Brian Hemesath

Brian Hemesath is the Managing Director of the Global Insurance Accelerator. He is responsible for the overall success of the program and ongoing support of the portfolio companies. He has built a career around technology startups, having been a founder and co-founder of several businesses. He successfully exited two of his own companies in 2010 (Diligent) and 2012 (Catchwind). Diligent was a boutique web development business that he ran with his brother, Eric, for just shy of a decade. The firm worked with local design talent and supported around 120 clients, mostly based in Central Iowa. In a pre-WordPress era, Diligent created its own content management system and built a business model around the platform. Brian was a co-founder of Catchwind, which helped retail and marketing agencies operate and manage SMS marketing campaigns. Catchwind had a proprietary technology platform and worked closely with mobile carriers and message aggregators to deliver solutions. In 2012 Brian helped get a ticketing startup off the ground while working out of Startup City (local incubator). The startup helped the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival successfully sell over 8,000 tickets in 3 minutes and 22 seconds. This feat was acknowledged by the Governor of Iowa in comments made at the 2013 Pig Pardoning. He founded and still advises VolunteerLocal as it grows and continues to help events all over the world effectively manage volunteers. Brian has a Computer Engineering degree from Iowa State University.