GoodData, Bizo grab top prizes in Amazon startup contest |
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GoodData, Bizo grab top prizes in Amazon startup contest
It was a San Francisco sweep as Amazon.com named the winners of its annual contest for startups using its cloud computing services. The top prize went to GoodData, a Bay Area business intelligence firm. It scored $50,000 in cash, $50,000 in Amazon Web Services credits and an "investment offer" from Amazon of undisclosed value. Bizo, a San Francisco-based business-to-business display advertising network, came in second, and flight delay prediction startup FlightCaster, also of San Francisco, won a prize for its use of Amazon Payments.
Here's how Amazon describes GoodData's business:
GoodData uses the economic advantages of cloud computing to let companies start business intelligence projects for free, and spend a fraction of the traditional cost of comprehensive BI. The company provides a cloud-based service that provides dashboards & reports, deep ad hoc analysis and powerful data warehousing.
The runners-up this year have both scored recent investments. Bizo just raised $6 million in venture funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Venrock, Ascent and Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures. And FlightCaster recently secured $1.3 million in funding from Sherpalo Ventures and others.
This is the second time Amazon has invested in its startup contest winner. The company, along with Madrona Venture Group and others, invested in last year's winner, Yieldex, a New York-based online ad optimization engine for web publishers.
Silicon Valley video distribution startup Ooyala won the first annual contest in 2007. Ooyala this fall raised a $10 million funding round from Rembrandt Venture Partners, Sierra Ventures and others.
Here's the full list of startups taking part in this year's contest. No companies from Amazon's home town of Seattle were in the lineup this time. The company announced the winners at the PlugandPlayTechCenter in Sunnyvale, Calif., last night.
Note: I'm having some trouble loading GoodData's website this morning. Perhaps they're getting a lot of unaccustomed traffic today?
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