Betaworks Uses Creative Methods to Find and Fund the Next Big Idea Betaworks calls itself a 'maker,' and so far they have helped build some of the social web's biggest companies including TweetDeck, Kickstarter and Tumblr.

Don't call it a venture capital fund, an accelerator or even an incubator. None of those terms apply to Betaworks. It calls itself a "maker," scaling germs of ideas into companies that are the future of the social web. That may sound bombastic, but this New York City firm has the cred to back it up--heard of bitly, TweetDeck, Kickstarter and Tumblr?

Co-founder and CEO John Borthwick says Betaworks does two things: "We birth our own ideas and see them expand into companies focused on social themes and the real-time web, and we also invest in companies that focus on those themes."

The idea is that these companies will have the potential to pull in more funding in successive rounds (see bitly's recent $15 million VC funding) or be bought outright (such as TweetDeck's $40 million sale to Twitter).