Silicon Valley will no longer have its own version of the Oscars
- TechCrunch is ending the Crunchies, Silicon Valley's version of the Oscars.
- The annual award show brought the tech community together to recognize startups.
- Many of its past winners have come to dominate the tech industry.
The Crunchies are coming to an end.
The trademark annual Silicon Valley award show, which celebrated its 10th edition in February, won't be renewed for an 11th run. TechCrunch, the news outlet that launched and organized the event, announced Wednesday it was "retiring" the Crunchies. Calling the show's demise "sad," Ned Desmond and Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch's chief operating officer and editor-in-chief, respectively, said in a post on their site the Crunchies had essentially outlived its usefulness.
"The Crunchies came to life at a time when the San Francisco startup community needed lots of pats on the back and excuses to socialize - it was a fun event that brought the scene together," Desmond and Panzarino wrote. "These days, startups are global news, and to be honest it's awkward to try to answer unanswerable questions - What is the best startup? Who is the best VC?"
Panzarino declined to comment further on the decision to end the Crunchies including about whether finances played any role in the decision. TechCrunch sold tickets to the event and also sold sponsorships to companies for it.
Techies - including Crunchies founder Michael Arrington - took to Twitter to mourn the end of an era.
Arrington launched the Crunchies in 2007 as a kind of Oscars ceremony for the tech industry. Though the event started as a way to recognize startups, many of those on its list of winners have come to comprise a kind of a who's who of the tech industry.
At the first event, for example, Facebook won the "Best Overall" award and Tesla won for "Best Clean Tech Startup." Amazon Web Services, the now dominant cloud computing service, won the "Best Enterprise" award in 2008. And in 2013 Snapchat won for "Best Mobile Application."