The votes have been tallied. The judges have weighed in. A battlefield of twenty-seven startups was whittled down to a final, elite group of seven. And now the winner has been chosen: Qwiki has taken the top prize at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco.
In addition to a $50,000 grand prize, the company has just been handed the Disrupt Cup, taking over possession from Disrupt NYC winner Soluto. Upon receiving the cup, CEO Doug Imbruce exclaimed, “Let’s change the world!”
Taking the runner-up spots are CloudFlare and Pinger, both of which were also very impressive.
Qwiki climbed above the rest by offering a new way to consume information: text, audio, video, and images melded together in a seamless interface, generating a dynamic movie of whatever you search for. It really does seem like something from the future, and it’s only going to get better.
Our backstage interview with Qwiki:
Make sure to check out our full coverage of each of these stellar companies:
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- Qwiki Just May Be The Future Of Information Consumption. And It’s Here Now.
- CloudFlare Wants To Be A CDN For The Masses (And Takes Five Minutes To Set Up)
- Pinger Now Turns Your iPod Touch Into A Free Cell Phone
And while only one startup can claim rights to the Disrupt Cup at a time, this was an incredibly solid field of companies, and we want to reiterate that it was a very close race. Many of the companies that took part in the Startup Battlefield are going to be doing great things.
In addition to the Disrupt Cup, some special awards were also given:
Yume for Best Marketing Strategy – Checkpoints
Perkins Coie – CloudFlare
Greylock Partners Disruptive Product – Qwiki
Greylock Partners Business Model – Pinger
Omidyar Network – Sumazi
Microsoft BizSpark – Badgeville
