

2013. Hard Lessons Learned - antidaily
http://www.benmilne.com/2013-kicked-my-ass-kicked/

======
FireBeyond
I was wondering who Ben Milne was (maybe that’s my first mistake). Oh, Dwolla.
CEO of a company that’s raised $20MM+ of VC, handles a billion dollars in
transactions.

What can I learn from his blog? Well, for one, there’s this huge “stuttering”
GIF that takes 3/4 of the vertical space of my screen, so I can only see the
top half of the blog title, let alone content. But I can see the second most
prominent link at the top of the page, however, “Buy Me A Coffee”, and “feed
[his] habit”.

I find it a little distasteful when someone who is much more successful in the
VC / startup game than the very vast majority of people ever will be has one
of the most prominent links on his site being to “give me money to buy
coffee”.

~~~
thomas_eh
thats what you took away from this? really?!

I don't think I've read something that came across so genuine and down to
earth for a long time (and not just in the context of very successful
people..but in general).

I, for one, appreciate his post much more than the average startup related
blog post I see these days.

~~~
FireBeyond
Actually, I re-read my post, and realized it wasn’t “the full message”. I
wanted to say that it -distracted- from the message, for me anyway.

------
sbierwagen
Some context, since Ben assumes you know who he is, and, more bizarrely,
doesn't put a bio anywhere on his site:

Ben Milne is a founder of Dwolla. Dwolla was sued by TradeHill in 2012:
[http://betabeat.com/2012/03/dwolla-was-just-sued-by-
bitcoine...](http://betabeat.com/2012/03/dwolla-was-just-sued-by-bitcoiners-
for-2-m/)

Dwolla also came to the attention of the DHS in 2013:
[http://pando.com/2013/05/14/dept-of-homeland-security-
freeze...](http://pando.com/2013/05/14/dept-of-homeland-security-freezes-
accounts-between-dwolla-and-bitcoin-exchange-mt-gox/)

~~~
yeldarb
Probably more useful to HN readers than links to articles about their drama
surrounding bitcoin: Dwolla is a payments company that has built their own
network to skirt credit card transaction fees. They charge a flat fee of 25
cents for transactions over $10 and transactions under $10 are free.

They also raised 16.5MM from Andreesen Horowitz last year:
[http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/30/payments-network-dwolla-
rai...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/30/payments-network-dwolla-
raises-16-5-million-series-c-from-andreessen-horowitz-others-expands-to-san-
francisco)

Also, many involved in Bitcoin dislike them because they were originally one
of the only ways to transfer USD to BTC exchanges and stopped allowing that
due to problems with fraud and law enforcement. So that will color a lot of
the Internet comments you read about them.

------
lpolovets
I thought this was a great list. Usually lists like this either feel like a
bunch of platitudes, or they are so specific that I'm left thinking, "I'm not
sure these lessons apply to anyone but the author." I can't put my finger on
why, but I found this post to be very compelling. It might be the examples and
the tone (the lack of "OMG everyone should do exactly what I did" is
refreshing).

------
prplhaz4
Definitely not the type of update I was hoping to see from Ben/Dwolla - it
leaves a bit of an ominous outlook for those of us trying to save some money
on credit card exchange fees in 2014.

I will look on the bright side and just assume this is his way of leaving some
difficult times behind...

------
pcunite
"Trust. Win. Trust. Win. Trust. Lose really HUGE. Trust again."

I'm going to do that this year. I've lost so much because I wouldn't allow
myself to trust someone.

------
singold
For me the best was the last line :

 _" Now get back to work and create something."_

See you later HNers! :P

