, who attended the announcement, touted the state’s efforts in helping veterans, which he said contributed to Wisconsin’s low veteran unemployment rate of 4.1 percent. And citing Connor’s numbers on post-WWII entrepreneurship, he said some of Wisconsin’s largest employers exist because veterans had “the fortitude, the dedication, the desire to go start a company.”

— By Polo Rocha
WisBusiness.com