Vendor Goes To Bat For Veterans, Budding Channel Partners

Cloud software developer AppRiver has grown each year since its founding in 2002, especially with the help of its roughly 3,300 channel partners.

But the company, based in the Florida panhandle community of Gulf Breeze, also recognizes its commitment to its community, especially veterans of the U.S. military. After all, its company roster includes several veterans, and it's surrounded by three military installations in the region: Tyndall Air Force Base and two naval air stations.

That's why AppRiver, which provides cloud-based cybersecurity and productivity services, is helping veterans who want to succeed as technology entrepreneurs through a new program the company announced this week. The program is open to veterans who are majority owners of qualifying ISVs, VARs or managed service providers that are less than a year old. And it's aimed at, though not limited to, veterans whose military specialties include information technology.

[RELATED: From Battlefield To The Technology Field]

Rather than simply earn a commission on their sales, veterans in the program will, for a limited time, be refunded all the AppRiver revenue they earn. In a statement, AppRiver said the program is designed as an "easy button," in which veteran-owned companies that have earned $5,000 in revenue from AppRiver will have the option to remain as referral agents and receive commissions on future sales, or, if they're qualified, become resellers who get discounted pricing and handle first-tier support calls for their clients.

The program also includes training, business counsel and marketing support, according to AppRiver. (For more information on the program, please click here.)

"We want to provide the smallest [of small businesses, led by] brand new veterans who are starting their own businesses, [with] the tools to help make that most critical time, that first year, a lot easier for them and to help them succeed," said Justin Gilbert, AppRiver's channel manager and himself a former air crewman with the U.S. Navy.

Gilbert said he expects the program to kick off with about 20 to 25 veterans. "We’ll monitor and see how it goes, and see if we need to change anything going forward,” he told ITBestOfBreed.

Niels Andersen, a Navy veteran, serial entrepreneur and CEO of VetCV, an online platform based in nearby Pensacola that encourages veteran entrepreneurship and helps veterans find jobs, calls the program "brilliant," lauding AppRiver for its belief in and support of military veterans. The $5,000, Andersen added, "is $5,000 more than most people have to start off."

"More importantly," he said, "the veteran knows that somebody believes in them and wants to support them in the growth of their business."

Bob David, an AppRiver partner and Navy veteran who is president of Technical Software Services, also in Pensacola, said in the AppRiver statement: "One of the biggest challenges we faced as a start-up was in making the transition into the business community and acquiring the initial customer base that would allow us to survive." He called the program an "excellent path" for taking the skills a veteran learns while on active duty and helping launch a "viable business."