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December 21, 2007

The Crunchies: Finalists Are Up, Vote For the Winners

Michael Arrington

60 comments »

The nomination process for the Crunchies, a joint effort between us, Read/Write Web, VentureBeat and GigaOm, is now complete.

82,000 nominations were made for thousands of individual startups. The top startups in each of twenty categories have made it to the final vote. Starting now, you can vote for the startups you think are most worthy in each of twenty categories - from “best technology achievement” to “best overall startup.”

Each category has five finalists to choose from. A few startups made it to the finals of multiple categories, but there are still nearly 100 to choose from for the various awards. Voting goes until January 10. The Awards Ceremony will take place on Friday, January 18 at the 1,000 seat Herbst Theater across the street from City Hall in San Francisco, followed by one hell of a party.

Thanks to sponsors Adobe, Charles River Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Microsoft, OurStage and Sun for assisting us with the event - we could not do it without them. Thanks as well to WeBreakStuff for building the site (they also did our Tech President site), and Media Temple for hosting.Contact us if you’re interested to sponsor an award or other part of the evening festivities. It’s sure to be a great evening.

Go vote now! If you are a finalist, you can also grab a badge to let your users know and vote for you to win.

And finally - tickets to the event will be going on sale in the next week or so. Stay tuned.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Events, Web 2.0 News & Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. Crunchies Voting is Open - rambls

    December 22nd, 2007 at 6:58 am

  2. Prosper Blog: Prosper, the online marketplace for people-to-people lending » Blog Archive » Prosper Nominated for Crunchie Award

    December 22nd, 2007 at 10:56 am

  3. Support this story on Stirrdup

    December 22nd, 2007 at 4:32 pm

  4. GeoffManning.com » Blog Archive » The Crunchies - Voting is Open

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:01 am

Comments

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  1. Tim

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:20 pm

    How boring… these are all well-known companies!

  2. Al Williams

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:21 pm

    Justin.tv best Video site?

    Is that a joke?

  3. Tim

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:22 pm

    ..but I guess that was required to give the contest a good name. Maybe next year you will take some more risks in your selection.

  4. Michael Arrington

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:26 pm

    I think next year we’ll guide the nomination process a little more from the beginning - perhaps by suggesting 10 or so companies per category and allowing a blank option as well for write ins. There was a lot of fraud in the nomination process that was easy, but time consuming, to strip out. Narrowing the list from the start may help reduce that fraud in the future.

  5. CarEnthusiast

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:28 pm

    I couldn’t make a vote on most of the categories due to not knowing anything about the companies in the category.

    I guess that’s the way start up culture works, but for next year, you could rethink the categories (fewer?) and ways to introduce the companies better before allowing voting.

    I’d rather make a vote on, say 5 most important dimensions of start ups, than waddle through all the current categories.

  6. Mark Grey

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:30 pm

    GO KDICE!!! Hah!

    http://vote.crunchies.techcrun.....w/timesink

  7. Jim Greer

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:34 pm

    KDICE? No way. Kongregate FTW!

    http://vote.crunchies.techcrun.....w/timesink

  8. Michael Arrington

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:38 pm

    Jim - Kongregate has the benefit of hosting desktop tower defense, which makes it a serious time waster site. :-)

  9. Heretic

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:43 pm

    I’m with #1.Tim on this one. Most of these are well established sites that have been around for many years. Yawn.

  10. Allen Stern

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:58 pm

    Link the startups to their sites plz.

  11. What is going on, blog

    December 21st, 2007 at 6:02 pm

    Congratulations to all of the nominees and to the winners ahead of time!

  12. Marcelo Calbucci

    December 21st, 2007 at 6:11 pm

    I think this award is great, but there should be some standards as to which company can participate. Isn’t this to be about Startups?

    Hulu? Feedburner? GrandCentral? Sure, they are not in a “start-up” category, but if the award starts to be about Apple, Microsoft and Sony, it becomes way less about entrepreneurialship and more about the power of money. They have enough awards already.

  13. David Mackey

    December 21st, 2007 at 6:17 pm

    Going to vote now…

  14. Joey Jones

    December 21st, 2007 at 6:47 pm

    I like the idea of guiding the nomination process more. I see a ton of large companies, and then the obvious fraud (Justin.tv).

