It’s a big day for the Seattle startup community, with Mayor McGinn this morning announcing a new initiative to support startup entrepreneurs, and our very own GeekWire Awards tonight recognizing the region’s top companies, most innovative technologies and hardest-working geeks.
We’ve also just released the latest update to the GeekWire 200, our monthly index tracking the Seattle region’s privately-held technology companies, sponsored by Fresh Consulting.
Check out the full update here, and continue reading for some of the highlights from the update to the list.
Big movers for the month include Zulily, the daily deals site for moms and kids, which advanced two places into the No. 2 spot (behind perennial No. 1 Big Fish) thanks to a big increase in Facebook likes. Zulily is a finalist in multiple categories in tonight’s GeekWire Awards.
CreativeLive, the live online workshop site co-founded by photographer Chase Jarvis and led by media vet Mika Salmi, broke into the top 10 thanks in part to an increase in its employee count as tracked by LinkedIn, coupled with its strong social following. CreativeLive raised $7.5 million in funding last fall.
Duxter, which has described itself as a LinkedIn for gamers, broke into the top 100 on the list with a big leap in Twitter followers. CEO Adam Lieb credits a marketing plan by Duxter to sponsor key influencers in the gaming community who have large YouTube or Twitch followings. Many of the people who follow those high-profile gamers end up using and following Duxter as a result.
And we have a new milestone to report: For the first time, a company on the GeekWire 200 has surpassed 1 million Facebook likes. The milestone was reached by PicMonkey, the online photo editing site started by veterans of the Picnik service, which was acquired by Google before being shut down.
The chart above comes from Seattle-area analytics startup Rival IQ, whose service we’re using to glean additional insights into the companies on the index.
GEEKWIRE STARTUP RESOURCES
GeekWire 200: This monthly index uses publicly available data to identify companies growing quickly and grabbing the attention of key online communities.
Startup List: This database of more than 700 startups provides a broad overview of the Seattle tech startup scene, sortable by category to help find the startups in specific sectors of the industry. Submit your startup here for inclusion on the list and consideration for the GeekWire 200.
Service Provider Directory: This online resource helps startups connect with service providers in the Seattle region, from accounting and legal services to office space and recruiting. Service providers, submit your listing here.
GeekWire Job Board: An online board for tech-related jobs in the Seattle region, providing employers with a targeted way to reach qualified candidates, and giving job-seekers an inside line on open positions in the region.
If you’re just tuning in, the GeekWire 200 is our effort to provide a broad snapshot of the Seattle startup community. It uses publicly available data — including social media followings, approximate employee counts and inbound web links — to generate a ranking of 200 top companies from our broader list of more than 700 Seattle-area tech startups.
This is not a scientific exercise, but it does provide interesting insights. For example, many of the companies toward the top of the index are candidates for public offerings — as evidenced by the recent IPO filing from Tableau Software — and others are likely buyout candidates.
The companies on the GeekWire 200 are drawn from our much larger GeekWire Startup List, a directory of more than 700 tech-oriented startups in the region.
Apart from the ranking, the sorting features we’ve included in the index provide unique insights into the Seattle startup landscape. You can toggle between B2B and B2C startups, or drill down to see the rankings in more than 20 different startup categories.
You can drill down even further to see how the companies rank based on the individual metrics used to calculate the index — seeing which business-to-business software companies employ the most people, for example, or which gaming companies in the Seattle region have the most Facebook followers.
Use the tools at the top of the index to filter based on all of these criteria.
To make sure your startup is eligible for inclusion the GeekWire 200, first make sure it’s included on the Startup List. If so, there’s no need to submit it separately for the GeekWire 200. If your Seattle-area startup isn’t among the companies on that larger list, you can submit it for inclusion here, and our algorithm will also crunch the numbers to see if your company makes next month’s GeekWire 200.
