“Move the furniture around: this is your club.”
That’s an invite from newly-opened betaworks Studios—a collaborative workspace for startup founders and builders in Manhattan’s meatpacking district—where the prospects of smart friends, free breakfast snacks and group brainstorms may make you want to settle in and stay awhile.
But it’s not just anyone’s club. Studios is members-only, and today it’s curating a top-notch network of founders with a selective application process designed to draw candidates with cred.
Over 65 percent of its current members have launched companies, 44 percent are actively founding companies and 37 percent have tech backgrounds, says betaworks Studios President Daphne Kwon. As members, those entrepreneurs enjoy amenities like weekly events and games, discussions and workshops, full use of the space and access to a high-powered community.
“We focus on ensuring the ecosystem that surrounds the founders are people who can help them build, including CTOs of major corporations, artists and creatives, academics and many others,” says Kwon.
This roster of industry leaders and “tech glitterati” came easy thanks to the larger betaworks legacy surrounding its startup platform. Since 2008, betaworks has helped launch companies like Giphy, Dots and Chartbeat and invested in Tumblr, Kickstarter, Gimlet and more.
“Betaworks has a ten-year heritage of successfully incubating, investing and accelerating businesses that have reached over a billion dollars in company value," says Kwon. " This gives Studios an unmatched credibility with builders across the tech industry."
Leveraging that reputation helps Studios bring influential founders together in a space they can trust. It's all part of the brand's philosophy: the best ideas won't hatch without people sharing, imagining, experimenting and actually talking. Encouraging those interactions is what Kwon hopes can safeguard us from a future of disconnected or soulless tech companies and products.
“The future of tech without that active focus on humane technology could push us into a place where the human experience is deprioritized for speed, efficiency or money,” says Kwon. “A place that encourages entrepreneurs to seek that moment of human connection during their building process will help future tech innovation stay in touch with the people it’s there to help.”
Kwon admired betaworks well before Studios launched. "The brand has always differentiated itself from the massive accelerators, funds and incubators by supporting technology designed for the human experience and social good."
Courtesy of BetaworksIn this edited and condensed interview, Kwon takes us inside betaworks Studios and shares her vision for growing its community of builders.
Betaworks Basics
“Betaworks has been around for ten years, with a mission of connecting builders with each other and creating an ecosystem of diverse voices. We wanted to open up this philosophy to the larger tech community in New York City in addition to our own investments so we launched betaworks Studios in May 2018. Members have the ability to reflect on frontier technologies with experts, bounce business plans off experienced investors and just commiserate on the day-to-day grind of being a founder. These activities are nearly impossible to find the time for when you’re at your coworking desk with your headset on, talking to your team that’s scattered across the globe, but Studios aims to break down these barriers.”
“A place that encourages entrepreneurs to seek that moment of human connection during their building process will help future tech innovation stay in touch with the people it’s there to help.”
Easy Introductions
“We use both software and ‘real people’ who are solely focused on making connections between members and our other resources. The software identifies member interests, needs and strengths to identify connections that might be helpful between members. We also have a “member connector” who gets to know all members, what they’re working on, what stage they’re at, what industry they’re focused on and then can make connections for members who might be uncomfortable introducing themselves. This is the opposite of some clubs that sometimes forbid members to approach one another without a pre-arrangement. At betaworks, everyone is equal whether you’re a first time founder or already a successful entrepreneur.”
Natural Conversations
“We have a full schedule of builder-focused sessions each week. Some of the larger experiences we offer center around specific topics including emerging technologies like synthetic media or 'betaworking' which focuses on how to build products. Others are exclusively member-led, meaning members will select the topic and moderate the discussion. Bringing together like-minded members around a topic of interest is a great place to spark new connections that are valuable but completely natural.”
Courtesy of Betaworks
Lessons From Luminaries
"We bring in the New York tech glitterati through our sessions, like our recently launched “Ask me anything” series that allows members to ask questions of the most successful entrepreneurs in tech. Perhaps even more exciting than corporate or big-name members, we integrate closely with betaworks Camp, a three month residency program to help founders build companies in emerging technologies that show an early indication that they'll impact society."
Balanced Voices
“The underrepresentation of diversity in the founder community and technology as an industry is something that we hope to change within the Studio walls. We address these topics directly in our sessions, ensure that our panels are as balanced as possible and try to have our membership reflect our own desire to have varied voices among our community. We’ve partnered with groups like Female Founders Fund and SheWorx to support their mission and programming, and hope to create similar partnerships with more underserved groups.”
A View Beyond Manhattan
“We hope to launch Studios in local tech neighborhoods nationwide, and even globally. Individually, these clubs could take their own local persona—for example, more media-centric in Los Angeles or more manufacturing-focused in Detroit. Those local clubs will stitch together into a national network of like-minded builders, and we hope to provide a greater and greater network to tap into for our members.”
