Welcome to the 2011 Crunchies!

Here in Silicon Valley, there’s no question that there’s an enormous amount of talent everywhere you go and it’s this talent that’s going around and creating some of the most memorable and successful startups that the industry has ever seen. Just who’s talking about these guys? Well besides us at Bub.blicio.us (small plug), you’re going to hear about it from at least one of the most influential tech publications out there: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and GigaOm. Each year, these three competitive groups join together to celebrate all that is tech and have what some may consider to be the industry’s version of the Oscars: the Crunchies.

Last Tuesday, entrepreneurs, journalists, investors, VIPs, fanbois, and those passionate about tech gathered at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco to bear witness to some of the best of the best appear on stage, interested to hear who would win. Many were nominated for a chance to win from among several categories, including Best Technology Achievement, Best Social Application, Best Mobile App, Best Design, and more. But it wasn’t all just limited to the company and the technology. Other categories were created to celebrate the individuals themselves and not just the startup team, but the investors themselves.

Bobby Hammer performs!

The show opened up with a great opening monologue by Harris Whittel and then an outstanding performance by Bobby Hammer, son of MC Hammer, singing “Is The Name“ before we dive right into the show. And what a show there is…nearly everyone from the tech scene is here. From Path’s Dave Morin to Google’s Marissa Mayer and Don Dodge to Ron Conway and Mayor Ed Lee! A bevy of who’s who showed up for this once a year celebration of tech!

Path's Dave Morin accepts the award for Best Design

Some of the biggest wins of the night went to Google+ for their award for the Best Social Application what may have been an upset against Instagram (runner-up) and even Path 2.0. In the category of Best Mobile Application, Evernote dominated the field against worthy competitors Flipboard (runner-up), Square, and Pandora. In a tough-battle, in the Best Design category, Path 2.0 took the award over recent blossoming startup, Pinterest. And in what would be the start of a great night for Dropbox, the cloud-based storage service took home the award for (what else?) Best Cloud Service, besting their rival Box.

Heather Harde addresses the audience at the Crunchies

In-between the awards, we took a quick break to pay a much-deserved tribute to former TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde for all her hard work over the years with the tech publication. Legendary Angel Investor Ron Conway took the stage to give a fitting tribute of Ms. Harde and even a brief interview with her industry colleagues was shown…it was quite moving and the only time a standing ovation was bestowed.

Twitter & Square founder Jack Dorsey accepts Founder of the Year

In the individual awards category, the Angel of the Year award went to LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman while the VC of the Year award went to Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz (who coincidentally also announced they’re raising another round of funding). The Founder of the Year award went to Jack Dorsey for both Square and Twitter denying Dropbox’s Drew Houston a chance at a third major Crunchie award. But it was LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner who took the win for CEO of the Year denying Spotify’s Daniel Ek.

Lastly, the most important awards were for the newbie startups and also for overall in the year. In 2011, the winner of the Best New Startup of 2011 went to Pinterest over Codecademy and the Best Overall Startup of 2011? Why that’s Drew Houston’s Dropbox returning the favor to Jack Dorsey’s Square.

And so there you have it…the winners of the 2011 Crunchies!

Oh, but wait, there’s more to fun to be had at the Crunchies…now we get to talk about the after-party, complete with photos!

Ben Parr, Twilio's Danielle Morrill, VentureBeat's Jolie O'Dell, and Aaron Gotwalt

8Tracks' Kate Imbach and Pandora's Tom Conrad ("Shit Silicon Valley Says")

Google's Don Dodge & TextPlus's Heather Meeker

Evernote's Phil Libin & TechCrunch's Susan Vander Kooi Hobbs

We won a Crunchie!

The legendary Ron Conway wheeling & dealing

Bessemer Venture Partner's Ethan Kurzweil claims a Crunchie!

This startup won a Crunchie!

Saleforce.com's Kevin Marks, Hubspot's Laura Fitton, & Seesmic's Liza Sperling

Shasta Ventures' Jacob Mullins & VentureBeat's Dylan Tweney

PandoDaily's Paul Carr & founder Sarah Lacy

Sarah Lane, CrunchFund's MG Seigler, TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld, Travis Kalanick, Menlo Venture's Shervin Pishevar, & Ana Pishevar

For more photos of the 2011 Crunchies, you can view them on my Flickr photostream by clicking here.

Photo Credit: All photos shown here are from Ken Yeung.

Help define who and what matters in the mobile space. If you’d like to connect with others and amplify your influence in the mobile tech space, then join NetShelter and publishers PhoneDog, IntoMobile and VentureBeat for an evening of insights, merriment and mingling.

EVENT DETAILS:

Where: ROE Nightclub. 651 Howard Street San Francisco, CA 94105

When: Thursday, July 15, 2010 | 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM

Registration: http://netsheltermixermobile.eventbrite.com
Cost: Free

Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=130248163665499
Hashtag: #netsheltermixer

HOSTS
Pirouz Nilforoush [@pirouzn] and Peyman Nilforoush [@netshelter_ceo] , NetShelter [ @netshelter ]
Noah Kravitz [@phonedog_noah], PhoneDog
Will Park [@willpark], IntoMobile
Owen Thomas [@owenthomas], VentureBeat

Last week at the Automattic Lounge in San Francisco, technology, gadgetry and startup publication VentureBeat held its first ever DiscoveryBeat where established startups focused on passing along knowledge of their success onto other up-and-coming startups. According to their website, DiscoveryBeat is “an event focused on the ‘secret recipe’ for application discovery & the opportunity to create the relationships needed to succeed.”

