"It's like I should be paying Connectd for all this help. If I had to pay these people salaries, I'd have to make a couple of million a year to offset the amount of value this team is providing."
Gavin Rowe, Founder, TaskForce VA: I'm third-generation Navy and come from a long line of service. I planned to retire from the military, but I was navigating some medical issues that dragged out for close to 10 months and got me to a very low point. I was trying to do everything I could for myself and wasn't getting any of the help I needed. That's what gave birth to TaskForce VA. It wasn't a business — it was a product I literally built to help myself. And as I started building it, I asked: why can't this help everybody?
The reality for a veteran is that you almost have to be doctor-level educated to best represent yourself. Transitioning military VA claims are denied upon first submission, and the reason they're denied is that they fail to capture the symptom, the frequency, the severity, or the impact. What technology today can do is prevent that from ever being an issue. We utilise AI in an ethical way — not fabricating anything — but bridging the gap where veterans shouldn't be expected to recite medical terminology like a doctor.
Gavin Rowe: It's built and designed to help veterans — whether they've been out a year or 30 years — and transitioning military, to navigate their VA claims process with clarity, competence, and confidence. From a B2C perspective, our platform is designed to make the VA claims process as easy as possible. We're not filing claims for them, but we're giving them the tools to help reduce that 38% denial rate. It tells you what you're eligible to file for. And it's not just a B2C-facing platform — it's B2B as well. We've also built out the largest legal database for veteran-specific law that I can find.
Gavin Rowe: I was actively separating from — retiring from — the military while all of this was happening. It was hard to sleep, and honestly it still is, because this is tied to life or death for people. The veteran suicide rate is a real thing, and it's a problem our product can help address.
There were so many hats I was having to wear — father, military member, business owner — trying to start a company that I never planned to start. So when I found out about the Connectd platform, the same thing my friends said when I told them about it was: "What's the catch?" There is no catch.
The services that Connectd has rendered for my company have been one of the prominent factors behind how successful we've been so far. It took what would have taken me probably a year and accelerated it to a matter of months. It gave me the opportunity to work with true subject matter experts in their fields — B2B sales, marketing, UI/UX, ethical AI. It takes those responsibilities out of my hands so I can focus on what I should be focused on, and it helps accelerate the business. And it's two-sided — it's not just beneficial for me, it's for the partners who participate in the Connectd programme too. It's a no-brainer for anybody navigating a business at scale.
Gavin Rowe: I spent about a month or two trying to find people within my network who were versed in cybersecurity. The biggest part of our platform is that we're handling sensitive client data and healthcare data — and I had minimal experience in safeguarding that. It wasn't something I was willing to risk. Joshua Walton came on board and put together our entire compliance strategy, and that became pretty much the foundational layer of our success.
Gary Bloom brought a vast amount of experience in go-to-market strategy, sales, and high-level advisory — and he also comes from a long line of service, so he really resonated with our mission. It might take me four hours to research something he's already lived and experienced firsthand. It's hard to put a value on that.
Mark McNamara — I went through the Connectd platform thinking, "I need a team of all-stars," and I truly think I have one. Mark has done every technology role there is, with 30-plus years of experience in the field. As our fractional CTO, he's taken that hat completely off me. What would have taken me a year or more to navigate, this team has accomplished in a matter of months.
Steph Huell has an amazing background in high-level graphic design — she's helped us develop all of our pitch decks, marketing content, one-pagers, and two-pagers. Eric Chavez is an industry professional in cloud infrastructure and, from a technology perspective, is the foundational layer of what we're building. Without his advisory, we wouldn't have a product.
Our fractional CFO, John Tate, has been a professional CFO for longer than I've been alive. All these complex questions I'd spend hours racking my brain over — he's done it hundreds of times and it's second nature to him. Making sure the company is running as it should and the financials are captured correctly is huge.
And Dr. Anderson Pruitt is a career professional in technology — exactly the help we needed in terms of how we want our AI to react, respond, and what guardrails need to be in place.
If I had to pay these people salaries, I'd have to make a couple of million a year to offset the amount of value this team is providing. It's like I should be paying Connectd for all this help.
Gavin Rowe: When you look at what you can do personally versus what you can do with three or four people around you — you're limited by your time. Doing everything yourself, you can only sustain that for so long.
Being willing to ask for help — that's what it comes down to. No one can help you if you don't ask for it. Connectd is truly providing an avenue for that. All you have to do is go to the platform, fill out a form, talk to one of the amazing representatives on the team, and they ask, "What can we help you with?" It's hard to believe it's free, and I'm incredibly thankful that it is.
From an advice standpoint — take what you didn't get done and convert it into what you did do. It's okay if you only got one thing done. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. One step a day is okay. What these entrepreneurs are building isn't built overnight. You have to build a strong foundation, and that foundation starts with the team. You're only as good as your team. Embrace the challenges, embrace the hard times — and consciously remind yourself that a year from now, you're going to look back and say, "Those were tough times, but look at what the fruits of the labour yielded."
Gavin Rowe, Founder, TaskForce VA
Going fractional doesn't change your function — it changes almost everything about how you operate within it.
