You may not have heard of betaworks, but you definitely know their work. Betaworks is responsible for building some really cool, innovative companies, including the likes of Giphy, Dots and Poncho.
How they do things at betaworks is interesting. In a lot of ways, they're like a factory that turns innovative ideas into successful businesses. They're not an incubator program, but rather a startup studio that promotes, funds and incubates ideas that come from within. And, of course, they also operate an externally focused venture arm as well.
So, what's it actually like to walk on the betaworks factory floor? We visited, and their Head of Creative, James Cooper, was nice enough to give us some insight on how the company works.
This space is awesome. How long have you been in it? We are turning 9 years old this month. We have always been in this building, but moved to the current downstairs space in September of 2014. Dots now has our original 2nd floor space. And Giphy is moving back into the building after having temporarily moved out. We like to keep it in the family.
Betaworks is a very unique company — not really a venture fund, not really an incubator, but both kind of at the same time. How do you describe what betaworks does? We are a startup studio. We have ideas for products and then build them ourselves. We also make small seed investments.
What is this artwork in your lobby? The screens are Electric Objects screens, a startup founded by Jake Levine, a previous betaworks employee. The screens display digital art — mostly GIFs. We frequently change the artwork.
You’ve had some really amazing companies come out of here. Who’s here now? In the studio now we have Dexter, Poncho and Scale Model. But Dots and Giphy are upstairs.
VR gear in the conference room? I bet you guys have awesome team meetings. What sorts of technologies are you excited to see in the future? We are interested in VR but have spent more time thinking about AI, bots and chat as an interface. We recently ran BotCamp, an eight-week session for companies building bots.
Images via Built In NYC
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