Announcing The 2012 Crunchies Finalists, Buy Your Tickets Now

So we’ve tabulated the nominations and the votes are in for the 2012 Crunchies. More than 600,000 nominations were calculated across 20 categories, and, along with our partners GigaOm and VentureBeat, we are very proud to announce the finalists for 2012’s best in technology. Voting begins now.

We’ve also updated our categories this year. For the first time, we’ll recognize enterprise, education, hardware, e-commerce, content discovery, collaborative consumption, and ye old hockey stick growth.

We’ve seen Felix Baumgartner risk it all for a jump from space in his crazy suit, the Curiosity land on Mars with some epic tweets, and Google record our lives through Glass. It should be quite the match-up for Best Technology Achievement. Newcomers like FiftyThree’s Paper, as well as Medium from Ev Williams and Biz Stone’s Obvious, have caught our attention for design, joining Facebook Timeline, Square, and Svbtle in the Best Design category.

Jim Goetz, Marc Andreessen, and Ben Horowitz will vie for your votes along with Matt Cohler, Michael Moritz, and Peter Thiel for VC of the Year. Goetz knocked it out of the park with the IPOs of Palo Alto Networks and Ruckus, as well as the acquisitions of Karma by Facebook and eMeter by Siemens. Matt Cohler continued to prove his understanding of the consumer Internet with the substantial acquisition of Instagram by Facebook. Michael Moritz saw the value in Kayak long before industry incumbents decided it was better to purchase, rather than compete with them. Thiel continues to take big risks and reaped the benefits of his Facebook investment in 2012. He’s the chairman and sits on the board of Palantir, arguably one of the hottest companies of 2012. And Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz continue to shake up Sand Hill Road with their modern operating style and key investments.

Sexy enterprise companies will take the stage by storm with their vertical’s resurgence in popularity. Asana offers organizational nirvana while Box gives us our place in the cloud. Cloudera, Plexi and Zendesk round out the group.

This year’s Best Mobile App category pits previous 2011 Crunchies winner for Best Location App, Grindr, against Google Maps – every iOS device owner’s first love – and Evernote, Instagram, and Square.

Speaking of good match-ups, the CEO of the Year competition includes some of the Valley’s finest: Twitter’s Dick Costolo, Evernote’s Phil Libin, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, Google’s Larry Page, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

It’s going to be a tight competition with so much talent, so start voting now. Everyone is eligible and encouraged to vote. The rules state that you may vote once per day, per award category, until voting closes on Thursday, January 24, 2013 at 11:59pm PST. There are 20 award categories open for voting, recognizing the top accomplishments across a variety of fields and roles. If you are one of the finalists, create a badge to get your community excited about this honor and get them to vote for you. Winners will be announced on Thursday, January 31st, live at the Crunchies.

In addition to today’s announcement of the Finalists, we are happy to release our next batch of tickets through Eventbrite. The release begins now, so act fast and get them while you can.

Here are your Finalists:

Best Technology Achievement (2011 winner: Siri)
Baumgartner Jump (Related posts)
Google Glass (Related posts)
Mars Curiosity (Related posts)
SpaceX docks with International Space Station (Related posts)
Tesla Supercharger Network (Related posts)

Best Collaborative Consumption Service (New for 2012)
Airbnb (Related posts)
Get It Now/Postmates (Related posts)
Lyft (Related posts)
TaskRabbit (Related posts)
Uber (Related posts)

Best E-Commerce Application (New for 2012)
Fab (Related posts)
Hotel Tonight (Related posts)
Karma/Facebook Gifts (Related posts)
Warby Parker (Related posts)
Zulily (Related posts)

Best Mobile Application (2011 winner: Evernote)
Evernote (Related posts)
Google Maps (Related posts)
Grindr (Related posts)
Instagram (Related posts)
Square (Related posts)

Fastest Rising Startup (New for 2012)
Exec (Related posts)
Lyft (Related posts)
Pinterest (Related posts)
Snapchat (Related posts)
Stripe (Related posts)

