Think Big Coworking Member Dwolla Raises $16.5 Million

Ben Milne, Founder of Dwolla.

It’s one thing for a startup company to successfully launch in the Midwest.  But it’s a whole different story when a Midwestern company gets $16.5 million in funding.  But Des Moines-based startup Dwolla was recently given that exact amount from Andreessen Horowitz, Village Ventures, Thrive Capital and Union Square Ventures. 

For those who haven’t heard of Dwolla, the startup is a payment network that allows anyone to send, request and accept money (many people think of PayPal when they hear this description).  But Dwolla is built on its own network that securely connects to your bank account and allows you to move money for just $.25 per transaction or free for transactions of $10 or less.

It wasn’t too long ago that Think Big sat down with founder Ben Milne to discuss where Dwolla was headed.  At the time (December 2011), Ben stated that Dwolla was still in its infancy even though it was moving between $30 and $50 million every month.   But he was right.  The company has grown at 15% month-over-month and reached a quarter-million account holders up from 80,000 in early 2012.  And the company has only seemed to grow more as time goes on.

At the time of the interview, Dwolla had a miraculous 700+ investors interested in funding it.  And now, it seems as if four of those investors, including Adreessen Horowitz, finally committed the dollars.  Dwolla scored $16.5 million in new funding in a Series C just last week.

So Dwolla will continue to expand.   It wasn’t long ago that two of Dwolla’s developers moved into Think Big Coworking in order to expand to the Kansas City market.  We are so proud of the KC team—Brandon Ratzlaff and Nick Christus—and wish all the best for the entire Dwolla team—from Des Moines to Kansas City to its new expansion in San Francisco.

Learn more about Dwolla at www.dwolla.com.