SAN FRANCISCO — Two young Silicon Valley companies and two more that just set
up shop in the valley are among the six winners selected "most likely to
succeed" by a panel of venture capitalists and angel investors.
All six winning companies, which were announced Wednesday in San Francisco,
join a group of previous winners that collectively have raised more than $145
million in venture capital funding over the past eight years of the annual
competition, according to SVForum, which helps organize the awards and calls
itself Silicon Valley's leading nonprofit organization for developers,
technologists and entrepreneurs.
This year's winners include Mountain View based Algorithms.io, which delivers
predictive analytics using cloud computing and open source software; Santa
Clara-based Bugcrowd, which provides crowd-sourced security for web and mobile
applications; and Menlo Park-based WHILL, which recently moved from Japan to
design and create a new generation of sidewalk electric vehicles.
Luxembourg-based FLASHiZ, Europe's first mobile payment system based on both
NFC and QR codes, also opened a Sunnyvale office in April "because it's where
the business is," said FLASHiZ CEO Alexandre Rochegude.
The two other companies that won were Fresno-based OnFarm, which allows
farmers to better manage fertilizer, water, labor and energy through a
cloud-based system; and Athens, Ohio-based E3 Clean, which produces clean
hydrogen fuel
as a byproduct of cleaning up diesel and power plant contamination,
exhaust and emissions.
This year's competition drew more than 300 entries from around the world. And
even nonwinners regularly attract capital and interest from companies that want
to invest in them, acquire them or purchase their technologies, said Chris Gill,
SVForum's CEO.
"It can be a game changer for companies that participate and aren't selected"
as a winner, Gill said. "One of the perennial challenges for startups is rising
above the noise and getting the attention of investors and others."
All of the entries were narrowed to a list of 30 companies that made
presentations on Tuesday before venture capitalists and angel investors in
Mountain View at Microsoft, which co-sponsored the awards.
Algorithms.io on Tuesday received attention from six potential clients
representing diverse industries that are interested in better using "all of the
data they're sitting on," said Andy Bartley, Algorithms.io's CEO.
So being named a winner in the "next generation Internet" category means even
more "exposure and introductions," Bartley said.
Also on Wednesday, SVForum announced the winners of its 16th annual Visionary
Awards: Steve Blank, a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, author and academic;
Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X-Prize Foundation; Ray Kurzweil,
Google's (GOOG)
director of engineering; and Padmasree Warrior, Cisco's
(CSCO)
chief technology and strategy officer.
Last year's Visionary Award winners included
Elon Musk, chairman
and CEO of Palo Alto-based Tesla Motors (TSLA).
This year's Visionary Award winners will be honored June 26 in Los Altos.
"These individuals have each played a significant role in the furthering of
technology and innovation, inspiring others to continue to push the bounds of
'what's now' and identifying 'what's next,'" said Deborah Magid chairwoman of
SVForum's board of directors.
Contact Dan Nakaso at 408-271-3648. Follow him at
Twitter.com/dannakaso.
SVforum names “most likely to succeed” winners
Here are the six companies honored Wednesday by
SVForum:
Next Generation Internet: Algorithms.io (Mountain View) and Bugcrowd
(Santa Clara)
Mobile: FLASHiZ (Luxembourg and Sunnyvale)
Life Science:
WHILL (Menlo Park)
Clean Tech: E3 Clean (Athens, Ohio)
Technology: OnFarm
(Fresno)
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