John Borthwick – Startup Investor Profile

John Borthwick, the Co-Founder and CEO of Betaworks, focuses on seed investments within the Media/Content, AI, and Consumer Internet sectors. His investments typically range from $100K to $500K, with a sweet spot of $350K per company. Borthwick’s current fund size is $50M, and he prefers investing in companies at the seed stage in New York City. With a track record of 106 investments since the inception of Betaworks, he aims to create value within a network of loosely coupled companies. Borthwick’s investment style follows a thesis-oriented approach, emphasizing convertible notes over priced rounds and delivering realized and unrealized returns of $72.4M. Collaborating with investors like Neel Baronia, Patrick Montague, and Peter Rojas, Borthwick’s strategic investments have proven successful, with a focus on building a strong network and fostering growth in early-stage startups.

Location: New York, NY

Country: United States of America

Investment Regions:

Investment Stages: pre-seed, seed

Website:

AI Reasoning: I found a Betaworks announcement showing Fund 3.0 closed on July 22, 2025 and reporting recent Betaworks activity and cohorts, indicating John Borthwick (co-founder/CEO of Betaworks) has active investments in 2025. Example startup mentioned as a recent Betaworks-backed company is The Browser Company. The most recent known investment activity is within 6 months before the reference date, which classifies the investor accordingly.

Low Activity – Only known angel investments more than 12 months ago.

Active – Known angel investments between the last 12 and 6 months.

Very Active – Known angel investments in the last 6 months.