Sexiest Enterprise Startup? Locals Grab Tech Honors

It didn’t have a worldwide audience like Sunday’s Super Bowl or the upcoming Oscars, but the stars of the tech world gathered at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco last Thursday night for the Sixth Annual Crunchies.

Even non-technies would recognize the names--Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Peter Thiel, Marissa Mayer--the kings and queen of tech.

The awards honor innovators and venture capitalists, and the companies they run and fund. Some attended in evening gowns or suits, while others arrived in jeans, t-shirts and disheveled hair, looking as if they’d just torn themselves away from a computer screen after endless hours of tweaking.

As always, the spotlight shone brightly on Palo Alto. Honored as CEO of the Year was Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg wearing his uniform of jeans and a grey hoodie. He bounded onto the stage and seemed genuinely pleased with the honor, "Honestly, it is just so much more fun to be here with entrepreneurs than talking with analysts," he told the audience. "The reason why I love the Crunchies is because it's this opportunity for the whole industry to come together and celebrate the progress and all the great work that all these startups have done."

The runners-up did not speak on-stage.

Palo Alto companies receiving honors:

• Best Overall Startup of 2012: Palantir (runner-up)
• Sexiest Enterprise Startup: Cloudera (runner-up)
• Best Content Discovery Application: Flipboard (runner-up)

Tech Titans with Palo Alto connections receiving honors:

• Founder of the Year: Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX) (runner-up)
• CEO of the Year: Larry Page, Google (runner-up)
• CEO of the Year: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook (winner)

TechCrunch, GigaOm, and VentureBeat jointly put on the awards, which were sponsored by Yahoo! TechCrunch and Patch are both owned by AOL.

View the complete list of nominees and winners here.

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