Des Moines Brian Hemesath wasn't far removed from the lecture halls of Iowa State University, where he graduated in 1999 with a computer engineering degree, when he took a chance by going to work for a telecom company, Raviant Networks, in 2000. " 'Give it a year,' " Hemesath recalls being told, " 'and you'll either be richer than hell or be out of a job.' "And it was a year and a week to the day that I was in … read more

Des Moines VolunteerLocal has a clear message for event organizers seeking a better way to orchestrate volunteer forces: if you want your volunteer process to excel, scrap the old spreadsheet. "We know we’ve fixed the problem, and I think a lot of our big task is educating the market that there’s tools like this available," said Brian Hemesath, VolunteerLocal’s founder. "Our biggest competition is … read more

Des Moines Des Moines’ entrepreneurial environment has changed a lot in the 10 years since Brian Hemesath launched his first startup. "The community has grown, people are talking more than they did 10 years ago," he said in our recent interview. "Opportunities for office space and physical infrastructure has grown… read more