John Borthwick
CEO, Founder @ Betaworks
New York, United States
John Borthwick is a seed investor at Betaworks in New York focused on Internet and Mobile. John Borthwick is the CEO and Founder of Betaworks. He leads the company building and investment process since 2008. Previously, John was SVP of Alliances and Technology Strategy for Time Warner Inc.; CEO of Fotolog, one of the first social photo sharing sites; and head of AOL’s product development studio after they acquired his first company, WPStudio, one of Silicon Alley’s first content studios.John Borthwick studied at Wesleyan University and Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
- Total investments:
- 77
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 10%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries John Borthwick invests in
Stages John Borthwick invests in
Countries John Borthwick invests in
Round sizes
Round size
- Seed
- $450k–$2M
- Series A
- $800k–$10M
- Series B
- $3.3M–$22M
Investment Focus
Industry
- Internet 15 (19%)
- Mobile 13 (17%)
- Social Media 13 (17%)
- Apps 10 (13%)
- Software 8 (10%)
Stage
- Seed 37 (48%)
- Series A 16 (21%)
- Series B 5 (6%)
- Angel 4 (5%)
- Funding Round 4 (5%)
Country
- United States 59 (77%)
- United Kingdom 3 (4%)
- The Netherlands 1 (1%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
Sensity AI
|
The Visual Threat Intelligence Platform. Deep learning for monitoring and detecting #deepfakes. | $2.1M / Jan 15, 2026 | |
Camera Intelligence
|
Alice Camera is a computational photography technology company that specializes in direct capture and image enhancement. The company was founded in 2022 and is headquartered in London, United Kingdom. | $2M / Seed / Sep 02, 2025 | |
Hugging Face
|
Hugging Face is an open-source and platform provider of machine learning technologies. Their aim is to democratize good machine learning, one commit at a time. Hugging Face was launched in 2016 and is headquartered in New York City. | $100M / Series C / May 09, 2022 | |
blockchain.art
|
BCA’s user-friendly platform answers the call for an industry-wide protocol for transacting digital art formats; one that will ensure provenance, verify uniqueness and enforce terms for artist resale royalties. Buy and sell with fiat currency on the BCA Marketplace or through your own domain. BCA will design, implement, and maintain the world’sfirst blockchain that is dedicated to the fine art community. This blockchain is being built with the next-generation technologies from the Polkadot Network ecosystem, which uses a proof-of-stake protocol and provides a host of benefits in terms of security, environment-friendliness, and more. The BCA closed beta is built on RMRK.app, which is an NFT platform on the Kusama Network.As its community grows, BCA will open its governance to the art industry’s stakeholders — artists, galleries, museums, and institutions — to run the technical infrastructure with nodes and as validators within the network. We believe this will help foster the growth of the digital art market while adapting faster to its needs. | $300K / Pre-Seed / May 19, 2021 | |
Vizual.ai
|
Vizual.ai is an A.I. content imagery optimization platform that integrates with publisher web pages to drive increased user engagement. The Vizual.ai platform automatically deploys static images and .gif formats for any site imagery including video thumbnails and text based content, increasing publisher click through rates and site monetization.Vizual.ai is the first company to launch from Foundry.ai, the artificial intelligence studio created by industry veterans Jim Manzi and Ned Brody. | Seed / Mar 07, 2017 | |
Giphy
|
Giphy is an American online database and search engine that allows users to search, share, and discover the best GIFs. It operates a search engine that enables users to search, share, and discover animated graphics interchange formats (GIFs) on the Internet.Animated GIFs have existed for decades, but there was still no good way to browse anddiscover the best the web had to offer. And the vision for GIPHY isn’t really just about finding GIFs. It’s a search engine today but soon you’ll see it grow into a community, a platform with a host of features targeted at gif artists, enthusiasts, bloggers, and anyone generally looking to discover or create that next big meme.It was founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York, United States. | $55M / Series C / Feb 16, 2016 | |
Dasher
|
Dasher is a Messaging app company. Dasher is a chat app that’s all about features. The app has live location sharing, map sharing, GIFs, photos, the ability to poll your group of friends with yes-or-no questions, and the ability to delete messages after they’ve been sent. It also offers peer-to-peer payments through an integration with Venmo, abeta feature it launched months before Facebook Messenger announced payments. | $840K / Seed / Jun 10, 2015 | |
|
Giphy
|
Giphy is an American online database and search engine that allows users to search, share, and discover the best GIFs. It operates a search engine that enables users to search, share, and discover animated graphics interchange formats (GIFs) on the Internet.Animated GIFs have existed for decades, but there was still no good way to browse anddiscover the best the web had to offer. And the vision for GIPHY isn’t really just about finding GIFs. It’s a search engine today but soon you’ll see it grow into a community, a platform with a host of features targeted at gif artists, enthusiasts, bloggers, and anyone generally looking to discover or create that next big meme.It was founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York, United States. | $21.5M / Series B / Jan 29, 2015 | |
|
Giphy
|
Giphy is an American online database and search engine that allows users to search, share, and discover the best GIFs. It operates a search engine that enables users to search, share, and discover animated graphics interchange formats (GIFs) on the Internet.Animated GIFs have existed for decades, but there was still no good way to browse anddiscover the best the web had to offer. And the vision for GIPHY isn’t really just about finding GIFs. It’s a search engine today but soon you’ll see it grow into a community, a platform with a host of features targeted at gif artists, enthusiasts, bloggers, and anyone generally looking to discover or create that next big meme.It was founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York, United States. | $2.4M / Series A / May 15, 2014 | |
CrowdTangle
|
CrowdTangle makes it incredibly easy to find & track content on the social web. | $2.2M / May 07, 2014 | |
| See all 77 investments → | |||
Co-Investors
About Betaworks
Betaworks Ventures is a product-focused, seed-stage venture capital fund, having invested in more than 150 companies. We invest in new consumer behaviors and trends powered by frontier technologies, and are often amongst the first institutional investors to invest.
Betaworks Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Analisa Svehaug
Director
|
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John Borthwick
CEO, Founder
|
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Jon Chin
Copy / Paste Specialist
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Jordan Crook
Partner; Partner
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FAQ
What does John Borthwick invest in?
John Borthwick invests primarily in Internet, Mobile and Social Media startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 77 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
What is John Borthwick's check size?
John Borthwick typically joins rounds of $450k–$2M at Seed, $800k–$10M at Series A and $3.3M–$22M at Series B. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds John Borthwick participates in.
When did John Borthwick last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for John Borthwick closed in Jan 2026. Shizune tracks 77 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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