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Revealed: the finalists for the 2012 Crunchies

Tom Krazit — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 18:00:44 +0000

The finalists for the 2012 Crunchies have been released, and now it’s time to decide who should rewarded for their technology innovation and leadership over the course of 2012.

The list of honorees follows below, and it’s a list packed with newcomers as well as Silicon Valley veterans. Thanks to all for voting in the nomination process, and now that we’ve narrowed it down to five candidates for each award, don’t forget to vote for which person or company you think is most deserving. Voting begins today (the voting page can be found here, and the rules are here) and closes on January 24th.

As a reminder, the Crunchies, a joint production with our friends at Techcrunch and Venturebeat, will take place on Thursday, January 31, 2013, from 7:30pm to 11:30pm at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco. You can purchase tickets here.

So, without any further delay, the nominees for the 2012 Crunchies are as follows:

Best Technology Achievement
Baumgartner Jump
Google Glass
Mars Curiosity
SpaceX docks with International Space Station
Tesla Supercharger Network

Best Collaborative Consumption Service
Airbnb
Get It Now/Postmates
Lyft
TaskRabbit
Uber

Best E-Commerce Application
Fab
Hotel Tonight
Karma/Facebook Gifts
Warby Parker
Zulily

Best Mobile Application
Evernote
Google Maps
Grindr
Instagram
Square

Fastest Rising Startup
Exec
Lyft
Pinterest
Snapchat
Stripe

Best Content Discovery Application
Flipboard
Instapaper
Pinterest
Prismatic
Tumblr

Best Design
Facebook Timeline
Medium
Paper by FiftyThree
Square
Svbtle

Best Bootstrapped Startup
FreshBooks
Instapaper
Nimbus
Techmeme
Upverter

Sexiest Enterprise Startup
Asana
Box
Cloudera
Plexxi
Zendesk

Best International Startup
Hailo
Rovio
Soundcloud
Spotify
Xiaomi

Best Education Startup
Codecademy
Coursera
Edmodo
Khan Academy
Udacity

Best Hardware Startup
Lit Motors
Lockitron
Makerbot
Nest
Raspberry Pi

Best Time Sink
Angry Birds Star Wars
Buzzfeed
Letterpress
Pinterest
WhatsApp

Biggest Social Impact
Donors Choose
Indiegogo
Kickstarter
Kiva
Reddit

Angel of the Year
Michael Arrington
Chris Dixon
Paul Graham
David Lee
Chris Sacca

VC of the Year
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
Matt Cohler
Jim Goetz
Michael Moritz
Peter Thiel

Founder of the Year
Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia (Airbnb)
Kevin and Julia Hartz (Eventbrite)
Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla)
Kevin Systrom (Instagram)
Nir Zuk (Palo Alto Networks)

CEO of the Year
Dick Costolo (Twitter)
Phil Libin (Evernote)
Marissa Mayer (Yahoo!)
Larry Page (Google)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

Best New Startup of 2012
Coursera
Crowdtilt
Lyft
Snapchat
Waze

Best Overall Startup of 2012
Fab
Github
Instagram
Palantir
Square

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YPlan brings last-minute mobile event bookings to London

David Meyer — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 12:00:10 +0000

The mobile phone is an ideal tool for booking something at the last minute, as you always have it with you. This concept has already become entrenched in the hotel-booking space through the likes of Hotel Tonight and Blink and in taxi-booking through Hailo et al, and WillCall is employing it for gigs and theater in a couple of U.S. cities. Now YPlan, a London-based outfit, is trying the same idea for more general events.

YPlan’s Passbook-integrated iOS app only works for the British capital at launch, but it offers an interesting range of events, from gigs (Hot Chip and Chemical Brothers co-manager Robert Linney is a backer) to shows, whiskey tasting, rooftop cinema and, er, chessboxing (a thing, apparently).

“For bands, live concerts and events present the biggest revenue drivers. But many of these live events aren’t sold to capacity, with millions of seats staying empty every year,” Linney said. “YPlan is aiming to change that for the better. Not only does it give YPlan’s customers immediate access to some of the coolest live performances in London, but it also helps the artists by allowing more fans to discover and see their shows.”

Compared with social event discovery services such as Vamos, this is a much more curated affair, with an element of learning the user’s tastes.

“We learn everything from what the user does,” YPlan founder Rytis Vitkauskas told me. “We track the clicking and booking patterns and we become smarter over time. This only works once you have lots and lots of events. That is ultimately the objective, to always have a shortlist, but a pretty well-tailored list.”

Now, about that ‘lots and lots of events’ point. YPlan isn’t really starting out with that many, largely because it sources its events directly. The sales team is led by an ex-Time Out digital director, though, so there’s clearly experience on that front.

YPlan quietly took in a round earlier this year and, according to Vitkauskas, it won’t need any more cash until next year, when it expands out of London. “Then we do the States, starting from the East Coast, then back to Europe — Berlin and Spanish cities,” he said.

Given the highly curated nature of the service, I would imagine that YPlan will have to be very deliberate about its growth strategy. But it will be interesting to see how it pans out, particularly as a more tightly-controlled counterpoint to the social tack taken by the likes of Vamos.

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Cabbies sue to drive car service Uber out of San Francisco

Jeff John Roberts — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 18:43:22 +0000

The nationwide battle between the taxi industry and Uber took another twist this week as San Francisco cabbies filed a class action lawsuit, claiming the upstart car service is engaged in unfair competition and illegal interference in business relations.