This three-hour event surely didn’t disappoint with a well-rounded cast of entrepreneurs giving presentations about their companies and also offering their own insights into how to move forward with a product & company. Audience members were treated to 10 minute presentations by the sponsors and soon afterwards there were three consecutive panels where three main points where succinctly but clearly talked about:

1. How to succeed by starting from scratch
2. Moving to the next level
3. Bringing in the big guys

In a packed room, executive editor Matt Marshall also stated that he hoped that both he and co-editor Dean Takahashi could continue with the discussion on a regular basis. Who knows if this will be a bigger series that will soon take off. Judging from the crowd in the room, it looks quite promising.

Here are photos from the event:

Hanging out at the Discovery Lounge during DiscoveryBeat

VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall

A packed room awaits to hear what the presenters have to offer at DiscoveryBeat 2009

Bill Mooney, general manager of FarmVille and vice president of Zynga entertains questions during his talk

VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi

Alex St. John, president and chief technology officer of hi5

Lisa Marino, VP of Sales at RockYou

More photos of DiscoveryBeat 2009 can be found on Flickr by clicking here.

Photos courtesy of Kenneth Yeung.

by Brian Solis

This weekend I’m headed to Palm Springs to cover DEMO 09.  The opening reception kicks-off on Sunday with the first company taking the stage on Monday morning.

This is a particularly exciting DEMO as it will be the first to feature VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall who will officially take the reigns from Chris Shipley starting with DEMO Fall 2009. The duo will co-host this event.

Here’s the lineup, which was just released today:

7 Billion People, Inc.; Austin, TX
Always Innovating, Inc.; Mountain View, CA
AppZero Corp.; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Asurion Mobile Applications, Inc.; San Mateo, CA
Avaak, Inc.; San Diego, CA
BitGravity, Inc.; Burlingame, CA
bluBuzz, LLC; Holland, MI
Cc:Betty, Inc.; Palo Alto, CA
Citrix Online, Goleta, CA
Coveroo, Inc.; San Francisco, CA
deskNET, Lausanne, CH
Document Depository Corp., LLC; Wayne, PA
eFormic, Ltd.; Stuttgart, DE
Ensembli, Ltd.; Sheffield, Great Britain
Evri, Inc.; Seattle, WA
Gazaro, Inc.; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
HAM-IT, Inc.; North Andover, MA
Home-Account, Inc.; San Francisco, CA
HowSimple, LLC; Huntington Beach, CA
Jadoos, Inc.; Sunnyvale, CA
Kutano Corp.; Burnaby, BC, Canada
Liquid Media, LLC; Arvada, CO
Ontier, Inc.; Portland, OR
Primal Fusion, Inc.; Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Promptu Systems Corp.; Menlo Park, CA
Purewire, Inc.; Atlanta, GA
Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Inc. San Diego, CA
Qubes, Inc.; Taipei, Taiwan
Silverstone Solutions, Inc. San Francisco, CA
Skout, Inc.; San Francisco, CA
SmartyCard; San Mateo, CA
Symantec Corp.; Mountain View, CA
Technicopia, LLC; Carmel Valley, CA
Transformyx, Inc.; Baton Rouge, LA
Vokle, Inc.; Santa Monica, CA
Xandros, Inc.; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
XMARKS; San Francisco, CA
Zipadi Technologies, LLC; Bluffdale, UT
Zuora, Inc.; Redwood City, CA

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by Brian Solis

If you didn’t think the Web had its own Academy Awards, think again. The Crunchies are back and voting is open. TechCrunch along with GigaOm and VentureBeat will host the Awards Ceremony at 7:30 pm, Friday, January 9 at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. It’s an elegant, old world theater with 900 seats that shroud the awards with the importance they deserve.

The reception will follow from 9 pm – midnight across the street in City Hall’s Rotunda. After-party co-host MySpace will be supplying a celebrity DJ. There will be an open bar, finger food, game room, and other fun surprises.

Here are highlights from last year’s event.

Natali Del Conte

For pictures from last year’s Crunchies, visit my album on flickr.

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by Brian Solis

It’s that time again, hard to believe that it’s already been a year. TechCrunch has announced the second annual Crunchies, co-produced with GigaOm, Silicon Alley Insider, and VentureBeat.

But, before we talk about attending the event, let’s focus on nominating the most deserving startups, or those who can solicit the most votes, as well as products across 15 categories based on their 2008 performance. Nominations are open until December 10th, Midnight PST.

The ceremony will be held on Jan. 9, 2009, 7:30 pm at the Herbst Theater across the street from City Hall in San Francisco. Tickets will be released in December.

Pictures from The 2007 Crunchies.

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