Startup Community Awards 2017 – An update

As most of you know, earlier in October we launched the first version of the Montreal Startup Community Awards. The goal behind these awards was to finally shine a light on and recognize all those who have been working tirelessly to support the ecosystem over the last year. We couldn’t be more excited about the response we received! We got over 175 nominations which made it quite the job to narrow that down to only 5 people per category. There were some clear trends with some people and organizations receiving over 10 nominations each! There were also a few gaps to fill and some curation to do (we wanted to ensure a broad and diverse pool of candidates for the awards) and for that we turned to various community members and finally settled on the 5 people / companies in each category. We definitely didn’t think it would be as difficult as it was and so we’ve taken a step back and put more thought into how this next round, the voting portion, will play out.

Basically, the public voting is now open and will be open until November 13th. The public will be determining the top 3 in each category ad then over the next few days we will be putting together a panel of judges made up of trusted and longtime members of the Montreal Startup Community who will narrow those down to the winner in each category. We will publicize the judge committee once everyone has been selected.

The next big question was: what about all those people who have spent the last almost decade building this ecosystem?? The startup community has really rebooted itself for 10 years now. 2017 is the year that we couldn’t pass without highlighting the amazing contribution of countless dedicated women and men without whom our ecosystem wouldn’t be where it is today! That’s why, for each category, not only will a 2017 Champion be selected but, in the wake of the last decade of dedication, we will be recognizing someone who has significantly contributed to the building blocks of our thriving ecosystem.

Our goal is to be as fair and transparent as possible in this process so please reach out to either one of us if you have any questions or concerns 🙂

– Emma & Ilias

Discover Startup Community Awards 2021 and stay tuned for next year! – startupcommunityawards.com
Read the recap of Startup Community Awards 2021