Awards0GWA_banners_300x250-02There were some huge deals in the Pacific Northwest tech industry in the past 12 months — from mega financing rounds to blockbuster IPOs to impressive acquisitions.

Today’s category in the GeekWire Awards — Deal of the Year — is all about those transactions.

As with each of our categories, the five finalists below were nominated by the community and then selected with the input of our panel of judges.

cooleyThe winners will be announced May 8th at the GeekWire Awards show, taking place at the EMP Museum in Seattle.

A big thanks to our Deal of the Year category sponsor, Cooley, for helping to make the award possible.

Cast your ballot today:


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eagleview-logo11EagleView Technologies sold to Verisk Analytics for $650 million in cash: As we wrote at the time, EagleView’s acquisition by Verisk Analytics kind of caught us by surprise. Founded in 2006, the software company was doing “big data” before “big data” was cool, quietly building a special class of algorithms to measure roofs.

It was started by brothers-in-law Dave Carlson, a Southern California roofing contractor, and Chris Pershing, a software engineer in Seattle, who came up with the idea of using aerial photography to more accurately measure roofs. “This combination is a natural culmination of the businesses we’ve built over the years and a win for our customers and employees,” EagleView CEO Chris Barrow said at the time of the deal, which is still pending regulatory approval.

Act-On2012-09-06 at 12.48.50 PMMarketing automation software startup Act-On raises $42 million: Portland marketing automation startup slid into a finalist slot with its $42 million venture round earlier this month, potentially positioning the company for an initial public offering. “This is not a market limited by competitors,” said CEO Raghu Raghavan. “This is a market where our success is driven by our own efficiency.”

junotherapeuticsCancer research startup Juno Therapeutics raises $176 million: Juno Therapeutics raised one of the largest series A financing rounds we’ve seen in some time, just today announcing that the deal closed at a whopping $176 million. A spin out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Seattle Children’s Research Institute, the Seattle company is hoping to kill cancer by rewiring the immune system. Among its backers: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; Arch Venture Partners and the Alaska Permanent Fund.

Richard Klausner, a co-founder of Juno and the former director of the National Cancer Institute, noted at the time of the deal: “In more than 30 years of immunotherapy research, this is the most exciting data I’ve seen—a complete molecular response in clinical trial patients.”

tableauTableau Software IPO: Tableau arrived on the New York Stock Exchange with a bang, pricing at $31 per share before soaring more than 50 percent with the May 2013 IPO. Today, the 11-year-old company is still impressing Wall Street, trading at about $57 per share and holding a market value of more than $3 billion.

“It has been a business building process, brick by brick, putting our shoulder to the cold stone of tradition, trying to do something different,” CEO Christian Chabot said at the time of the IPO. “And it has been working out well for us.”

zulily-ipo-mo_111513_hires-3Zulily IPO: Zulily did not disappoint with its public offering. The Seattle e-commerce powerhouse priced at $22 per share, and opened at $39.40 on Nasdaq. It has since soared, with the stock topping $70 at one point. It now has a market value of more than $5 billion.

“It may not be a glamorous way of saying it, but I believe that a retail business is a detail business. And it is that execution every day that makes us great, so you are going to see us invest in that detailed execution,” CEO Darrell Cavens said at the time of the IPO.

Vote in previous categoriesStartup of the YearCEO of the YearApp of the YearInnovation of the YearBootstrapper of the YearYoung Entrepreneur of the YearPerk of the YearGeek of the YearNext Tech Titan; Gadget of the Year and Hire of the Year.

Tickets are going fast for the big show, so make sure to get yours today.

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