It was alive and kickin’ Thursday night at the EMP for the 2013 GeekWire Awards, as we welcomed more than 750 of you to help honor the best and brightest from Seattle’s startup community.
From Chris DeVore’s inspiring keynote speech about the Emerald City startup scene to hearing the crowd thunder in applause and appreciation for Dr. Rebecca Gardner’s cancer-destroying research work, we loved each and every minute of last night.
“I want to thank each and every one of you for the work you do everyday,” DeVore said. “The thing we’re building together is already one of the massive flywheels of the global economy, and we are just getting started.”
It was great to hear many of our winners giving credit to those who helped them be honored Thursday night.
“It’s weird — the people who get up on this stage don’t truly represent the startup community the way the 130 people who work at SEOmoz, or the 60-something people at HasOffers, or the seven people who work at Haiku Deck represent those teams,” SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin said after accepting the award for Perk of the Year. “I want to accept this award on behalf of the teams who deserve all the perks and benefits they can possibly get.”
“I didn’t prepare anything because I thought it would be pretty hard to compete with the others on this list,” Edward Jiang said after accepting the award for Do-Gooder of the Year. “Everyone that was nominated was truly incredible. I feel very honored to be here on behalf of the StudentRND community.”
We recapped the winners from the 14 categories with a roundup post from Thursday night, and now we’d like to share some awesome photos from the scene, including those from the hilarious photo booth (also embedded below). Thanks to our awesome intern Alisa Reznick for snapping these shots.
First, here are some of our winners with the category sponsors:
Startup Deal of the Year, presented by UK Trade & Investment
Winner: Zulily
App of the Year, presented by Fresh Consulting
Winner: Haiku Deck
Perk of the Year, presented by Kibble & Prentice (See a KING5 story on this category here)
Winner: SEOmoz
Do-Gooder of the Year, presented by Seattle Children’s Research Institute
Winner: Edward Jiang, StudentRND
Game of the Year, presented by Filter
Winner: Halo 4
Bootstrapper of the Year, presented by HasOffers
Winner: Matthew Matsudaira, Adorii
Innovation of the Year, presented by Intellectual Ventures
Winner: Puzzazz TouchWrite
Geekiest Office Space, presented by Knoll
Winner: Killer Infographics
Hire of the Year, presented by Summit Group Solutions
Winner: Charlie Kindel, Amazon
Next Tech Titan, presented by Wave Business Solutions
Winner: Zulily
Geek of the Year, presented by Barokas PR
Winner: Oren Etzioni (University of Washington) and Rebecca Gardner (Seattle Children’s Research Institute)
Young Entrepreneur of the Year, presented by Appature
Winner: Dan Price, Gravity Payments’
Startup of the Year, presented by Flinn Ferguson Corporate Real Estate
Winner: Simply Measured (Award accepted by Simply Measured CEO Adam Schoenfeld)
MORE PHOTOS:
Thanks also to additional event sponsors, DoubleDown Interactive, SEOmoz, Exsilio Solutions, and supporting sponsors Killer Infographics, Bootstrapper Studios, and Babson F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business.
Here’s a look at the amazing action going on in the photo booth:
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Photos taken by Taylor Soper and Alisa Reznick, a University of Washington student working as an editorial intern at GeekWire this quarter. Reach her at alisa@geekwire.com or on Twitter @AlisaReznick.
