This Gillmor Gang was recorded live at betaday, the betaworks annual gathering in New York. The Gillmor Gang included John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Douglas Rushkoff, Paul Davison, and Steve Gillmor. Enjoy.
@stevegillmor, @Borthwick, @scobleizer, @rushkoff, @pdavison
The Gillmor Gang is produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
Article courtesy of TechCrunch
John Borthwick and his investment company Betaworks made news last week by acquiring Instapaper, a popular read-it-later app. However, he’s not just looking for companies that are situating themselves on the virtual plane. Instead, he recommends entrepreneurs seriously consider New York as a launch spot, especially if they’re in the media, ad, or hardware game.
Borthwick sees the value in encouraging startups to grow in the New York area but he’s not big on tax subsidies simply because it creates an unusual precedent that could, in the end, force a not-so-lean startup to realize they have run out of cash too soon once the tax bill comes.
The company also launched Open Beta, a place users can visit to see cool new products that the company is building before they’re officially launched.
Article courtesy of TechCrunch
Betaworks is a fairly unique entity, as a holding company that creates, acquires and invests in a wide variety of startups and products, including most recently Marco Arment’s Instapaper. Betaworks founder and CEO John Borthwick took the Disrupt stage today to talk about his company and its investments, as well as the products it has created in-house like Giphy.
Borthwich says he sees how the Betaworks approach is strange, but on the other hand, it makes the most sense versus other models of investment and startup financing. The idea for how Betaworks operates was inspired by Borthwick’s time as head of digital at Time Warner, a company which had varying stakes in a wide range of businesses, a minority share here, a majority there.
“When I was at Time Warner running tech there, I appreciated that not everything was a wholly-owned asset,” he said. “It’s kind of a combination, and that’s what I’m building at Betaworks.”
Betaworks is a “collection of things,” Borthwick says, some of which it owns tiny pieces of, some of which it has created in house, and some of which are full acquisitions. Most of the things it does it builds, he says, including Poncho, Giphy and a new game to be released mid-week. But all the properties, both those built by Betaworks itself, and those that the company takes on ownership stakes in, are part of a larger puzzle.
“If you look at the products out there I think of them more as ecosystems or clusters of things,” Borthwick said. “There’s a strong relationship between the products that we build or invest in at Betaworks, they all fit together like a puzzle [...] Thinking about the entire puzzle instead of trying to invest everything in the highest growth piece is what we’re doing.”
That’s why Betaworks was interested in building a Google Reader replacement, since it fits right between Instapaper and Digg in the content space. At the time, they couldn’t talk about the Instapaper piece since that was still in progress, but that was the thinking around that group of acquisitions; they make up a larger picture. In general, Borthwick says that Betaworks is concerned more with high engagement users than with pure numbers, and all those apps have that dedicated, impassioned user base ingredient.
Borthwick says that there’s a new game coming from Betaworks midweek, so it’ll be interesting to see what comes out of that. He also seemed to suggest that Betaworks is currently in the process of raising additional funding.
In general, the Betaworks approach seems like an interesting variation from the traditional VC investment portfolio, and you get the sense that there’s a grand design. As Borthwick puts it, “it’s the puzzle that fascinates.”
Article courtesy of TechCrunch
It was just last week that Betaworks announced it had acquired a majority stake in fan-favorite reading service Instapaper, and today on the Disrupt NY stage, betaworks CEO John Borthwick shed some new light on the process of striking a deal with Instapaper creator Marco Arment.
“I got an email from Marco which came in at 2AM, and he said that he was lying awake and trying to figure out how he could balance his priorities between the magazine, his family and Instapaper,” Borthwick noted.
Arment came to the conclusion that he wanted Instapaper to continue growing, but didn’t want to deal with the tremendous headaches involved with but managing a larger team or raising funding (and who can blame him?). The two men later ironed out the particulars of a deal that would see a revenue share agreement take effect. As Borthwick puts it, they both crafted the transaction with a set of principles in mind: to align Instapaper for the long term, and to give Arment input on Instapaper’s development without saddling him with too much responsbility there.
