20VC: Betaworks' John Borthwick on Why The VC Model Is So Inefficient, Why Venture Fund Cycles Are Too Short & Why Frontier Tech Could Only Have Been Disappointing Over The Last Year
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 6 March 2017
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John Borthwick is the Founder & CEO @ Betaworks, the New York-based startup platform combining 3 areas of expertise. They have a studio where they have built products including Giphy, Dots, Bitly and more. They have a fund with prior investments including Tumblr, Medium and Kickstarter. Finally they have a camp, a thematic accelerator program for companies in frontier technology sectors. As for John, Prior to Betaworks, John was an SVP at Time Warner Inc following John's previous company, WP-Studio, being acquired by AOLTW.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How John made his way from AOL and Time Warner to founder of Betaworks?
2.) Why is John skeptical of the traditional VC model? Why does John believe that the market has adapted but the VC model has not?
3.) Why does John believe fund cycles are simply too short, in the same school of thought as Matt Ocko @ Data Collective? What are the problems with this?
4.) How does John evaluate Fred Wilson's post on the consumer downturn? Why does John think we are addicted to short term rapid fire hits?
5.) Why is John not surprised that AI, Bots, VR and AR are being 'labeled a disappointment for the last year? What does he think will be the catalyst for their rise?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
John’s Fave Book: King Lear
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome back to another week in the wonderful world of venture capital with the 20 minute VC |
| 0:04.1 | and your host Harry Stebbings at H. Stebbings with 2Bs on Snapchat and found writing a lot more |
| 0:09.2 | these days on MahitoVC.com. I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback on that. However, to the show |
| 0:14.4 | today, and as a tech and venture nerd, today's guest has been an individual I've immensely respected and admired for many years, |
| 0:21.3 | and so I'm very honored to be joined today by John Borthwick, a founder and CEO at Betaworks, |
| 0:26.1 | the New York-based startup platform combining three areas of expertise. |
| 0:29.9 | They have a studio where they've built products including GIFI, Dots, Bitley and more. |
| 0:34.5 | They have a fund with prior investments including Tumblr, Medium and Kickstarter. |
| 0:38.9 | And finally, they have a camp, a thematic accelerator program for companies in frontier technology |
| 0:43.6 | sectors. As for John, prior to Betawork, John was an SVP at Time Warner Inc, following John's previous |
| 0:49.1 | company, WP, Studio, being acquired by AOL Time Warner. I'd also like to say a huge thank you to previous guests, |
| 0:55.1 | Matt Hartman and Peter Rojas, at BetaWorks for the intro to John Stay, without which the show |
| 0:59.7 | would not have been possible. But before we dive into the show today, there are some products |
| 1:03.3 | that you simply cannot remember what life was like before them. For me, that's X.a.I. They bring |
| 1:08.2 | you Amy and Andrew, their AI-powered personal assistance for scheduling meetings. |
| 1:12.6 | And the beauty of Amy or Andrew is you interact with them like you would any other person. |
| 1:16.7 | And it allows you to avoid the tedious hours of email ping pong in order to schedule one meeting. |
| 1:21.6 | Even better, though. There's no sign in, no password, no download. All you do is CCAmy at X.A.I. Absolutely fantastic. And you can check it out now |
| 1:29.9 | at X.comaI. It really is a must. And on the topic of streamlining traditionally long and |
| 1:34.7 | cumbersome workflows, you must check out Workable, the all-in-one recruiting software for ambitious |
| 1:39.2 | companies. From posting a job to tracking and managing candidates, Workable provides everything |
| 1:43.8 | you need to hire better. |
... |
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