GeekWire Reveals The Winners Of The 2013 Geekwire Awards

GeekWire,GeekWire Awards,Seattle startups

(photo: geekwire.com)

Last Thursday night Seattle based GeekWire presented the 2013 Geekwire awards recognizing the “pillars of the region’s startup community”. Winners of the prestigious GeekWire awards walked away with a customized joystick trophy, one of the most sought after awards next to a Crunchie.

Here are the winners:

Startup Deal Of The Year: Zulily, a daily deals site for moms and kids raised $85 million dollars earlier this year from Anreesen Horowitz at a $1 billion dollar valuation.

App Of The Year: Haiku Deck this app makes it incredibly easier (some say easier than Keynote) to build pitch decks and presentations on an iPad.

Perk of the year: SEOmoz, this category recognizes a perk given to employees by a “startup employer”. Of course companies like Google and Facebook are known for the quality of life and perks for their employees. This award recognizes a Seattle company with a great perk.  SEOmoz gives employees $3,000 that can only be used for vacation. Denver startup Full Contact does the same kind of thing for employees, but with $7500 and those employees need to agree to totally “disconnect”.

Do-Gooder of the year: Edward Jiang, StudentRND. Jiang’s organization forsters the even younger startup community in Seattle. According to GeekWire, StudentRND hosts hackathons for high school and college students looking to engage the youngest of entrepreneurs.

sneakersStartup CEO of the year: Sam Blackman, Elemental Technologies.  Elemental Techonologies is powering big name companies digital offerings like HBO Go and Comcast’s Xfinity. They raised $13 million in venture capital earlier this year, although they didn’t need it. Blackman’s background includes stints at PixelWorks, Silicon Graphics, and Intel.

Game of the  year: Halo 4. GeekWire says that “Microsoft proved that Halo has a life beyond Bungie last fall”, that and raking in $220 million in sales on the first day alone was good enough to get the trophy in this category.

Boostrapper of the year: Adorii. Although they aren’t “married” to the idea of bootstrapping forever, Adorii CEO Mathew Matsudaira said “It allowed us to be agile and move quickly to deliver an (minimum viable product) to the marketplace,”. In it’s simplest form Adorii is a deals site for those planning a wedding, at times offering up to 80% off products and services for those headed down the aisle.

Innovation of the year: Puzzazz TouchWrite. Puzzazz is the first company to tackle handwriting recognition for iOS devices. Right now their handwriting recognition software is proprietary to the company and used in their “digital puzzle bookstore” platform.  According to GeekWire “TouchWrite lets users draw a character across the top of the screen, then recognizes the letter and places a digital version in the active cell of the puzzle. It can work with a variety of handwriting styles and doesn’t require users to learn any special style of writing. The feature turns on automatically when the on-screen keyboard is turned off.”

Geekiest Office Space: Killer Infographics. In addition to creating Killer Infographics this Seattle company has a killer office space. Head over to GeekWire to see a video tour.

What, A startup accelerator just for women founders? 

EESVDeal1

Founder Institute Introduces Mentor Mondays In Seattle

The Founder Institute, the largest idea stage accelerator in the world is starting a new initiative in Seattle to connect startups and entrepreneurs with great mentors.

Mentor Mondays cost a very modest $5.00 fee and give early stage startups, entrepreneurs and anyone with an idea access to a large mentor  base of the regions top mentors. Founder Institute has over 60 successful founders and CEO’s that are there to support the startup ecosystem in Washington.

The lunch meetings are BYOL (Bring Your Own Lunch) but no worries there are over a dozen food trucks a stone throw from the venue  in South Lake Union. The hour long schedule is stacked tightly:

12:00-12:15 Lunch and casual conversation
12:15-12:30 Mentor Topic
12:30-12:45 Q&A
12:45-1:00 Mentor 1:1 meetings

It’s kind of like mentor speed dating but the access opportunity for just $5.00 is incredible. Of course when you go into Mentor Mondays with a great idea, passion, drive and a plan you’ll probably get to spend a lot more than just 15 minutes 1:1 with the mentors.

Mentor Mondays start Monday August 20th and you can register here.

These are the same caliber mentors that Founder Institute is known for and that several have paid hundreds of dollars to get access to. In Seattle, for Mentor Mondays it’s just $5.00 (and the cost of your food at the food trucks if you so desire)

Linkage:

Register for Mentor Mondays here

Source: StartupSeattle.com

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”