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Dwolla founder recognized on list of MIT’s “35 Innovators Under 35”
This morning the MIT Technology Review revealed its prestigious annual list of “35 Innovators Under 35.” This year, that group included Dwolla founder and CEO Ben Milne. Milne, who was honored as an outstanding entrepreneur, will be featured online and in print. The Des Moines-based startup’s founder also will appear on the cover of the…
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Dwolla founder blogs about recent investment in clusterFlunk
On his personal blog Monday, Dwolla founder Ben Milne wrote about why he chose to invest in Iowa City startup clusterFlunk. “The founders are worth following just to see what happens,” Milne wrote of co-founder AJ Nelson and Joe Dallago…
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ClusterFlunk founders take “leap of faith,” leave school to build company
Six months ago Iowa City-based startup clusterFlunk was little more than an idea. Now co-founders Joe Dallago and AJ Nelson have stopped attending the University of Iowa to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. “We are working on clusterFlunk full time and are excited about it,” Nelson said. “It was cool to take our ‘leap of faith,’…
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Speaker Q&A addresses investor meetings, mistakes and mic skills
To end the first full-day of Big Omaha on Thursday, four speakers stuck around for an audience Q&A. Megan Casey of Pack, Anil Dash of ThinkUp, Tony Conrad of about.me, and Ben Milne of Dwolla. The group used their personal experiences to respond to questions on their failures in the workplace, personality traits they’re forced…
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Ben Milne tells Big Omaha crowd not to “be worried about what is normal”
According to Ben Milne, one of the biggest mistakes a founder can make is to abandon the Silicon Prairie and its Midwestern roots. And he should know. Without the community surrounding his Des Moines-based company, Milne said Dwolla probably wouldn’t be thriving today. “Had we not stayed here, we would not have made the friendships…
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Kansas City developer’s DIY project turns light bulb on for each new user
Numbers, analytics and reports can statically tick away on an entrepreneur’s computer with the hope that they will provide insight on a startup’s growth and trajectory. But what if the milestones motivating startups were dynamic? Rodrigo Neri, co-founder of Kansas City education app-maker Instin, recounted …
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Dwolla raises $16.5m round led by Andreessen Horowitz, adds SF office
Des Moines-based Dwolla today announced it closed a $16.5 million Series C round led by Andreessen Horowitz, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture capital firm whose portfolio includes Airbnb, Pinterest and Stripe, another payments startup. Three of Dwolla’s previous investors, Village Ventures, Thrive Capital and Union Square Ventures, also participated …
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Dwolla founder: “Everything no one wants me to say about Bitcoin”
Dwolla founder and CEO Ben Milne on Sunday published a personal blog post that shared his latest perspective on Bitcoin, a virtual currency that’s once again hit the headlines and public interest. His company is involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem as it’s used to …
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Dwolla introduces Guest Checkout, prepares to celebrate like old times
During an interview Thursday with Ben Milne, I posed a question that drew a smile from the Dwolla CEO: Is it fair to say Dwolla’s upcoming meetup will be like the classic Dwolla meetups of the early days?” “That’s totally fair,” said Milne, the founder of the four-year-old, Des Moines-based payments startup. “This is us…