This trend is being driven by a confluence of factors, including a strong economy and an increasing desire among women of all ages to start and run their own companies. There are now 12.3 million women-owned businesses in the United States, according to a report by American Express and SCORE. Compare that to 1972, when there were only 402,000 women-owned businesses, representing just 4.6 percent of all firms.

Women are willing to take on more risk, since the economy remains strong. Optimism among small business owners was the highest on record in 2018, according to the NFIB. The organization’s monthly Small Business Optimism Index also reported that owners believe the current period is a good time to expand substantially, and they are planning to invest in more inventory and are reporting high sales figures.

Statistics tell the story. Last year 1,821 new women-owned businesses were launched every day, the Amex-SCORE report revealed. Women of color founded 64 percent of those businesses.

But women still have a long way to go in order to have gender equality in the lending market. The Biz2Credit research found that the average size loan for women-owned businesses was 31 percent less than for male-owned businesses ($70,239) in 2018.

Part of this can be attributed to the fact that women are better bootstrappers and save up more money before borrowing, since women typically are more risk averse than men. The study shows that female-owned firms are younger businesses with a shorter track history of repayment of debts. It is harder for such companies to secure capital through traditional bank loans.

Nonetheless, female-owned firms are booming. Women are opening an average of 849 new businesses per day, according to American Express’s State of Women-Owned Businesses Report (2017). The study found that the number of women-owned businesses has increased 114 percent in the past two decades, and the number of companies owned by women of color has increased 467 percent. Minority women now own 46 percent of all women-owned firms, according to the report.

Lending activity from the SBA helps women-owned companies secure capital for growth. The agency facilitates federally guaranteed loans to small businesses that might not otherwise qualify for traditional bank term loans. SBA loans totaled $25.37 billion in the fiscal year that ended in October 2018. Many of the loans go to women-owned and minority-owned businesses.

“More women are realizing that they have more opportunities and are transitioning out of some areas of the workforce, SBA administrator Linda McMahon recently told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo. “New business creation is prevalent in the tech field. They might know how to build an app or know the latest in machine learning, but don’t know how to run a business and might want to. That’s where the SBA can help.”

McMahon also said that women are moving into the fast-growing health-care services sector.

However, there are some differences between the military and corporate life.

“The big difference between the military and professional services, like PwC, is that we want to people to suggest ways to make things better. In the military you have to be careful to follow orders,” Burg said in a phone interview.

To help the new hires transition even after boot camp, PwC assigns battle buddies, a former veteran already working for the company who can provide advice and guidance. The firm also wants the new hires to stay for the long run, so they plan to continue to check in with the boot camp graduates to determine a career path.

The two-year mark is an important milestone for veterans because that’s when you are likely to get promoted or get antsy, according to Crace.

PwC plans to repeat the cybersecurity boot camp with future hires to continue to fill openings in its cybersecurity consulting practice.

Read MoreBusiness owners, cybersecurity doesn’t have to cost so much

Charles Ommanney | Getty Images

Shuttered and repossessed homes line the streets of a middle-class neighborhood on the east side of Detroit.

Plus, if you’re a Detroit homeowner and know you can’t get a higher appraisal for your home improvements, there’s little incentive to invest and upgrade, which only adds to the city’s blight problem and declining population. The upshot is a “vicious cycle” of unprofitable rehabilitation and little incentive to invest in property, according to a new update from the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Institute that focuses on economic and policy research.

“In Detroit, the appraisal problems are so acute,” said Laurie Goodman, director of the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center.

Read MoreSome Americans can’t afford to buy homes in their hometown

To offer a sense of the city’s struggles, consider that there were only about 500 mortgages in 2015 in Detroit, Goodman said.

Now a new program is expanding and hoping to gain more traction by targeting Detroit’s appraisal gap through the use of second mortgages.

Background checks of freelance workers has come front and center In the wake of the deadly shooting spree in Kalamazoo, Michigan, last month. An Uber driver, Jason Dalton, was charged with killing six people.

Read MoreUber: No background-check change after Michigan rampage

TaskRabbit uses a third-party company, SterlingBackCheck to complete its background checks with Social Security number traces, a federal criminal background check and additional county background check. While some who follow the sharing economy have argued mandatory fingerprinting would help screen potential workers more aggressively, TaskRabbit — like Uber —does not use fingerprinting as part of its screening process.

What’s more, Busque said every potential tasker offering to do various jobs meets with someone from headquarters, or a company ambassador in smaller markets. Taskers learn about the company and if something isn’t right, they have the ability and connections to speak up, she said.

“I think collectively as a group of sharing economy companies, we have to ensure we work together to dedicate safety and trust as our number one priority in this marketplace,” she said.

Read MoreIRS to return seized cash to small-business owner

On a cold February night in Stamford, Connecticut, the chill in the air is doing nothing to dampen patrons’ thirst for Half Full Brewery’s craft beers. The brewery’s tasting room is serving a steady flow of customers looking to sip a glass of its Bright Ale, Pursuit IPA or Onward Pale Ale. The mood may be mellow, but it belies Half Full’s rapid growth.