In a complaint filed in California Superior Court, cab drivers Leonid Goncharov and Mohammed Edine say Uber drivers are breaching San Francisco taxi laws by, for instance, not accepting cash and failing to use meters.

The two drivers say they have brought the case on behalf of all other San Francisco cabbies, and are seeking an injunction to shut Uber down and an order for the company to hand over its profits since 2010.

The case turns on the distinction between taxis and “limousines” or black cars which are not permitted to take street hails. Uber claims it is part of the former class while the lawsuit points to Uber’s “e-hails” and dispatch service to say it is the latter. In other words, if it acts like a taxi, it should be regulated like a taxi. (you can read the full filing below).

Update: Uber has retained prominent lawyer John Quinn who said in an email that the company complies with all laws and that, “Uber would rather compete for business on the streets of San Francisco than in the courtroom, but Uber will defend these claims in court and is confident of the outcome.”

Disruption in the taxi industry

This is just the latest legal headache for Uber, which is facing regulatory pressure in Boston and New York and a class action lawsuit brought by Chicago cab companies that accuses it of pocketing tips and catering to rich hipsters.

In the bigger picture, Uber has come under fire because its business model — which allows people to summon cabs based on the GPS in their smartphones and pay with a pre-stored credit card — is proving disruptive to the traditional taxi business.

Outspoken Uber owner Travis Kalanik has been clashing with cabbies head-on. He recently railed against “industry corruption” and said Uber “would continue to fight the good fight,” according to The Next Web, which was first to report the story.

While Kalanik has succeeded in rallying users and tech types to his defense, the story may not be as simple as a hidebound industry resisting an innovator. That’s because taxis provide a vital transportation function like buses or semi-trucks, and cities have long used rules in an attempt to make them safe and available to everyone (that’s not to say the existing system works). While Uber and other upstarts like Hailo appear to have discovered a more efficient distribution model, it appears likely they will have to jump through a hoop or two before becoming a permanent part of the urban transportation eco-system.

IMAGE 11-14-12 114428

(Image by Pius Lee via Shutterstock)

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MyTaxi rides into U.S. market with a trick up its sleeve

David Meyer — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 15:57:37 +0000

When it comes to taxi apps for the smartphone, the U.S. has a few to choose from – depending on the city, there’s Uber, Hailo… and now, if you’re in Washington D.C., there’s myTaxi.

MyTaxi is actually an older service than the aforementioned upstarts. It’s been going in Germany since mid-2009 and, reflecting quite a lot of international expansion since then, it now claims 2.3 million users and a taxi base of over 18,000.

D.C. is its first U.S. play, and it announced the move in a cute, if crackly, Ustream performance on Wednesday. The functionality of the iOS and Android app should be fairly familiar by now: a peer-to-peer connection between the driver and passenger, a rating system for the drivers and live-tracking of the approaching cab. MyTaxi also has an in-app fare calculator, which is useful.

A driver-side version of the app also exists, for helping drivers monitor customer locations and get some basic information on them.

“Americans took more than 10 billion trips on public transportation last year,” myTaxi CEO Niclaus Mewes said in a statement. “Smartphones can have an immense impact on urban mobility. At myTaxi we want to rethink and reshape how taxi trips are taken. Passengers and drivers want something convenient, transparent and tailored to their needs. We want to deliver on that.”

Rethink and reshape how taxi trips are taken? That seems a bit strong, given that the idea has already become pretty hot in the U.S. over the last couple of years, and plenty of players are trying to take over the space.

But wait, there’s more…

It’s true that myTaxi does have some differentiators up its sleeve, and not just its share-grabbing $5-voucher launch offer. For one thing, the company seems to have the endorsement of the D.C. Taxicab Commission – a useful kind of thing to have, when you look at the troubles Uber has been having in Chicago, New York and, uh, D.C.

“The D.C. Taxicab Commission welcomes any electronic reservation company such as myTaxi, bringing technological advancements to the District of Columbia,” D.C. Taxicab Commission chairperson Ron Linton said. “We are delighted that passengers using DC public vehicles-for-hire will enjoy the enhanced quality of service.”

But the really interesting thing about myTaxi becomes apparent when you look at its investors. One of the big ones is Daimler’s Car2Go car-sharing service. And talk about synergies.

MyTaxi and Car2Go are in fact sharing an office in D.C., and that looks set to be a trend. I asked myTaxi spokeswoman Lina Wueller where in the U.S. myTaxi would expand to next, and she refused to name names but did suggest I check out where Car2Go is active. So that would be places like Miami and Austin, then.

And here’s why:

“We are planning to integrate myTaxi into [Car2Go's] app,” Wueller said. “We’re going to launch that firstly in Europe, and then in other markets.

“We’re aiming for people not needing to own cars anymore.”

So that’s the trick: if you’re out and about, and you need a car, you’ll use Car2Go’s app to find the closest one that’s available for you to drive. If you can’t find a suitable car, or you’re not in a driving mood, you’ll hail a cab through myTaxi, from the same app.

Clever strategy. But will it be enough to displace the companies that have been taking over the U.S. market over the last couple of years? If myTaxi and Car2Go can expand fast enough, they may stand a chance.

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