One of technology’s most persistently prescient crystal ball gazers is Betaworks CEO John Borthwick, a guy who – from Summize to Tweetdeck to bitly to Digg to his latest baby tapestry - always thinks ahead of the crowd. So, as a follow-up to Borthwick’s review of 2012, I sat down with the Betaworks CEO in his New York City office to get his take on what will happen in 2013. As always with Borthwick, the conversation was free-ranging and bold – particularly his prediction of how bad ideas will die sooner in 2013 and why that will be a good thing for startup entrepreneurs. And I was particularly struck by Borthwick’s vision of the “persistence of old platforms” in 2013 – a theme that TechCrunch’s Keith Teare also touched upon this weekend in his provocative Unnatural Acts piece.
So rather than a “web of things,” perhaps 2013 will really be a year in which we all go back to the future – back to a “re-portalization” craze and platform wars in which reinvented giants like Yahoo! and Microsoft realize new relevance. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, as the French – a nation that knows a thing or two about persisting with old platforms – might say.
Founded in 2008, betaworks is a company of builders. A tightly linked network of ideas, people, capital, products and data brought together in imaginative ways to build out a more connected world. At first glance we seem to do many things. But first and foremost, we’re builders, seeking to create a more sustainable innovation model. The more we build, the more we learn, the more we get ideas for peripheral things, all related, connected – in a loosely...
John Borthwick is CEO of betaworks. betaworks is a technology company that operates as a studio. betaworks builds new products, runs companies and seed invests. Prior to betaworks John was Senior Vice President of Alliances and Technology Strategy for Time Warner Inc. John’s company, WP-Studio, founded in 1994, was one of the first content studios in New York’s Silicon Alley. John holds an MBA from Wharton (1994) and an undergraduate degree BA...
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
