Lately startup accelerators—whether industry focused or not—have cropped up all over the Midwest. From Lincoln to Kansas City to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a bevy of accelerators across the region have begun to attract both local and out-of-town startups to their doors. 

Now Des Moines will have its own iteration with the Global Insurance Accelerator, which was announced earlier this month. While the idea for the accelerator is nothing new, Mike Colwell, executive director of entrepreneurial initiatives at the Greater Des Moines Partnership, says the real logistical planning for the Accelerator has been executed in the last 60 days. 

“We’ve been working on what do we do next for a long time,” Colwell told Silicon Prairie News. “There’s been a lot of talk around StartupCity and what do we do next, and I think a lot of people think there needs to be just one thing.

“I think we need to do a lot of things.”

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And one of those things will be the Global Insurance Accelerator. 

The program, which Colwell says will hopefully see its first class by next spring, will be focused on startups innovating on aspects of the insurance industry. So far, local insurance companies Delta Dental, Principal Financial Group and American Equity Investment Life have signed on as partners for the Global Insurance Accelerator. 

But with more than 80 insurance companies based in central Iowa, it’s likely more will sign on soon, enticed by the talent pool and access to innovative entrepreneurs a program like the Accelerator will provide. 

“Our way to get insurance companies interested was to tell them we’re not trying to create other insurance companies. That’s the last thing we have in mind,” Colwell (right) said. “What we’re trying to do is create startups and then companies that will have great value on their cost side and on their risk side. Really anything out of the competitive space is really how we’ve termed it.” 

After speaking last week during the Global Insurance Symposium in Des Moines, Delta Dental CEO Jeff Russell penned a blog post about why he thought the Accelerator was an important program to get involved with, not only for his own company but for the ecosystem as a whole. 

“To find all of the good ideas that will move us forward, we need to look both inside—and outside—our four walls,” Russell wrote. “I know that we can and will leverage the ideas from the Accelerator to grow our business and serve our members. Moreover, I am excited to mix our talented management group with driven and innovative entrepreneurs and see what happens.”

As of now there are no plans to brand the Accelerator with TechStars, though Colwell says the Boulder, Colo.-based organization has been helpful when its come to getting the new program off the ground. A set time period—likely somewhere in the range of 90 to 120 days—has not yet been determined either. 

While many of the other logistical elements of the program—like when exactly its inaugural class will begin and where it will be housed—are still being figured out, the current goal is to raise at least $1.2 million for each class of the Global Insurance Accelerator. Using that fund, each of the Accelerator’s six chosen teams will receive $20,000 upon entering the program with the potential for $100,000 in follow-on funding after graduation. 

While the Partnership has played a large role in helping facilitate the Accelerator’s establishment, Colwell says the goal ultimately is not to have the Accelerator operated by the organization. 

“It’s an initiative of the Partnership, meaning that we’re promoting the idea, but once it takes off, it belongs to the industry,” Colwell said. “We have asked the industry [partners] to form their own board, hire their own executive director and staff and run it themselves because the only way it succeeds is if they take ownership.”

“The Partnership’s role will greatly diminish. The more successful it is, the less we’ll be involved.” 

As many of the program’s details come together, Colwell says there are ways the Partnership can help facilitate the growth of the program; however, the industry Board of Directors will ultimately need to come together to hire a leader and staff who can advocate for and run the Global Insurance Accelerator. 

“The Partnership can facilitate a lot of that,” Colwell said. “We can help find the space, but the Board has to find the right person to do this. The Executive Director has got to be the right person from the industry or from a group that supports the industry.”

Colwell admits that person isn’t him, but that he thinks the Accelerator’s future director needs to be both well-known in the insurance industry as well as a disruptor of its traditional practices.  

So who should consider applying?

As planning continues for the Global Insurance Accelerator, the program soon will look for startups to apply and provide innovative solutions for the problems insurance companies are seeing across their industry. But what types of companies is the accelerator looking for?

“We’re not asking a startup to say, ‘I only serve insurance companies,’” Colwell said. “If I’m a risk management company, I could serve eight markets, but if one of them is insurance and I can get into that market with a program like this, then maybe that’s my first market.”

Colwell says it’s a great opportunity for startups that can focus their market to the insurance industry to be able to participate in an accelerator with a pool of local industry mentors and the ability to present at a demo day during the Global Insurance Symposium in Des Moines, a goal of the program’s for its inaugural class. 

“You can’t buy that marketing,” he said. 

That being said, Colwell doesn’t think the creation of the new accelerator will effect the application pool for the Iowa Startup Accelerator, which will welcome its first class in early August. He hopes the specialized nature of the accelerator will draw as many as 500 applicants from around the globe and help highlight Des Moines as an industry leader. 

Once a Board of Directors is formed for the Accelerator, Colwell says its members will likely create a list of problems they see across all sectors of their industry. If companies applying are able to show they could solve one of those problems, they will likely have a better chance of being accepted. 

An application for the inaugural class of the Global Insurance Accelerator is not yet available, but will be posted on the accelerator’s website by July 1, according to the site.