Two and a Half Men star Ashton Kutcher is a man determined to get his hands dirty in the tech industry, dirty with cash rewards when his investments pay off. His latest investment is in payments startup Dwolla where he has invested an undisclosed amount of money in the company that is seeking to take the payments industry by storm.
Dwolla works by charging a fixed commission of 25 cents on transactions rather than a percentage of the transaction value, as is the norm with all other payment systems. The company, which operates out of Iowa, has already raised $5 million from other sources but has declined to reveal how much Kutcher as invested in the company.
The amount must be significant, nonetheless, owing to the fact that Dwolla CEO and founder Ben Milne, said he talks with Kutcher via Skype every month or so. Milne says Kutcher’s insights have “shown up in the product already in a million different ways.” This shows the investment must be significant to merit such patronage from the star.
Investing through his investment firm A-Grade Investments, Kutcher has invested in about 40 tech startups and tech companies, including popular services such as Foursquare, Zaarly and Skype. He says of his investment in Dwolla that he sees the potential for the company to change the face of transactions the world over.
He adds that the company also has the potential to employ a few hundred people in Iowa and the reason why he was investing in the company was because “he wants to help build a “killer” company in Iowa, and “put a bunch of people to work here.” The star has also been recently tipped to play the part of iconic Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in an upcoming biopic although this has not yet been confirmed.
