I’ve worked with a lot of incredible people.
Bio
Ben Milne is the Founder & CEO of Brale, merging the best of distributed and central finance. He is the Founder, Chairman, and former CEO of Dwolla, which has been honored by Fast Company as one of the world’s “Most Innovative Companies.” Milne has been recognized by MIT, Goldman Sachs, Forbes, and Inc for his work which serves millions of people globally.
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Work
Brale
Combining the best of CeFi & DeFi.
Role – Founder & CEO
Founded 2022 – Active
Dwolla
A software solution enabling programmable payments. Dwolla’s software supports fast growing technology companies that range from day 1 software startups to publicly traded companies.
Role – Founder & Chairman, Former CEO
Founded 2010 – Active
Lincoln Savings Bank
Board member of a 100+ year old financial institution based in Iowa focused on building great community experiences, technologies, and teams.
Role – Director
Board Member 2020 – Active
V-Sum
A distributed FinTech conference that brings together people from all over the world to discuss new financial technologies, markets, and opportunities.
Role – Founder
Founded 2020 – Active
Basis Theory
Encryption infrastructure for the internet.
Role – Co-Founder
Founded 2020 – Exited 2021 – Inactive
Clay & Milk
A news website focused on telling stories about Iowa Technology companies that would otherwise never be covered. The company was started to fill a gap in reporting coverage covering Iowa technology companies. Telling more stories about the innovative work being done in the midwest helps companies be discovered and their products used.
Role – Co-Founder
Founded 2018 – Exited 2019 – Sold
Elemental Designs
A distributor and manufacturer of acoustic products for automotive and home. Elemental Designs supported distribution and manufacturing operations throughout Asia and the United States. During his time at the company, Milne also consulted on projects ranging from in-vehicle audio processing systems for Ford & Toyota to custom audio manufacturing projects.
Role – Founder & CEO
Founded 2002 – Exited 2009 – Sold
Other contributions
Techstars
Participant in the mentorship and support of startups around the country through group and dedicated one-on-one sessions.
Mentor 2017 – 2021
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Contributor on Mojaloop Project where Milne worked with a team of skilled engineers to develop an approach and systems to serve as the core services and forensic logging around the central services of the project. The central services is the trusted core ledgering infrastructure built to be leveraged by global telecoms and central bank providers in emerging markets.
Contributor 2016 – 2020
Technology Association of Iowa
Served as a board member of TAI, the largest group of technology companies in the state of Iowa. Engaging in discussion and initiatives focused on expanding the Iowa Technology ecosystem. Supported TAI’s core goals of Diversity and Inclusion in the state technology sector, development of Iowa’s workforce, driving public policy.
Board Member 2018 – 2020
Federal Reserve Bank
Through our real-time payments focus, the Dwolla team contributed and participated in various Federal Reserve payment initiatives and projects culminating in our own Faster Payment System proposal. This initiative involved discussion with the Fed, large financial institutions and regional FIs to uncover what was ultimately the right approach for a national real-time payment system.
Contributor 2015-2018
Monetery
An annual conference designed to build an inclusive no-coast technology ecosystem. Monetery brings in speakers from outside of the community to share knowledge and insights about how to build a strong and thriving technology community.
Role – Co-Founder
Founded 2018 – Exited 2021
Patents
Maintaining security in digital electronic transfers through use of a label tracking system
Reducing information requirements in digital electronic transfers
API Invoked Functions for Use in Online Social Network
Social network transaction processing system
Dynamically selecting sending and receiving accounts
Additional patents pending
Industry Recognition
Forbes (Disrupter of the year), MIT (35 under 35), Inc, Fast Company (50 Most Innovative Companies), Goldman Sachs (100 most intriguing entrepreneurs), SBA (Entrepreneur of the year) and others.
Technology Experiments
Middlebit
A invitation only Y-Combinator-like news aggregation website experiment to give distributed non-coastal communities a place to share information pertinent to them.
Shipped 2019 – Shuttered 2020
Silawet
A distributed layer 1 ledger infrastructure. The proof of concept enabled the recording and distribution of messages throughout the distributed network through any internet enabled device storing a keypair by allowing each sending message participant to sign their own messages rather than requiring network participants to validate through costly mining processes.
Shipped 2017 – Shuttered 2018
Stacks
A token project designed store fiat currency value on personal computers. A layer 1 experiment developing early digital dollars. The project provided a chain of ownership that could be extended from regulated financial institutions to individuals to hold actual fiat on their own devices rather than in a FI.
Tested 2013 – Shuttered 2014
VizyBob
A web software designed to take screenshots of the worlds most popular web assets on a daily basis with the intent to curate the evolution of a brand, message, and communication styles over long periods of time visually.
Shipped 2012 – Shuttered 2013
Proxi
A method for deriving locations close to your mobile device to enable peer-to-peer and retail point of sale transactions using GPS. System did not require NFC and only required the use of GPS coordinates leveraging geocoded retail locations and existing locations of cell phones to present the end user with the proximity of entities that were physically relevant to transact with.
Shipped 2011 – Shuttered 2016
Instant
A technology for enabling instant lending over virtual payment networks to any network participant. The technology enabled a third party to engage in instant lending and consumer purchases with a regulated lender directly over a third party digital payment network in real-time. Funds were granted to the recipient merchant in real-time bypassing traditional card network fees and settlement times.
Shipped 2011 – Shuttered 2012
FiSync
A technical method to enable real-time gross settlement across financial institutions directly proportional to consumer behavior on an associated network. The system could be used to instantly settle fiat currency between regulated financial institutions across the consumer internet in sub 1 second intervals. Applications included consumer, retail, B2B and large scale trading infrastructures. FiSync also enabled repeat usage through heavily leveraging tokenization to obfuscate personal information from the transaction process.
Shipped 2012 – Shuttered 2017
VineMe
A social network giving context to time. The application gave everyone the ability to upload photos and share them on timelines with the ability to organize timelines by events and tags. The events and tags could be used to tell a historical story of any event in history through imagery be it World War II or a Birthday Party.
CoFounder 2012 – Exit 2014 – Sold
CoLinear
A method for combining ceramic and neodymium magnets. The motor topology was designed to maximize motor force within a compact diameter without sacrificing linear motor performance in low frequency transducers.
Shipped 2007 – Sold in 2009
Media
Various print and live recorded interviews with:
CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, Fox News, MIT Technology Review, Forbes, Inc, Entrepreneur, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Business Insider, USA Today and others.
Public Speaking
Milne speaks at conferences and events all around the world on topics of entrepreneurship, payments, security, internet technologies, innovation and related topics. He’s been a speaker at Web Summit, Collision, MoneyConf, Money2020 US, Money2020 Europe, Finovate (Winner best in show), Federal Reserve Payment Conference(s), O’Reilly, MIT EmTech, Seamless Asia, Paris FinTech Forum, SIBOS, various private corporate events and others.