Many American veterans are becoming entrepreneurs when they finish their tours of duty. A large number of these veterans are centered in the D.C. area, thanks to its proximity to government and its concentration of veteran groups.

Mark Rockefeller is the founder and CEO of StreetShares, a veteran-centered lending platform. He said veterans continue to be a powerful resource for the greater Washington region.

StreetShares works as a lending community for the military and veteran community. “We have a generation of veterans that are getting into entrepreneurship, like myself, I’m an Iraq veteran myself,” Rockefeller said.

“That generation, by and large, entered into our entrepreneurial journey at a time when the traditional institutions weren’t there for us,” said Rockefeller. When Rockefeller returned from Iraq in December of 2008, a vast market crisis was just beginning. “Lehman Brothers was about to crash and everything was about to kick off,” he said.

He was spurred to provide support for veteran entrepreneurs where other institutions didn’t.

“We have this extraordinary basis of trust among veterans,” Rockefeller told What’s Working in Washington. StreetShares is “a community of now 32,000 members and growing, that are lending to each other and monetizing that trust,” he said.

Since loans to veterans are funded by other veterans, there’s a higher sense of obligation to pay them, which leads to lower risk and subsequently lower interest rates.

Lower risk is also due to veteran entrepreneurs having “grit,” said Rockefeller. “So much of entrepreneurship is to just keep on keeping on. It’s to persevere, it’s to have that tenacity,” and that kind of determination is what veteran have, thanks to their experiences in the military.

“One of the great things that StreetShares can offer is an actual, tangible way for people to get involved in the lives of veterans,” said Rockefeller. “You can come in, and you can support these loans as an investment. So it becomes far more than just a polite ‘thank you for your service,’ you can actually do something about it.”

StreetShares’ loans run from $2,000 to $500,000. However, “the average loan size right now is $22,000,” said Rockefeller. “The investors typically put in between $25 and $200 dollars in each loan.”

StreetShares chose Virginia as its base of operations because “we live here. We love it here, and there’s tremendous benefits that come with looking at the landscape, figuring out where your key stakeholders are, and setting up your business next door,” said Rockefeller.

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