Best Content Discovery Application (New for 2012)
Flipboard (Related posts)
Instapaper (Related posts)
Pinterest (Related posts)
Prismatic (Related posts)
Tumblr (Related posts)

Best Design (2011 winner: Path 2.0)
Facebook Timeline (Related posts)
Medium (Related posts)
Paper by FiftyThree (Related posts)
Square (Related posts)
Svbtle (Related posts)

Best Bootstrapped Startup (2011 winner: Imgur)
FreshBooks (Related posts)
Instapaper (Related posts)
Nimbus Data 
Techmeme (Related posts)
Upverter (Related posts)

Sexiest Enterprise Startup (New for 2012)
Asana (Related posts)
Box (Related posts)
Cloudera (Related posts)
Plexxi (Related posts)
Zendesk (Related posts)

Best International Startup (2011 winner: Peixe Urbano)
Hailo (Related posts)
Rovio (Related posts)
SoundCloud (Related posts)
Spotify (Related posts)
Xiaomi (Related posts)

Best Education Startup (New for 2012)
Codecademy (Related posts)
Coursera (Related posts)
Edmodo (Related posts)
Khan Academy (Related posts)
Udacity (Related posts)

Best Hardware Startup (New for 2012)
Lit Motors (Related posts)
Lockitron (Related posts)
Makerbot (Related posts)
Nest (Related posts)
Raspberry Pi (Related posts)

Best Time Sink (2011 winner: Words With Friends)
Angry Birds Star Wars (Related posts)
Buzzfeed (Related posts)
Letterpress (Related posts)
Pinterest (Related posts)
WhatsApp (Related posts)

Biggest Social Impact (2011 winner: Twitter)
Donors Choose
Indiegogo (Related posts)
Kickstarter (Related posts)
Kiva (Related posts)
Reddit (Related posts)

Angel of the Year (2011 winner: Reid Hoffman)
Michael Arrington (Related posts)
Chris Dixon (Related posts)
Paul Graham (Related posts)
David Lee (Related posts)
Chris Sacca (Related posts)

VC of the Year (2011 winner: Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz)
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz (Related posts/posts)
Matt Cohler (Related posts)
Jim Goetz (Related posts)
Michael Moritz (Related posts)
Peter Thiel (Related posts)

Founder of the Year (2011 winner: Jack Dorsey)
Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia (Airbnb) (Related posts)
Kevin and Julia Hartz and Renaud Visage (Eventbrite) (Related posts)
Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla) (Related posts)
Kevin Systrom (Instagram) (Related posts)
Nir Zuk (Palo Alto Networks) (Related posts)

CEO of the Year (2011 winner: Jeff Weiner)
Dick Costolo (Twitter) (Related posts)
Phil Libin (Evernote) (Related posts)
Marissa Mayer (Yahoo!) (Related posts)
Larry Page (Google) (Related posts)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) (Related posts)

Best New Startup of 2012 (2011 winner: Pinterest)
Coursera (Related posts)
Crowdtilt (Related posts)
Lyft (Related posts)
Snapchat (Related posts)
Waze (Related posts)

Best Overall Startup of 2012 (2011 winner: Dropbox)
Fab (Related posts)
Github (Related posts)
Instagram (Related posts)
Palantir (Related posts)
Square (Related posts)

The 6th Annual Crunchies Awards

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, CA

7:30pm – midnight – Awards Ceremony and After Party
A night of celebration with festive attire.

Tickets are available now.

Voting opens: Thursday, January 3rd
Voting closes: Thursday, January 24th at 11:59pm PST
Winners will be announced on stage at the Crunchies.

Our sponsors help make the Crunchies happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities during the ceremony or after-party, please contact sponsors@beta.techcrunch.com.

For press credentials, please fill out this request form, and confirmations will be sent separately via email.

Check out additional event coverage from our partners: GigaOm and VentureBeat.