The 9th Annual Crunchies are right around the corner, and some of the best and brightest startups, companies and leaders are vying for the chance to win the coveted Crunchie award in one of the 12 categories up for grabs.
As the event draws near, we’ll be featuring the finalists in each of the 12 categories up for grabs, starting with the nominees for one of the most prolific awards — the Best New Startup of 2015. Here are the companies that have been selected as finalists for this coveted prize, as well as a look back at those companies who have won this award in previous years.
Come see which company will follow in this prolific line of amazing startups at the 9th Annual Crunchies show, which takes place on February 8 at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House. Tickets to the show, which is described as the Oscars of Startups and Technology, are still available starting at $115.
The 2015 Nominees
Eaze
Eaze is a delivery service that brings medical marijuana in various formats like flowers, edibles and concentrates to your door in minutes, provided you live in one of the handful of California cities in which the service is currently available.
Honor
Looking to help deliver healthcare to the aging population, Honor is a service that provides on-demand caregivers to help with things like medication reminders, meal preparation, transportation and companionship to those in need.
Jet
Jet.com is a new e-commerce platform that aims to change the way consumers buy things online. The service aims to be more practical than the likes of Sam’s Club and Costco, and cheaper than Amazon.
Operator
Operator is an iPhone app that connects users to a network of experts in various topics that provide users with quality recommendations that are tailored to their taste. Users send a request for something they want or need — clothes or flowers for that special someone, for example — and someone who knows their stuff will deliver custom recommendations based on your responses to follow-up questions.
Robinhood
If you’ve ever traded stocks, you’ve probably been charged a fee for every trade you make. Robinhood aims to change all that by providing commission-free trading, instead making its money on those who upgrade to the company’s managed margin accounts (currently in beta) and accruing interest on customers uninvested cash balances.
Past Winners
iMedix – First Annual Crunchies Winner
iMedix was a service that combined a healthcare search engine (sort of like WebMD) that let users look up various injuries and ailments with a social network that let users interested in various topics (sports injuries, for example) connect with each other. The service has since shut down.
FriendFeed – Second Annual Crunchies Winner
FriendFeed was a social feed aggregator that consolidates updates from various social networks, blogs and microblogging services into a single site. The company was acquired by Facebook in 2009, and the FriendFeed service was finally shut down in April 2015.
Bing – Third Annual Crunchies Winner
Microsoft’s Bing search engine made a splash when it debuted in 2009 as a somewhat-formidable alternative to Google. Several years later, Bing is now the second most popular search engine in the US, according to comScore.
Quora – Fourth Annual Crunchies Winner
Quora is a community-driven question and answer site that features users discussing questions on all sorts of topics. The service is edited and moderated by its community of users, which keeps the discussions generally insightful and enlightening.
Pinterest – Fifth Annual Crunchies Winner
If you haven’t heard of Pinterest, you probably haven’t been on the internet lately. The online visual bookmarking website is a great place to discover, save and share creative ideas on all sorts of things like recipes, places to travel, home improvement projects and much more.
Coursera – Sixth Annual Crunchies Winner
Those looking to better themselves by learning something new often turn to Coursera, the education company that partners with several universities and organizations around the world to provide free massive open online courses (MOOCs) to all those who want to learn about dozens of topics.
Tinder – Seventh Annual Crunchies Winner
When the Tinder app launched in 2012, it pretty much singlehandedly changed the way the world thinks about online dating. Tinder users create profiles for themselves, then browse through other profiles, swiping right when they’re interested in connecting with a person, or swiping right when they aren’t. A recent addition lets users swipe up to indicate they “super like” someone.
Product Hunt – Eighth Annual Crunchies Winner
With so many things coming to market every day, it can be difficult to find cool new things worth checking out. Product Hunt arose to fill that gap, making it easy for users to discover new products like apps, games, and other products. Users can upvote projects they like to bump them up the daily list so others are more likely to find them.