Picnik Wins Big

You’d think it was the late ’90s and the dot-com bubble had reinflated, the way the crowd was pumping hands and showing off innovative products at the Pacific Science Center this past May. More than 300 entrepreneurs, employees of startups and others were celebrating the Seattle 2.0 Awards, which honored top vote-getters in categories ranging from Best Startup to Best Social Event for Startups.

In part, the show was designed to re-energize the entrepreneurial spirit of Seattle. “We wanted to recognize the people that are doing the best work, so that we have more people aspiring to be them,” says Seattle 2.0 publisher Marcelo Calbucci.

Despite the downturn, a lot of startups continue to bootstrap here. So, the award show was also designed to create awareness about the spectrum of startup activity taking place.

The first phase of the awards came earlier this year, when the public was invited to nominate people and companies in nine different categories. More than 2,000 nominations came in for about 500 companies and individuals, says Calbucci. In April, 30 judges—investors, reporters, bloggers, entrepreneurs and more—whittled that list down to three to five contestants for each category, and voting was again opened to the public.

Like a typical Academy Awards show, one contestant ran away with the majority of the awards. Online picture editing site Picnik snapped up the coveted Best Startup, Best Bootstrapped Startup, Best Startup CEO and Best Startup Product Designer medals. The Best Startup Technologist award was given to Nat Brown, chief technology officer of iLike, a music sharing service that recently added support for users’ Twitter, My-Space and YouTube pages.

Other winners:

• Best Venture Capitalist: Matt McIlwain (Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group)
• Best Angel Investor: Geoff Entress (Venture Partner at Voyager Capital)
• Best Service Provider to Startups: Shannon Swift (President & CEO of Swift HR Solutions)
• Best Blog From/About Startups: TechFlash by John Cook
• Best Social Event for Startups: Lunch 2.0 by Josh Maher

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