    Either way, I’ll vote this year! And I love the name Crunchies

  15. Jeremy

    December 21st, 2007 at 7:12 pm

    Mike I know they’re were a lot of people wanking about the crunchies process and I don’t want to add to it, but maybe the solution next year is less about narrowing the already narrow field of people you consider and more about transparency. I think a lot of people were bummed, not because you delayed the posting (which obviously was dealing with fraud) but because there was such little communication about it, during the week delay.
    For example, between myself and my small team we sent out hundreds of emails to our friends, family, and contacts to get nominated for the best bootstrapped startup. I don’t mind not getting nominated, thats the way it goes, but what was a bummer, was for the last week, all the people we rallied to vote for us, telling them how important the competition was, all of a sudden seemed kind of silly when no one knew what the deal was with the delay.

  16. kin

    December 21st, 2007 at 7:34 pm

    82000 startup entries - is this a joke ? can you release the list of them? …if 82K is true then this year should be marked as the year of century.

  17. JeffC

    December 21st, 2007 at 7:40 pm

    How about a subset ’special’ award in future Crunchies: For example, the guy who said adios to his company with a bong-in-hand video … I’m too lazy right now to search archives for his name. A few special awards could be given for unique contributions, like the lifetime achievement Oscars, call them the ‘Munchies’.

  18. Steven Bao

    December 21st, 2007 at 7:46 pm

    It’d really be great if SmugMug did away with that freaking Comic Sans.

  19. Web 1.0

    December 21st, 2007 at 8:08 pm

    I think the “82000 startup entries” is a web 1.0 way of announcing how many suggestions they got for the Crunchies, including multiple suggestions for same companies. So no 82k different start-ups, but 82k suggestions, surely.

  20. Michael Arrington

    December 21st, 2007 at 8:16 pm

    web 1.0 - yes. tried to make that clear above “82,000 nominations were made for thousands of individual startups.” And while there were thousands of unique entries, a lot of these were very much stretching the definition of “startup.” Still, many of those, even, were appropriate for the bootstrapped category.

  21. Michael Arrington

    December 21st, 2007 at 8:17 pm

    By the way, I didn’t put the full list of finalists into the post for space reasons, but here it for those who are interested:

    Best technology innovation / achievement
    Earthmine
    Like
    Move Networks
    Twine
    Viewdle

    Best bootstrapped start-up
    FriendFeed
    PoliticalBase
    ProductWiki
    Techmeme
    UpNext

    Best new gadget / device
    iphone
    Kindle
    Ooma
    Pleo
    Wii

    Best business model
    Glam Media
    Imeem
    Prosper
    Weatherbill
    Zazzle

    Best design
    Etsy
    Jackson Fish Market
    Netvibes
    Smugmug
    Songza

    Best enterprise start-up
    37Signals
    Attributor
    EditGrid
    Ribbit
    Zoho

    Best consumer start-up
    1800FREE411
    23andMe
    LinkedIn
    Meebo
    Zillow

    Best mobile start-up
    AdMob
    Fring
    Loopt
    Shozu
    Twitter

    Best international start-up
    Atlassian
    Gizmoz
    MusicShake
    Netvibes
    OpenAds

    Best user-generated content
    Digg
    Facebook
    Geni
    Instructables
    Yelp

    Best video site
    Aniboom
    Hulu
    Joost
    Justin.tv
    Tokbox

    Best clean tech start-up
    A123 Systems
    Ausra
    Gridpoint
    NanoSolar
    Tesla Motors

    Best use of viral marketing
    Flixster
    iLike
    iminlikewithyou
    RockYou
    StumbleUpon

    Best time sink site
    College Humor
    Duels
    kdice
    Kongregate
    Pandora

    Most likely to make the world a better place
    Causes
    DonorsChoose
    Kiva
    One laptop per child
    ZeroFootprint

    Most likely to succeed
    Kayak
    Mint
    Slide
    Wordpress
    Zivity

    Best start-up founder
    Reid Hoffman
    Max Levchin
    Kevin Rose
    Evan Williams
    Mark Zuckerberg

    Best start-up CEO
    Gina Bianchini
    Dick Costolo
    Toni Schneider
    Rob Solomon
    Lance Takoda

    Best new start-up of 2007
    Hulu
    iMedix
    Joost
    Ribbit
    Tumblr

    Best overall
    Digg
    Facebook
    GrandCentral
    Twitter
    Zillow

  22. Paul Montgomery

    December 21st, 2007 at 8:36 pm

    What would be more valuable to a small start-up: being nominated for a Crunchie, or the mere fact of being linked from TechCrunch?