Opened in August 2012, Half Full saw its revenue top $350,000 by the end of 2013. Last year it hit $750,000, and this year owner Conor Horrigan expects it to top $1 million. As demand has increased for Half Full’s beers, the brewery is looking to hire more workers.

“I would say in the next 60 days we’re looking to almost double our staff,” said Horrigan, who currently counts seven employees on his payroll.

Half Full is not the only craft brewer looking for workers. The Brewers Association trade group said here in the U.S. one or two craft breweries open every single day, and growth in this industry shows little sign of slowing down.

U.S. small business confidence declined further in February as lingering concerns about sales growth and profits hurt capital spending and hiring plans, a survey showed on Tuesday.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) said its small business optimism index dropped one point to a reading of 92.9 last month, with none of the index’s components showing an increase. The index decreased 1.3 percentage points in January.

“Spending and hiring plans weakened a bit as expectations for growth in real sales volumes fell. Earnings trends worsened a bit as owners continued to report widespread gains in worker compensation while holding the line on price increases,” the NFIB said in statement.

Despite the Fed’s overall positive data on Main Street, optimism remains uneven since the recession.

In separate data out Tuesday, U.S. small business confidence declined further in February to a two-year low. The National Federation of Independent Business said its small business optimism index dropped 1 point to a reading of 92.9 last month, which is well below the 42 year average of 98.

Read MoreSmall business confidence weakens

Spending and hiring plans weakened slightly as expectations for growth in real sales volumes fell. Earnings trends also softened.

“A ho-hum outcome this month confirms that the small business sector is not performing with any strength,” NFIB Chief Economist William C. Dunkelberg said in a statement.

And this muted sentiment among pockets of Main Street is only getting amplified during a presidential election year.

What’s driving small business owners during an election cycle? “There are issues squeezing small business owners from every side — the economy, taxes and health care,” John Swanciger, CEO of Manta, a social network for small business owners, told CNBC. “They are looking for a candidate who understands how their sector is being impacted.”

Read MoreMain Street speaks out: Top candidate for small biz

Gibbon, 31, eventually put his engineering background to use to find a solution (he had previously developed the price-comparison iPhone app called ShopAround, which shut down despite having garnered a top 100 iOS App Store ranking.) Sensing capital would be easier to raise in California, Gibbon moved to San Francisco in 2012 and took a friend’s offer to work at Attachments.me as a software engineer. He worked there for a year before he started focusing on launching Shyp.

In 2013, he “threw together a landing page” asking potential customers what they needed to ship and played the role of courier himself in just one Zip code area of San Francisco.

“I’d collect the shipments, pack them up back in my garage and send them off. I still had to deal with the shipping piece, but now somebody was giving me money to do it.”

That formula continues to pay off, though Gibbon is no longer your pickup guy. In Shyp’s four markets (San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago), the company has 245 employees, including couriers, packagers and warehouse technicians who are counted as W-2 employees rather than 1099 contractors. Gibbon believes full-timers, though pricier, represent businesses better than freelancers.

Shipping starts with the Shyp app, available for free on iOS and Android. Users take a photo of their items, request a pickup, and a courier arrives at a prearranged time or within 20 minutes in markets with an on-demand option. The deliverables are then scanned into Shyp’s system and brought to a local warehouse for packaging before being handed off to a carrier, such as UPS, FedEx or the U.S. Postal Service. All for $5, plus the cost of shipping.

Food waste is a growing problem in the U.S. According to the National Resources Defense Council, 40 percent of the food we grow in this country is never consumed. In fact, food is the single biggest source of waste in municipal landfills, according to EPA data. Meanwhile, the USDA reports that nearly 50 million Americans, including 7.9 million children are “food insecure.”

Rauch says he believes we can use one problem to solve the other.

“Our mission is how … we bring affordable nutrition into a struggling area where people unfortunately, due to their diets, are having epidemics of obesity diabetes heart disease, etc., because they can’t afford to eat the nutritious food they should be eating,” Rauch said.

In keeping with its mission, Daily Table sells produce at rock-bottom rates. Its bananas sell for 29 cents per pound, and apples go for 69 cents per pound, and those prices are about half of the U.S. city average price.

Despite being a nonprofit Rauch says he wants Daily Table to become a self-sustaining business. However, it keeps its nonprofit status to entice companies to work with them.

“The tax code incentivizes manufacturers, growers and grocers to donate wholesome healthy excess food,” said Rauch. “Food that’s still good, but is either too much, or it’s getting close to its code date, or it’s cosmetically blemished in some way.”

The start-up downturn kicked in late last year, after a stock market correction in August. Venture investing in the U.S. dropped 28 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, according to the National Venture Capital Association, even as full-year financing reached the highest since 2000.

There hasn’t been a tech IPO in the U.S. this year.

Salesforce has still participated in some hefty rounds, including a $90 million investment in enterprise planning software developer Anaplan in January and a $56 million financing of marketing software start-up BloomReach the same month.

Salesforce Ventures has more companies worth at least $1 billion in its portfolio than any other corporate VC, CB Insights’ data show. Among them are DocuSign, MuleSoft and Anaplan.

“Good companies continue to be able to raise money,” Somorjai said. “Even though valuations have compressed a little bit, that’s OK.”