Best New Startup? Locals Grab Tech Honors

It didn’t have a worldwide audience like Sunday’s Super Bowl or the upcoming Oscars, but the stars of the tech world gathered at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco last Thursday night for the Sixth Annual Crunchies.

Even non-technies would recognize the names—Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Peter Thiel, Marissa Mayer—the kings and queen of tech.

The awards honor innovators and venture capitalists, and the companies they run and fund. Some attended in evening gowns or suits, while others arrived in jeans, t-shirts and disheveled hair, looking as if they’d just torn themselves away from a computer screen after endless hours of tweaking.

As always, the spotlight shone brightly on Mountain View.

The "Best Startup Award" for 2012 went to Coursera, an online education site for universities. Co-Founder Andrew Ng, in his acceptance said, "I have a confession. Coursera isn't really a startup company, it's a quest."

"Those of us who work there want to give everyone in the world a great education for free. We want to see a world where students no longer have to choose between paying for tuition and paying for groceries. We want to see world where a poor kid born in Africa has nearly the equality of opportunities as a kid born in the wealthy suburbs of D.C."

NASA Ames can take some credit for the Mars Curiosity's "Best Technology Achievement" since they've helped the rover land on Mars. Pretty important task. Receiving for NASA was Bobak Ferdowsi.

"I think there's been a huge mistake," he said. "Our computer is actually slower than all of your cellphones. It's about fiften years old and has about 120 megs of RAM," he said. "hanks so much on behalf of thousands of people across the country and the world who participate in this. Thanks for thinking that it's cool too. It's a kid's dream come true."

The runners-up did not speak on-stage.

Mountain View companies receiving honors:

• Best Technology Achievement: Mars Curiosity
• Best Mobile Application: Google Maps
• Best New Startup of 2012: Coursera

Tech Titans with Mountain View connections receiving honors:

• Angel of the Year: Paul Graham, Y-Combinator (runner-up)
• CEO of the Year: Larry Page, Google (runner-up)
• Best Education Startup: Khan Academy

TechCrunch, GigaOm, and VentureBeat jointly put on the awards, which were sponsored by Yahoo! TechCrunch and Patch are both owned by AOL.

View the complete list of nominees and winners here.

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Other stories on Mountain View Patch:

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• CHAC Signs Multi-Million Dollar Deed Swap for New Building
• NASA Ames Remembers Astronaut Kalpana Chawla

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