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. 

Kansas City Startup InvenQuery Raises $1.1 Million and Continues to Save the Planet

Many Midwestern entrepreneurs may have heard of Planet Reuse, one of the new successful startups making waves here in Kansas City.  But many may need to start paying attention to InvenQuery as well, Planet Reuse's inventory, point-of-sale and e-commerce solution for reuse centers.

The Kansas City-based startup, which currently operates out of the Think Big Partners coworking space, bizperc, has raised $1.1 million in seed funding and Series A investment.  Primary investors include $650,000 by Dundee Venture Capital (Omaha, Nebraska) and $450,000 from a prior angel investment.  The investment will be used to enhance the InvenQuery technology and improve customer outreach.

The InvenQuery mobile application is currently beta testing the product with two local Kansas City reuse centers.  The technology, according to Brian Alferman of Missouri Habitat for Humanity ReStores, "should help us drastically improve awareness of our store and the flow of unique items we have here at any given time."  In addition, the new platform will attract new customers, prevent price tampering and provide new reporting and point-of-sales tools.

InvenQuery's niche market isn't a small one either.  There are currently 1,200 for-profit and non-profit reuse organizations in the United States that accept donations of used and surplus building materials and then resell them to the public at 40-60% of the price of new.  The industry is growing at 20% per year.  Currently, the reuse market place is a $250 million industry.

But this investment isn't just a win for InvenQuery.  It's also a win for the environment.  According to a recent press release, InvenQuery's mobile application will actually prevent millions of pounds of usable surplus materials from going to landfills.  Without a system like InvenQuery's, the environment will continue to suffer with the 40% of US landfill waste that comes from the building construction and demolition industries.

Hats off to the team at Planet Reuse and InvenQuery for their new investment and initiative to make the world a better place!  To learn more about InvenQuery, please visit www.invenquery.com.

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