Sexiest Enterprise Startup: Los Altos' Box Grabs TechCrunch Honors

Amid the din of the Super Bowl and the upcoming Oscars, Los Altos' newest and shiniest tech business, Box, has emerged from the Sixth Annual Crunchies with what might arguably be the best-named award: Sexiest Enterprise Start-Up.

The Crunchies, held at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco Thursday, were started "to recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, internet and technology innovations of the year," in the words of TechCrunch, one of the three co-hosts along with GigaOm and VentureBeat.

Box CEO Aaron Levie appeared on stage in suit, tie and bright red Puma sneakers, quipped, "I feel like Snapchat"—and promptly thanked his mother.

"I'd like to thank my mom ... for always believing in cloud computing," he said, to a ripple of laughter, that quieted at the next sentence. "She's really been there since Day One of this industry.

"To the other start ups out there: Keep executing, keep innovating, keep dominating—unless you're competing with us."

Honored as CEO of the Year was Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg wearing his uniform of jeans and a grey hoodie, and VC of the year was Peter Thiel, an early investor in Facebook. Zuckerberg 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."

When it started five years ago, the notion of an Oscars for tech start-up was lightly regarded, noted Business Insider writer Owen Thomas. Now, "...it's clear as day that the tech world has stars like Marissa Mayer, Mark Zuckerberg, Aaron Levie, Brian Chesky, and Kevin Systrom. And arguably, the digital products they launch on the world are far more important than the ephemeral celluloid narratives of Hollywood."

Stars, in a sense, yes. Except in Northern California, particularly Silicon Valley, few feel obliged to go Hollywood and go don tuxes. 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.

Here's a list of the winners:

Best Technology Achievement : Mars Curiosity
Best Collaborative Consumption Service : Airbnb
Best E-Commerce Application : Fab
Best Mobile Application : Google Maps
Fastest Rising Startup : Snapchat
Best Content Discovery Application : Pinterest
Best Design : Paper by FiftyThree
Best Bootstrapped Startup : Techmeme 
Sexiest Enterprise Startup : Box 
Best International Startup : SoundCloud
Best Education Startup : Codecademy
Best Hardware Startup : Makerbot
Best Time Sink : Buzzfeed
Biggest Social Impact : Reddit
Angel of the Year : Chris Dixon
VC of the Year : Peter Thiel
Founder of the Year : Kevin Systrom (Instagram)
CEO of the Year : Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
Best New Startup of 2012 : Coursera
Best Overall Startup of 2012 : GitHub 

View the complete list of nominees and winners here

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

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