Startups of the Year Voting FAQ

What is Startups of the Year by HackerNoon?

It’s a community driven vote for this year’s startup of the year for every city in the world above 100k people. Start voting for the best startups today! HackerNoon and our sponsors want to recognize the startups that are changing technology and the world as we know it for the better.

What is Hacker Noon?

How hackers start their afternoons. We are working to be the best place for technologists to read, write, learn, and publish. HackerNoon publishes 35+ stories per day from the brightest people in tech. More about us and how to publish.

How Does This Work?

The HackerNoon team has curated the initial 35,000+ startups from 4,000+ cities from virtually every matter of fact country in the world. These startups have shown notable traction and/or raised capital in 2020/2021.

Nominations last 6 weeks, starting Monday Jul 26, 2021. Nomination will close Sep 6, 2021. Anybody can nominate a startup by scrolling down to the bottom of each city URL and enter the startups of choice. HackerNoon editors will approve as we see qualified.

Voting will also start Monday July 26, 2021 and will last 6 months, closing Jan 26, 2022. Anybody can vote for any one startup in each city. Winners will be announced in the first week of February, 2022.

How is This Built?

Startups.HackerNoon.com is built by Hacker Noon’s custom voting software, which powered Noonies 2019 and Noonies 2020. The stack includes Prisma, Algolia, Firebase, Vercel, Heroku and more. It integrates with the content management system we built to power HackerNoon.com.

How to navigate the site? (or why do I see so few startups)

Search, search, search. Keep in mind - there are over 4,000 cities and 35,000 startups nominated, so we can’t display all of them on the homepage. However IMHO, the site is pretty easy to navigate! You can either:Utilize pagination next to each of the 16 regions to browse through all startups in each region. You can get to each of the regions via the top navigation bar on every single page of the site. Enter the keyword (startups or cities or descriptions details) in the search bar on every page to find exact matches.

Are You Adding More Cities?

Probably not. Hacker Noon staff curated 4,000+ cities. Looking for the community to help nominate even more startups now. But if you have a quality city idea, feel free to contact us.

How do I nominate a startup?

Please do! On any individual city award, click on “suggest a startup” and type the name of your nominee. You also have the option to add a “why” and a URL for more context. A real human will review each submission. Nominations close on September 6, 2021.How does voting work?We weigh votes to further elevate the voice of our contributing writers, reward verified expertise, and prevent spam. Hacker Noon published writers votes count as 10, authenticated users votes count as 3, and unauthenticated visitors have their vote count as 1 (pending spam reviews).

The reasons for this are:

• the contributing writer, by publishing their words and expertise on Hacker Noon, has earned the right to have their voice count the most when it comes to who deserves HackerNoon rewards
• authenticated users have much lower spam rate so their vote should count more
• we want to continue to ensure that anyone can vote. All users can vote once on each award in voting season.

When Can I Vote?

Voting starts on July 26, 2021 and will last 6 months, closing Jan 26, 2022. People can vote once per city award. Voting starts by clicking the “vote” button on any startup city page.

My startup was nominated for Startups of the Year. What should I do next?

Congrats! Our advice is to promote the shit out of this nomination (no but really) to improve your chance of winning. We have taken the liberty to create a Startups Special Package just for you: If you are a Startups of the Year nominee, you will be qualified for significant brand publishing and promotion discount. Check it outhere. Also - check your email for promotional assets and communication from us.

I received an email saying that I was nominated for Startups of the Year, but couldn’t find our listing. What should I do?

Sorry about that! Please search for the name of your city or startup (in all their different variations, if any) via our search bar on the top right of the site. There could have been a spelling mistake. If you still can’t find your startup, our apologies! Our database is not perfect and there must have been an oversight. But no worries, feel free to nominate yourself via the “suggest a startup” option at the bottom of your city page. Our staff will make sure to prioritize your startups!

Some information about my startup is incorrect. How do I fix it?

Oops! No worries though - easy fix. Simply contact us and we will fix it asap!Can I pay to get nominated?No, but you can submit your startup for us to review.How do I submit stories to Hacker Noon?Glad you asked. Simply create an account and submit a story. Our editors will review it within 4ish days! Learn more about publishing with us here.What do the winners get?Street cred, a sense of making a difference in the world. Additionally, Hacker Noon will generate an evergreen and dynamic tech company news page for each winners.

Can I pay to get nominated?

No, but you can submit your startup for us to review.

What startups qualify for nomination?

The requirements are between $50k-$50M in yearly expected revenue and/or $1M-$100M in secured funding. Additionally, the official HQ must be where the company city award nomination is. Like Hacker Noon’s editorial line, we prefer startups that add more value than they extract. Some verticals we dig:  blockchain,  cryptocurrency,  programming,  bitcoin,  startup, hackernoon-top-story, software development,  javascript,  technology, web-development, artificial-intelligenc , tech,  entrepreneurship, machine-learning,  ethereum,  business,  crypto,  coding, marketing, react, security, ai, productivity, data-science, venture-capital, product-management, python, nodejs, web monetization,  ico,  investing, aws, startups, devops, software-engineering, good-company,  privacy, agile, cybersecurity, social-media, open-source,  design,  finance,  innovation, deep-learning, education, leadership, mobile-app-development, docker, decentralization, cloud-computing, api, and  management.

What do the winners get?

Street cred. Internet cred. A logo to demonstrate growth, a sense of making a difference in the world. For all nominated startups with an American EIN, Brex is offering free $300 on a Brex credit card. For all winners of Central Europe, Vercel is offering a $100 hosting credit. To all winners worldwide, Blockster is offering free ad credits to run advertisements on their platform for 1 month. Awards can apply on a city by city basis, so do check for the yellow box on the city award page. Additionally, Hacker Noon will generate an evergreen and dynamic tech company news page for each winner.

Can I sponsor a Startup of the Year Award?

At this point, all of our sponsorship slots for 2021 are filled. Big thanks to our headline sponsors Brex, ByBit, and Blockster; as well as our other sponsors freeCodeCamp, LaunchDarkly, Coil, FREEton, Udemy, Udacity, Vercel, and Asia Pacific Transgender Network. To learn more about how to partner with HackerNoon, visit sponsor.hackernoon.com.How do I build a custom city voting site like this?We built ours from scratch. If you'd like us to power a site like this on your own domain or subdomain, email  [email protected].

How does HackerNoon make money?

We will never put up a paywall, charge readers, run a popup ad, or pay for content to get published on Hacker Noon, However, we do make money through sponsorships and partnerships, such as the little yellow bar you see atop hackernoon.com. Learn more here.

What is “Startup Specials”?

Startups Specials are our limited time Discount Sponsorship packages curated just for the nominees of Startups of the Year. There are 3 options: Free, Growing ($1k) and Scaling ($10k). Take your pick.

Who can I contact about the Startup of the Year?

HackerNoon.com/contact.