Let’s Nominate More Women & Minorities for the Crunchies!

What you can do to ensure the Crunchies stage is more diverse than ever.

By Shaherose Charania (Co-founder & CEO, Women 2.0)

The 9th Annual Crunchies are just around the corner. They’re kind of a big deal. The Crunchies are like the Oscars of startups and technology. Hosted by TechCrunch, the 9th Annual Crunchies will be held at the San Francisco Star Wars Memorial House on February 8.

Did you know that you — yes you — can have a say in who wins these awards? Here’s how the winners will be selected:

• The general public nominates startups and individuals for each of the awards
• TechCrunch editors refine nominations into a final list of nominees for each award
• A top-secret 100-person Crunchies Board will pick the final winners by paper ballot. This is new to the selection process. The board will include TechCrunch editors, plus entrepreneurs, investors and other tech notables.

Is there a startup, investor or entrepreneur who you think deserves to be in the limelight? Now is your opportunities to make it happen! All you have to do is head to the nominations page and type in who you think should win. We challenge you to nominate diverse organizations for every single one of the 12 awards. This simple act of nominating underrepresented individuals means you can ensure more diverse people and organizations take home Crunchies awards.

Nominate Women 2.0 for The Include Diversity Award

We’d be thrilled if you nominated us for The Include Diversity Award: An organization or individual that has advanced diversity in tech. Just pop on over to the nominate page, type Women 2.0 into the Include Diversity box and click nominate. Do it by December 2, aka right now!

And while you’re at it, be sure to nominate women and female-led organizations for the other categories as well.

Here’s a full list of this year’s categories:

• Best New Startup of 2015: A startup founded or publicly launched this year.
• Best Overall Startup: A star startup in all categories that was founded or launched in the last 5 years.
• Fastest Rising Startup: An award acknowledging strong growth in a variety of ways.
• Best Technology Achievement: An exceptional recent technological achievement.
• Best Mobile Application: A recent standout that has earned its place on your home screen.
• Hardware Of The Year: Breakout hardware product of the year.
• The Include Diversity Award: An organization or individual that has advanced diversity in tech.
• Social Impact: Excelling in using technology to effect social impact.
• Founder of the Year: A founder that has made a statement in leadership and execution this year.
• Angel Investor of the Year: A breakout portfolio.
• VC of the Year: An investor whose bets on founders and companies has borne fruit this year.
• CEO of the Year: A true leader of a standout organization.

Once again, nominations close on Wednesday, December 2, 2015 so get to it!

Who will you nominate for the Crunchies?

Photo from TechCrunch via Flickr. Taken by Max Morse for TechCrunch.

About the author: Shaherose is a purpose-driven Product Marketing leader. She was previously, the CEO and Co-founder of Women 2.0. She began her career working at various startups in Silicon Valley in Product Management and Marketing at: Ribbit (British Telecom), Talenthouse and JAJAH (sold to Telefonica/O2). She is an active advisor to early stage technology startups through her pre-incubator, Founder Labs which she founded in 2010 and sits on the Board of Directors for Good World Solutions. Shaherose holds a B.A. in Business Admin from The University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business. Follow her on Twitter at @shaherose