20th
New York investor/incubator Betaworks raises new fund
wow, summize sold for $15M.Rafer’s comments below on why betaworks structure may matter. Part of the points he makes below, yes, were reasons for choosing this different structure because we think it affords us the best starting place to build businesses - it’s right for what we want to accomplish, at least now. It’s why we call the things we get involved in participants in our network (as opposed to components of a portfolio).
Rafer sez:
Betaworks is also “not a fund,” because it’s not a fund. It’s a holding company that has no inherent need to look at investment horizons, limited partner distributions, capital calls (and correlated management fees), carry calculations, etc., etc., that bias VC-startup relationships before they even start.Betaworks is a small but well-connected New York investor/incubator firm that’s making a name for itself. It has put money into a number of well-hyped (and incidentally, also New York-based) startups including dating service turned social gaming site Iminlikewithyou, local news site Outside.in, joke e-greeting card company Someecards and music recommendation service Songkick.
Most prominently, it backed Summize, the search engine for Twitter — that Twitter bought this summer for $15 million. Betaworks, which uses the buzzword-laden phrase “business accelerator platform” to describe itself, has just raised another $10 million to $15 million from prominent angel investors, Silicon Alley Insider reports.
Well, I would say the things we have done, if they are “well-hyped” at all (dont think they are), are innovative and potentially large businesses.
And, we are not a fund, because not only do we invest, we also build things. And the structure, from a corporate perspective, is totally different. We probably haven’t done the best job of explaining it, really in short we build businesses, and attempt to do that in a scalable, focused and accelerated manner using our specific skills, a very product centric focus, and the network of companies we have. That’s the main strategy. How we do that - invest, build, acquire, etc. - is just a tactic, a detail.