Now that Instapaper has been added to the flock, Betaworks is now a company that makes money — Borthwick noted that Instapaper has a phenomenally loyal and avid userbase, and that it makes roughly “$1 million a year after Apple’s take.” Here’s hoping that Instapaper eventually sees the same sort of growth that the revamped Digg (which Betaworks acquired back in July 2012) has — BuzzFeed’s Aswini Anburajan pointed out earlier this month that Digg’s referral traffic has surged something like 93% over the last 12 months. Betaworks may devote plenty of time and effort to nurturing nascent companies and crafting nifty little projects of its own (including a game that we be unveiled this week) but it’s apparently no slouch at taking existing properties and propelling them to new heights either.
You can see Borthwick’s full chat with TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis below:
Article courtesy of TechCrunch
The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — spent a too-quick hour on Facebook Home, Twitter’s new deep linking Cards, and the jousting over Webkit. Individually, these developments represent interesting strategy for the major notification platforms of Google, Apple, Twitter, and Facebook.
But taken together, we’re seeing an important moment of truth. With Facebook pulling a “kindle” by hijacking Android’s lockscreen for its notification engine, suddenly everybody has to get in line. Apple retains its AirPlay gateway to the big screen, but it’s Facebook not Google that threatens iOS’ fit and finish. And just in time for apps, Twitter sets in motion developer innovation linking app to app and eventually the Web, Look out Cleveland, a fork is coming through.
@stevegillmor, @kteare, @kevinmarks, @borthwick, @jtaschek
Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
Article courtesy of TechCrunch
We’re pleased to announce John Borthwick will be back for another TechCrunch Disrupt. As the founder and CEO of betaworks, Borthwick has a unique vantage point on the New York City startup scene. There’s likely no one better to give us a solid understanding of the tech city that never sleeps.
This isn’t Borthwick’s first time on the Disrupt stage. He joined us last May where he told us that the NYC VC scene was just as vibrant as but less overheated than San Francisco’s. Borthwick and betaworks have been pretty busy themselves since then, working on several new products including famously acquiring and quickly relaunching Digg. Hopefully Borthwick will reveal some details about Digg’s Google Reader replacement.
Starting on April 27 our 24-hour Hackathon precedes Disrupt NY. The conference officially kicks off at the Manhattan Center on April 29 with a schedule filled with speakers, product demos and of course, happening each afternoon, Startup Battlefield — Where 30 startups compete for the Disrupt Cup and a giant $50,000 check.
Early bird general admission tickets are available until April 11. Or, sign up for the Hackathon for a chance for the same ticket for free.
Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com.
Article courtesy of TechCrunch
To absolutely no surprise, the people I know are enamored of Google Glasses. The world of sensor-driven big data is sure to come, just as apps have supplanted sites as the metaphor with which we frame our lives. As one who replaced music with computers, I am eager for the next phase.
But while Glass forages ahead in mind share, my thoughts slide to the elegant footnote that is increasingly absorbing my interest. The iPad Mini, a device I only bought because I couldn’t quite rule out something lurking there, so subtle that I can really only see it in the absence of something. As I’ve lived with this strange step-child, that something is taking shape, becoming visible and tangible.
Just as Glass captures our imagination, the Mini absorbs our reality. Always present, just big enough to transfer much of the iPhone’s work load, barely big enough to suck the Retina iPad dry, and just waiting to use AirPlay to push toward the big screen for media. Waiting not for the tech but the politics of the death of the broadcast windowing business and the rise of streaming to sort itself out.
With so many cycles opting for the Mini, our behavior is shifting. This is bigger than big data, because the compressed signal of behavior moves ahead of the raw data in identifying the underlying sentiment. It’s not analysis, it’s the feel in musical terms. It’s that rush we felt the first time, and every time, we heard the Stones’ Last Time. It’s not the riff, although that was plenty for starters, it wasn’t the lyric either, it wasn’t any of the parts but for sure it just felt good.
There’s some of that in the Glass video too, the moments where you can extrapolate what will happen when we can dive into an event and feel it because so many people are running it that we can cut to just the right person at just the right angle both in image and sound. Groups will form like the Beatles in Hamburg where the band got so tight they just simply started making music greater than the sum of its parts.
When people start finding the value, the joy, in working together, now that is something big. RIght now, we can’t quite see it, but these new tools are like the electric guitar, the Arriflex in movies, Netflix in the changing of the guard. Each of them produced a state of being where magic could happen. Only now years later can I hear what the British musicians heard when they heard the blues masters. It was there all the time, I just didn’t listen. Lightweight cameras birthed the French New Wave, freeing Truffaut and Godard to deconstruct the studio system into its essential elements of story and naturalism.
