One of the many good reasons we organize the Seattle 2.0 Awards is to help showcase some of the top startups and people in Seattle, so more individuals, in Seattle or not, can learn about them and what they do. With that in mind, over the next 10 days we’ll be posting a new blog post for each category on the Seattle 2.0 Awards 2011. You can read about them, register to attend the event, but also register to be a member of the Voting Panel and vote on your favorites.
To kick off this series of blog posts, read about the finalists on the Best Consumer Startup, but more importantly, go check out their services. They’ve got here for a reason.
The finalists are:
Bonanza is a social marketplace aimed at complementing Amazon in niche item categories. Bonanza’s key differentiator is that it makes shoppers less anonymous than competing sites. Buyers and sellers can chat in real time to get questioned answered or negotiate deals. All sellers have their location and avatar shown alongside their items, underscoring the site’s dual emphasis on “people” and “items.” These social dynamics lend themselves to the formation of communities around niche item categories such as collectibles, antiques, clothing, handbags, jewelry, and books.
BuddyTV is an online TV guide and discussion center. It provides original articles, news and interviews on a large range of TV content. In addition to content provided by BuddyTV, fans can conduct TV jockey broadcasts audio, video, blog and polls about their favorite shows. BuddyTV has forums in which users can discuss everything from The Simpsons to The Simple Life. BuddyTV offers a space for fans of cult and niche shows also, bringing together much smaller communities which may never have formed were it not for the ubiquity of the web. BuddyTV was founded by Andy Liu and David Niu, and has raised $9 million in capital from Charles River Ventures, Gemstar-TV Guide and Madrona Venture Group.
Cheezburger, the company behind popular sites such as I Can Has Cheezburger?, FAIL Blog, Memebase, and The Daily What, was founded in September 2007 by Ben Huh, a former journalist turned entrepreneur with a knack for nailing popular zeitgeist. Ben has been credited with bringing Internet memes to the mainstream and popularizing Internet culture. The Internet media publisher counts a passionate fan base of 16.5 million people who upload more than 500,000 pictures and videos as well as view 375 million pages and 110 million videos each month. Cheezburger has been profitable since its inception with revenue from three sources – advertising, traditional media publishing including books, and merchandising. Recently, Cheezburger closed a $30 million dollar round from Foundry Group, Madrona Venture Group, Avalon Ventures and Softbank Capital.
Swype creates text input technology for screens. The patented interface enables users to create words with one continuous finger motion across an on-screen keyboard. This approach provides a faster and easier way to write. Swype delivers single-tap, multi-tap, predictive and “swype” motions for both stylus and finger based input. In addition, the application is designed to work across a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, game consoles, kiosks, televisions, virtual screens and more.
Zulily is an online store offering daily sales events on top-quality apparel, gear and other goodies for moms, babies and kids. Members enjoy savings of up to 90% off retail prices. Zulily was founded by Darrell Cavens and it has $10.6M in funding from Maveron and August Capital.
Aisha Tyler K. D. Aubert Sara Spraker Alexis Bledel Kim Kardashian
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