State dossier
Signal board
Region ledger
Beacon branch filter
Digital readiness: what certified veteran firms actually publish
Share of the 34,319 SBA VetCert firms with a public location whose directory profile includes each item. Snapshot 2026-10-04.
Digital readiness by state
Firms per House seat
Certified firms divided by House seats, a population yardstick (about 761,000 residents per seat after the 2020 census). US: .
Density vs. web presence
Each dot is a state. Red dots are business deserts. Hover for detail.
Certification layering: vs US
Who owns the firms:
Formation wave:
Firms by start period. Periods are uneven: early bins span 5 to 10 years, later bins one year.
Metro digital presence
Website and capability statement share in 20 tracked metros.
Beacons by region and branch
Base-to-Desert Bridges
For each of the 10 business deserts, the three closest installations measured from the state's center point. Installations are where transitioning service members, spouses and contractors already live and buy. They are the nearest launch points for new veteran firms in a desert.
Distances are straight-line miles from approximate state centers to approximate installation coordinates. The list covers major installations, not every site.
Through a veteran's eyes: what should my page have?
I'm a veteran business owner. Before I trust a page with my time, I compare it to the best intelligence dashboards and service menus I've seen. Below is my checklist for this platform, then my checklist for my own business page.
Platform checklist: features from leading dashboards, mapped to VBSI tools
My own business page: checklist with peer benchmarks
My readiness score
Peer rates come from the VetCert directory for the state chosen in the dossier. Items marked "not measured" have no public benchmark yet.
SuperintelligencePedia: mini classroom
Five short lessons from this page. The full classroom covers resume translation, business plans and market research.
How to read a night map
Bright clusters mean many certified veteran firms. Gold pulses are installations. Red glows are business deserts: states where certified firms are scarce for the population, few are new, and fewer publish a website. Dark does not mean empty; it means under-certified or under-counted.
The one-page edge: capability statements
Only about 12% of certified firms post a capability statement in the directory, and about 60% list a website. A buyer who finds two similar firms will usually call the one with a clear one-page statement. This is the cheapest advantage you can add this week.
Treat the nearest base as a market
Installations bring payrolls, contractors, families and local purchasing. Map the businesses that already serve the base, ask what is hard to get, and offer it. Start with small buys, which use lighter procedures.
A desert is a question, not a verdict
A low count can mean an open lane or weak demand. Before launching, confirm buyers exist: talk to ten of them, check recent awards and look for incumbents. The SI Desert Index points you to where to look, not what to conclude.
Certification layering
Most certified veteran firms hold SDVOSB status. Few add HUBZone, 8(a) or WOSB. Each extra certification opens separate set-aside lanes if you qualify, so check eligibility for every program, not just one.
Definitions
- SI (Super Intelligence)
- A public intelligence system built from government datasets and documentary evidence, with analytical interfaces layered over the data.
- Night Beacon Map
- A night-style map of the United States that shows certified veteran firms as light, installations as beacons and business deserts as red glow.
- Beacon
- A major military installation drawn at approximate coordinates. Beacons mark where service members transition and where nearby demand already exists.
- Light field
- Points of light scattered around each state's center and tracked metros, scaled to certified firm counts. It shows relative weight, not exact firm locations.
- Firms per House seat
- Certified firms in a state divided by its House seats. Seats are apportioned by population, so this is a simple density yardstick.
- SI Desert Index
- A 0 to 100 score per state: 50% density rank (firms per House seat), 25% formation rank (share started 2021 or later), 25% web-presence rank (share listing a website). The 10 lowest are business deserts. It measures certified veteran business presence, not overall economic distress.
- Base-to-Desert Bridge
- The three closest installations to a desert state's center, in straight-line miles.
- Digital readiness
- The share of firms whose public profile lists a website, a capability statement or a business narrative.
- Certification layering
- Holding more than one federal small-business certification, such as SDVOSB plus HUBZone or 8(a).
- Formation wave
- Firms grouped by start period, showing when today's certified firms were founded.
- Signal board
- Ranked lists that flag states standing out on deserts, new-firm formation, digital gaps or certification layering. States need at least 50 firms to be ranked, except on the desert list.
- Suppression
- Counts under 5 are shown as <5, and shares based on them are withheld. No firm, owner or person is named.