Slack, Honor, Gear VR, Stewart Butterfield, Bill Gurley win at the 9th Annual Crunchies
And The Winners Of The 9th Annual Crunchies Are... Silicon Valley is getting dressed up tonight to celebrate startups, their founders and CEOs, VCs and angels, and the products they make during … Tweets: @clean_freak , @accel , @mariosundar , @gvteam , @ndiblasio , @daveleebbc , @usatodaytech , @ndiblasio , @hunterwalk , @ndiblasio and @daveleebbc Tweets: Anne Toth / @clean_freak : Fastest rising startup @SlackHQ, accepted by these amazing engineers. pic.twitter.com/SKzl1kersu Accel Partners / @accel : Congrats @SlackHQ - Fastest Rising Startup & Founder/s of the Year! (@stewart @ericost @iamcal & Serguei) #Crunchies http://techcrunch.com/... Mario Sundar / @mariosundar : Congrats @SlackHQ, @stewart, @bgurley, @Uber_SF, @nist, @cyantist and @finkd. Looks like #thecrunchies got it right! http://twitter.com/... @gvteam : Congrats to @stewart @SlackHQ, recognized as Founder of the Year and Fastest Rising Startup at the #Crunchies — http://techcrunch.com/... Natalie DiBlasio / @ndiblasio : VC Of The Year award goes to @bgurley at the #Crunchies! (He invested early in Uber and Zillow) pic.twitter.com/x1LW5ucS8O Dave Lee / @daveleebbc : Biggest social impact award: http://Code.Org #crunchies pic.twitter.com/oCAfFmXkIK Usa Today / @usatodaytech : #Crunchie winner Honor just converted independent contractors to employees http://www.usatoday.com/... https://twitter.com/... Natalie DiBlasio / @ndiblasio : Wow! @SlackHQ is winning big at the #Crunchies. Founder Of The Year goes to @stewart Butterfield of Slack. pic.twitter.com/WGaYd37rRT Hunter Walk / @hunterwalk : Yup @honor wins BestNewStartup #Crunchies. Inspiring team & mission. Thrilled to have @homebrew on their cap table http://twitter.com/... Natalie DiBlasio / @ndiblasio : Congrats! @SlackHQ wins for fastest rising startup. Shoutout to diversity in their acceptance speech. #Crunchies pic.twitter.com/0wT8vGVVuh Dave Lee / @daveleebbc : Angel investor(s) of the year: Scott and Cyan Banister #crunchies pic.twitter.com/kwSvHU9vfY
Context & Ripple Effects
The 9th Annual Crunchies land a year after TechCrunch announced the 8th Annual Crunchies winners and Re/code used the same ceremony for its 'Startups and Self-Loathing' skewering — so the show arrives carrying both its trophy-case role and its reputation as Silicon Valley congratulating itself. The headline result is Slack's double crown: Fastest Rising Startup, with Stewart Butterfield taking Founder Of The Year, celebrated publicly by backer Accel Partners.
Two details give the night more than confetti value. Honor, named Best New Startup, has converted its independent contractors into employees — an unusual labor model for an award-stage startup — while Bill Gurley takes VC Of The Year. And Slack's momentum proved durable: the company shows up again among the 10th Annual Crunchies winners a year later.
First-order effects
- Slack exits the night with category and founder trophies that function as recruiting and enterprise-sales validation, amplified by Accel Partners' public congratulations to its portfolio company.
- Honor's Best New Startup win now attaches award credibility to a home-care business that employs its workers rather than classifying them as contractors — a direct contrast with the contractor-first model common among on-demand startups of this cohort.
Second-order effects
- Rivals in consumer-facing startup categories face a benchmark set by an employee-based workforce, forcing them to defend contractor models against a newly visible alternative.
- The Crunchies reinforce their role as an annual status market: appearing among the winners in consecutive editions, as Slack does from the 9th to the 10th, becomes a marker investors and talent read.
Third-order effects
- If Best New Startup-caliber companies keep choosing employment over contracting, award recognition starts rewarding labor-model legitimacy alongside growth — nudging the broader startup ecosystem's assumptions about worker classification.
- The ceremony's pattern of crowning the same winners repeatedly points toward a consolidated Valley canon, where a handful of companies and VCs accrue symbolic capital year over year rather than the field rotating.
The trend: Silicon Valley's annual self-awarding cycle is doubling down on workplace-software winners like Slack while beginning to showcase employee-based labor models such as Honor's as legitimate startup templates.