We don’t yet see Netflix for what it is, intuiting that ethereal something but getting lost in irrelevant cord cutting and cartel stonewalling. But here it is: just like the Beatles and their compatriots dismantled the existing music business and took over both the means of production and then distribution, so too will the next wave take over this live streaming cloud-based network and produce live push notification-driven events owned and created by the artists themselves.
You can begin to feel the power of this moment with the Mini. It’s small enough to always be there, big enough to get work and research done, Bluetooth enabled to add a keyboard as I’m doing right now to write this, enough battery to manage notifications, news, Spotify, Chatter, AirPlay, everything. It’s the hub, and Glass will work with it because it needs to. When Jobs said he’d cracked the code, I believed it. It wasn’t bravado; he just ran out of time. And when I finally settled into the Mini, I began to see how.
The Mini is hard to write to. It may be because I’m sick of the tricks, or the usual kerfuffles, or whatever. But the Mini reeks of just enough, no fluff. What is annoying and dumbed down on the Retina, like Pages, is plenty good enough with the keyboard. I don’t know what will happen with the Logitech mini keyboard, if MG is to be believed that it may be too small. But if I can make it work, it will be the first non-Apple Smart Cover I’ve bought. Already I can see the Bluetooth rules engine choosing keyboards based on location, priority, and all those intangibles that govern the studio recording process. How far behind is the atomization of the MacBook Air via the Bluetooth console?
The Mini turns my iPhone into the Pebble, at least until or unless Apple jumps in. With notifications turned on, Twitter and increasingly Facebook are draining the battery and pushing me even more toward the Mini. And it’s made Facetime an increasingly valuable choice where the Retina is too big and way too heavy. Glass may move in here as well as a Bluetooth Mini accessory. They’ll need to spend significant search bucks to subsidize Glass or risk being beaten by Apple on price.
Meanwhile event television is testing the streaming waters as the Mini melds controller, point of sale terminal, and notification multiplexing. Broadcast and cable politics mandate blocking of Netflix over AirPlay for the moment, but when I can’t watch Episode 4 and whatever of House of Cards through Apple TV, I opt for the Mini and out of Showtime or NBC. The one thing I have a finite amount of is viewing time, and the more Netflix wins in that arena, the more pressure is on the hotel to participate via AirPlay and get a cut. Watch for the weaker news channels like MSNBC cracking the code first.
I spent the weekend in a hotel in New York hacking into HDMI2 with the Mini and and a new Apple TV. The more I butted up against the roadblocks, the more I realized how Apple is partnering with companies like Netflix and Spotify rather than fighting. Being on HDMI2 made it difficult to watch shows on the hotel broadcast channels, but I could Slingbox in to California and watch on three hours later or Comcast on demand or buy on iTunes the next day. I could listen to three tracks off Boz Scaggs’ new record on Spotify and then buy it on iTunes for the full album.
The network fare suffers greatly when matched against House of Cards or the relentless advance of time-shifting. I’ve stopped recording Glee because I know it will be on Netflix when the season’s over, and besides how can it compete against a steady stream of 13 week “seasons from the streamers. Mad Men, Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Downton Abbey, House of Cards II, these things are stacked up over Gotham in relentless fashion. Just as the Beatles moved the record business from singles to albums and went to yearly production and release patterns, these binge streaming series are wiping out the weakened networks. Unless they buy in like AT&T did with the iPhone.
Sure, there’s a second screen these days. But it’s not the one you might think. The second screen is the TV, where the decaying rules remain in force as network comedies atrophy and the fall season is rife with cancellation. The first screen is the Mini, managing the push notification appointment calendar and relationships of the binge viewers as they kibitz, joke, and narrate the stream economy.
Article courtesy of TechCrunch
The Gillmor Gang — John Taschek, Robert Scoble, John Borthwick, and Steve Gillmor — went bicoastal with @stevegillmor at @borthwick’s Betaworks Studios in New York City. @scobleizer and @jtaschek held down the West Coast as it threatened to float away in Googlemania. With a touch Chromebook and a Google Glasses video surfacing, at least half the Gang is predicting Apple is in trouble.
Certainly the Googlers get network while a Tim Cooked Apple gets supply chain, but who’s to say (Scoble) that the fun ride is over for ownership of innovation. I think not, fascinated as I am with the amazing platform being nurtured around the iPad Mini and what it augurs for Apple’s move to the streaming cloud.
@stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @borthwick, @jtaschek
Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
Article courtesy of TechCrunch