  23. Imao

    December 21st, 2007 at 9:43 pm

    haha what a joke - you call these startups ?

    Facebook - a startup ? WTF ? 250+ Million funding.
    Hulu ? 200 Million + Funding
    Joost ? 50-80+ Million Funding
    Zillow ? 50+ Million Funding
    Grandcentral ? Acquired by google - 50+ Million
    Tesla Motors? 100+ Million Funding
    Admob ? 15+ Million Funding
    Twitter ? 5+ Million Funding
    23andMe? 5+ Million Funding
    LinkedIn? 20+ Million Funding
    Meebo? 10+ Million Funding
    Zillow? 80+ Million Funding

    You call these startups ? What a joke. So much for techcrunch reviewing “startups” - more like “well funded and connected companies”

    My 2 Cents….

  24. listen_to_blogs

    December 21st, 2007 at 10:05 pm

    Wow, justin.tv made it to the top 5. Did its founder(s) do something desperate again this time ;)

  25. Bruno

    December 21st, 2007 at 10:24 pm

    What is the definition of “boot-strapped” when FriendFeed is founded by three guys from Google who EIRed at Benchmark?

    Boot-strapped to me means you take no funding and need a business model that delivers cash flow early-on to sustain and grow the business.

  26. Vijay

    December 21st, 2007 at 10:33 pm

    All are great startups.
    I wish if LimeAll (www.LimeAll.com) could have made in to crunchies…..may be in 2008 :-)

    Heard they are working hard on couple of exciting features…..

    Please visit http://www.LimeAll.com

  27. Mark

    December 21st, 2007 at 11:46 pm

    there are a lot of cool companies on this list.

  28. Jay

    December 21st, 2007 at 11:52 pm

    LOL.

    The best CEO category includes at least one who will be fired, another one who has already lost his job. And another who should.

    And FriendFeed has 69 daily active users on FB– any college senior with a degree in CS could outperform that

  29. Curious

    December 22nd, 2007 at 1:07 am

    I wonder if any of the complainers here can actually name a startup that isn’t listed that’s worth mention. One would think that if Mike had truly slighted some notable startups that the comments here would be filled with mentions of them. And yet in the 30 comments here so far not one has been.

    Added because of spam filter.

  30. Fake Thomas Hawk

    December 22nd, 2007 at 1:36 am

    I can’t believe that you forgot Zoooooomr! How could this have happened?

  31. Curious

    December 22nd, 2007 at 1:55 am

    @33

    As Mike commented above, it is not 82,000 startups but rather 82,000 submissions.

    I have seen much complaining in the Techcrunch comments over the last year that Mike is only covering the big names like Facebook, Google, Yahoo etc. and well funded startups and is somehow slighting startups that are more worthy of mention. And yet I have never once found a startup that was worth mention that had not been already covered here or that was eventually covered.

  32. Robert Scoble

    December 22nd, 2007 at 2:03 am

    I listed my Crunchies votes here: http://scobleizer.com/2007/12/.....ies-votes/

  33. adoption poem

    December 22nd, 2007 at 4:17 am

    “Crunchy” sounds very similar to “deadpool”.

  34. Mark G

    December 22nd, 2007 at 5:12 am

    I am somewhat disappointed in this list. Not that we didn’t make it, but rather who was considered our competition. There is no way our site could ever compete with the likes of Digg, LinkedIn, and Facebook. When I hear of “annual awards” for “startups”, I was really thinking this was for companies that have sprouted up in the past year. I also think there should be seperate categories for companies with significant funding vs. those without. Otherwise, you really can’t compare.

  35. Jason

    December 22nd, 2007 at 6:37 am

    lol @ Digg being nominated for best overall site/product of 2007. That alone just threw any credibility of this out the window.

