Betaworks
 | |
| Private | |
| Industry |
Venture Capital Business Studio |
| Founded | 2007 |
| Founder |
John Borthwick Andy Weissman |
| Headquarters | New York City, United States |
| Website |
betaworks |
Betaworks is an American startup studio and seed stage venture capital company based in New York City[1][2][3][4] that invests in network-focused, consumer-facing media businesses.
Its hybrid investor/builder model has led to both investments in fast-growing startups like Tumblr, Airbnb, Groupon and Twitter as well as more exclusive stakes in internally built startups such as Chartbeat, Bitly and SocialFlow. Betaworks was founded in 2007 by John Borthwick and Andy Weissman.[5]
It has also recently come into the limelight a little more with The Intern podcast, hosted and produced by Allison Behringer. The podcast recounts a young woman beginning her career in the world of technology.[6]
Recently Betaworks was in the news for selling one of its products, called Instapaper to the social media scrapbooking site, Pinterest.[7]
Studio
Current:
- Giphy lets anyone search for animated gifs on the web. It was born out of an experiment by two hackers in residence, Alex Chung and Jace Cooke, who found it difficult to browse the best gifs on the web. It spread unexpectedly quickly, serving millions of results in the first few weeks. "We could tell it struck a nerve, so we swarmed it," said Paul Murphy, the head of product at Betaworks told The Verge [8]
- Bloglovin' helps people discover and follow their favorite blogs. The site was founded in Sweden and has over 2 million members, 70% of them who follow fashion blogs & over 90% who are female. Shortly after it took $1 million of investment from Betaworks and Lerer Hippeau Ventures in 2012, traffic spiked following Google's announcement to discontinue Google Reader.[9]
- In July 2012, the company acquired the Digg brand and internet assets for USD $500,000[10][11] and merged it with News.me, a social news reading app.
- In April 2013, the company acquired a majority stake in Instapaper, before selling it to Pinterest in 2016.[12]
- In April 2013, the company released Dots, a video game downloaded over 10 million times.
Former:
- Chartbeat, which provides realtime analytics to websites and blogs. It shows visitors, load times, and referring.
- Bitly, which that allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier.
- SocialFlow, which optimizes the real-time value of content.
See also
- Venture builders
References
- ↑ Richardson, Vanessa (October 1, 2012). "Betaworks Uses Creative Methods to Find and Fund the Next Big Idea". Entrepreneur (magazine).
- ↑ Perez, Sarah (December 30, 2010). "News.me, Betaworks & NYT's Stealthy Social News Project, Starts Accepting Invite Requests". ReadWriteWeb.
- ↑ Shah, Agam (March 11, 2010). "Intel Invests in Social Media Incubator Betaworks". IDG News Service via PCWorld.
- ↑ Wortham, Jenna (May 2, 2010). "In New York, a Tech Incubator Becomes a Hub of Collaboration". The New York Times.
- ↑ Hempel, Jessi (January 13, 2009). "Reinventing the tech incubator". CNNMoney.com. Archived from the original on October 20, 2012.
- ↑ Behringer, Allison. "The Intern Podcast".
- ↑ Chaykowski, Kathleen. "Pinterest Focuses On Articles With Instapaper Acquisition".
- ↑ Popper, Ben (20 March 2013). "Betaworks' Giphy takes on Google in the red-hot market for GIF search".
- ↑ "Bloglovin passes 2M members and buckles down for life beyond Google Reader". 15 March 2013.
- ↑ Albanesius, Chloe (July 12, 2012). "Betaworks Buys Digg, Will Fold Into News.me". PC magazine.
- ↑ Walker, Joseph; Ante, Spencer E. (July 13, 2012). "Once a Social Media Star, Digg Sells for $500,000". The Wall Street Journal.
- ↑ "The next generation of Instapaper – Marco.org".
