Just 16 months after raising a $4 million round, MindMixer has landed an additional $17 million in a Series C investment.

The Kansas City-based civic tech company, focused on creating engaged communities, has raised $23.2 million to date. CEO Nick Bowden says they weren’t even seeking funding.

“This one was pretty unique in that we had no intention to do fundraising,” Bowden told SPN last week. “The last round gave us the fuel to grow and scale and legitimized what we were doing, but this came together a lot more informally than a traditional raise.”

The latest round, which closed in June, was led by long-time funders Dundee Venture Capital and included the Govtech Fund, a fund specifically looking at tech solutions for government, and several undisclosed partners.

The $17 million raise is one of the larger rounds of its kind on the Silicon Prairie, particularly for those with a customer-facing product that built its growth through several rounds of investment. The most similar deal that comes to mind is Dwolla’s $16.5 million raise from Andreessen Horowitz in April 2013.

The round will help in continuing employee growth and exploring new markets. MindMixer has 74 employees, with 15 more coming on in September. Bowden says they hope to have 120-160 employees in the next six to eight months, with a lot of hires devoted to the product side.

Going forward, he says MindMixer plans to hire people with more specializations and deeper knowledge in certain areas.

It also means looking to other growth areas.

“We’ve also started to think about some adjacencies, too,” Bowden said, declining to name specifics just yet. “The amount of opportunities that touch citizens from the government perspective is much broader than the niche we are in now.

“We always continue to evolve the view of citizen engagement, and now we have more capital to explore it.”

He says government tech could easily be the largest tech market in the U.S., despite having a high amount of friction in the space.

He points to numerous antiquated citizen services.

“The other day, I was changing my license plates in KC and I was surprised to see they had a text messaging service to reserve a spot in line at the DMV. In 2014, that’s a revolutionary thing, that the DMV is using text messaging. And that service is already old. So there’s enormous opportunity in government infrastructure.”

Bigger swings for a Midwest company

Mark Hasebroock bought in on MindMixer from day one. The Dundee Venture Capital investor said it’s been the VC’s goal early on to invest small first and then continue to buy in as companies hit milestones.

“MindMixer was the first one we made a deal with and they’re ahead of the game,” Hasebroock told SPN. “For every company we invest in, this is the goal. They happen to grow faster and are exceeding all expectations, but show it can be done here in the Midwest. You can succeed and attract the right kind of capital.

“I think this funding allows them to swing for the fences.”

It’s the largest investment DVC has done to date and it’s the first company to break through to the double-digit-millions mark in fundraising.

Hasebroock attributes his continued involvement to his belief that MindMixer is unique not only for the Midwest but for the whole country. He said Bowden’s leadership also reassures him of his investment.

“Driven, focused, an excellent communicator, an amazing salesperson, a great listener, confident and never satisfied” is how Hasebroock describes him.

But Bowden insists MindMixer isn’t celebrating too much, because fundraising isn’t its goal.

“Every time we do fundraising, it’s an important affirmation of our work, but that’s not the goal,” he said. “That’s our mindset in our company—it’s not a celebratory goal in the company. Our work is.”

Bowden on fundraising

Managing a round sometimes brings more challenges and problems than raising it, Bowden wrote in a July SPN guest post about scaling.

“Now you have to hire more people, put more managers in place, manage bigger expectations, the list goes on,” he wrote. “Having more money simply means you bought more time to figure out the previous challenges and the new challenges.

“Don’t get me wrong, having money is better than not having any money, but that wire transfer doesn’t solve any problems.”

Bowden also shared some of his fundraising advice with young startups in the Straight Shot accelerator in June, including a point about updating your deck the day after you land investment.

Background

MindMixer has worked with most major city governments in the U.S., including Los Angeles, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Omaha and Kansas City.

Across all its projects and topics, 1.6 million participants have generated 100,000 new ideas for their communities. It raised a $300,000 seed round in 2011, a $1.9 million Series A in 2012 and a $4 million Series B in 2013.

In April, MindMixer consolidated two Nebraska offices into one operation in Kansas City. Last month, MindMixer took home Startup of the Year at the Silicon Prairie Awards.