  36. Vishal

    December 22nd, 2007 at 7:06 am

    Check out the Google-Zero:The Eco-Friendly Search Engine

  37. Jason

    December 22nd, 2007 at 7:07 am

    Best Time Sink Site - Where is WIKIPEDIA?????

  38. Wondering

    December 22nd, 2007 at 7:40 am

    How old does a company have to be to still be considered a startup? 37 signals has been around for ages (at least 3 or 4 years if not longer). Are they still a startup?
    How do you distinguish a startup from merely a ’small business’ that might eventually grow one of these days and become bigger?

  39. Conspiracy theories...from sore losers

    December 22nd, 2007 at 8:04 am

    Wow, so many upset people.

    How can anyone call this a sham when these nominees were selected by people voting?

    TC, VB, R/WW, and GO were all presumably involved of sorting through the 82K nominations, so how can people make accusations about this event as a sham or fixed?

    Sounds like lots of sore losers.

    Get it? USER nominations?
    Get it? 4 blogs all involved in the sifting to assure honesty?

  40. regular TC reader

    December 22nd, 2007 at 8:09 am

    Wow. This really has brought out the worst in people,. It even makes me uncomfortable to read the monologue of hate by what seems to be just a couple of really bitter people.

    It’s just an award. The nominations make sense, some are more established but they are still startups and there is a decent mix.

    Get on with your life. Go put that energy into your startup and maybe you will be on the list next year.

  41. steveballme

    December 22nd, 2007 at 8:46 am

    steve ballmer said…

    btw.
    I have been accused of spamming your little blog or whatever here. Gimme a break! Do you people know who I am? Do you have any idea what I can do? Spam? I don’t think so!
    What I do, I do out of concern for my fellow man. It hurts me to my core to see you people sitting around using these little toy computers with candy looking interfaces.
    I beg of you! Save the children! STOP this Mac madness now, Vista awaits you, reality is out there waiting for you to join it!

    Just get up, slowly!
    Back - away from the keyboard.
    Now get the credit card, go to any electronics outlet and buy a Vista PC!

    Now does’nt that feel better?
    Glad to help.
    fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  42. Jerry

    December 22nd, 2007 at 10:40 am

    I’ve got ten bucks says the list will be on Valleywag day before the event.

  43. Allen Stern

    December 22nd, 2007 at 2:33 pm

    Here are my votes - my trackback didn’t work - stupid drupal:

    http://www.centernetworks.com/.....ies-awards

  44. 44th

    December 22nd, 2007 at 2:52 pm

    Who was the selection committee? Didn’t see it listed out.

  45. Tony

    December 23rd, 2007 at 2:19 am

    Didn’t the Wii launch in 2006? I thought I remember some family getting it for Christmas last year.

  46. Guy Brooks

    December 23rd, 2007 at 3:44 am

    i actually think that

    http://www.wannago.com

    is the best ever…

    mr. Brooks :)

  47. Mark G

    December 23rd, 2007 at 4:56 am

    No hate being spewed here, but here is my defense to those offering their challenges to this awards feature.

    1) This is a discussion forum, which would not be half as entertaining if everybody agreed, right? And those who post tend to me more passionate than those who read, so be prepared to read from those who are very opinionated.

    2) TechCrunch was thrust into prominence by their readers. They were the ones who created the buzz. They were the ones who spread the word virally. They were the ones who came back day after day. If TC has decided to change their focus away from start ups and more to a general Silicon Valley industry rag, and strategically speaking, I am not saying this is the wrong decision, they have to expect some to feel jilted.

    3) There is a realization among true boot-strapped start-ups setting in- and that is getting listed on TechCrunch is no longer a realistic hope. I saw an interview with Arrington once who said that TechCrunch listed 1 in 3 start-ups that were submitted (I think this was 2005). Obviously, when I see that the top 3 stories right now are about Wikia, YouTube and Mozilla, true startups have little chance to gain noteriety against such well-funded and established ventures. So maybe there is a slight amount of apprehension as to where the new guys are going to turn to help get the word out. Is someone out there ready to fill the void?

    But its now the day before Christmas Eve, and there are other things to focus on for a couple of days. Including watching (hopefully) the Giants clinch a play-off spot today (c’mon Eli, step up for a change). So Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

  48. uploadchoice

    December 23rd, 2007 at 5:06 am

    Its little confusing to choose who is the best.

  49. start-up boy

    December 23rd, 2007 at 8:34 am

    TC apparently doesn’t want to be challenged on something obviously thrown together / refusing to hire someone knowledgeable at contests, just like they didn’t hire a real conference guru to run their conferencel. My guess is that although the awards name is obviously biased towards TC it also involves other industy voices with RWW/GO etc. - readwritewebbies? gigaommies? It just seems no surprise any more when they do something without thinking it all the way through, then are shocked by the response.

    First: definition of a start-up was clearly missing. A small bootstrapped company cannot compete against 58M people voting on facebook.

    Second: the system was easily gamable

    Third: no way 1 human really went through 82,000 votes. Many of those were likely lumped, estimated or overlooked

    This will be just another notch in Zuckerberg’s bedpost. For this new, slapped together sham of an awards show I doubt he’ll roll out of bed for it (it’s not the web2.0 conference after all) unless his PR person makes him.

    Mike, why not address the concerns of the people who made you who you are: your readers for the audience, and the content - ie start-ups who are actually DOING the work and out there getting their hands dirty while the TC team just blogs opinions on them.

  50. Adam Wexler

    December 23rd, 2007 at 9:23 am

    I, for one, want to commend Mike and his whole team for all the work that they’ve done since TC got started. The Crunchies is the newest branch of the TC name that has drawn the attention of countless people intrigued by the power of the internet.

    I do agree with some of the comments made before: for future purposes, a specific definition of each award should be in place. Yet, with these definitions in place, debate will surely exist once again. Just take a look at the BCS system if you are naive enough to disagree.

    In this day and age, there are an absurd amount of startups to keep tabs on. In my opinion, it’s understandable to see certain ones get more recognition. And, if anybody’s paying attention, this fact of life should just lead to more startups highlighting the OTHER ones out there.

    We are all fortunate to have the internet and it’s influence as a part of our lives today. So many new jobs and opportunities have been opened up by the power of the internet, and social networks of late. Once again, I just wanted to thank Mike and his staff for all the hard work that they put in to helping make the internet such a fun and intriguing place for all.

    -Adam

  51. start-up boy

    December 23rd, 2007 at 9:47 am

    @Allen, just read your list, and one thing jumped out in addition: Digg and geni are not user generated content. Digg - voting on articles or images or videos and geni entering in some facts about dead people. Good catch on both of those!

  52. Sam

    December 23rd, 2007 at 3:32 pm

    its to bad TC doesn’t recognize the little guy….. Seems you have to be funded with millions to even get noticed. Seems they only report on Companies that have giant media relation companies greasing the pockets of someone.

  53. Adam Wexler

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:04 pm

    Let me preface the following statements: I am currently developing a social network music website myself. Along with my two other partners, we are extremely passionate about the concept and excited about its future potential. We fully believe we have found a niche in the music discovery community, and are attempting to fill that void.

    I wake up every morning and sift through the latest TC posts among other daily writeups. TC is one of my favorite resources around, and I can’t blame them for not covering every website.

    I have a question for those asking for the “little” guys to get noticed: How are you supposed to cover the “little” guys when there’s hundreds popping up every day? For people like ^Sam, give me an example of how they could go about recognizing the smaller companies. I am very interested to hear different ideas. Who knows, but maybe one could help us out when we’re ready to market/advertise. Thanks in advance.

  54. Ремонт и строительство

    December 23rd, 2007 at 7:21 pm

    Check out the Google-Zero:The Eco-Friendly Search Engine

  55. VC Cafe

    December 24th, 2007 at 12:09 am

    Although there is a ridiculous number of startup competitions, this one is likely to get attention (as opposed to Open web awards).

    Among the finalists in the crunchies there are four Israeli companies. Pretty good representation. Read my coverage on the Israeli finalists on Vc Cafe at: http://www.vccafe.com/2007/12/.....e-israeli/

  56. Sam

    December 24th, 2007 at 6:26 am

    A good service (website) is a good service (website), if you put a little time into looking you can find them. Maybe a simple submission process where an intern can weed out the crap sites and spam. A simple form where the TC community can submit sites they find and what the site does. If TC find it “News Worthy” then they write about it.

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