San Francisco, California - Thursday night, tech's hottest startups, founders, engineers and venture capitalists vied for recognition as the best of best at the 2015 Crunchies Awards. Winners across 20 categories, including Fastest Rising Startup, Best Founder and, Best Health Startup, took home the coveted monkey statuettes of honor.

TechCrunch, together with VentureBeat, hosted the annual ceremony at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall, honoring companies and individuals that made the biggest impression on their peers and on the industry in 2014.

"The tech industry thinks of itself as high stakes and it sometimes is," said Alexia Tsotsis, co-editor of TechCrunch. "These awards are an opportunity to get some perspective and laugh at ourselves, while still celebrating the creative accomplishments of Silicon Valley."

Emceed by actor and comedian T.J. Miller of HBO's Silicon Valley, the show featured editors, writers and special guests presenting awards to the honorees, and the celebration continued during the tech industry's favorite after-party.

"Everyone in our quickly moving industry is so focused. The Crunchies lets us get together and give out some awards for the best technology and accomplishments from the past year," said Matthew Panzarino, co-editor of TechCrunch "And besides that, it's a good excuse to not take ourselves too seriously."

Chosen by public voting, this year's winners included Stella Solar-Powered Car, Airbnb, Oculus VR and Uber. The full list of 2014 winners include:

Best Technology Achievement
Stella Solar-Powered Car (Winner)
Apple Pay (Runner Up)

Best E-Commerce Application
Casper (Winner)
The Honest Company (Runner Up)

Best Mobile Application
Storehouse (Winner)
Acorns (Runner Up)

Fastest Rising Startup
Yik Yak (Winner)
Slack (Runner Up)

Best Health Startup
Theranos (Winner)
Fitbit (Runner Up)

Best Design
Airbnb (Winner)
Medium (Runner Up)

Best Bootstrapped Startup
Meadow (Winner)
MailChamp (Runner Up)

Best International Startup
Line (Winner)
Spotify (Runner Up)

Best Education Startup
ClassDojo (Winner)
Khan Academy (Runner Up)

Best Hardware Startup
Oculus VR (Winner)
GoPro (Runner Up)

Can't Stop, Won't Stop
Kim Kardashian: Hollywood (Winner)
BuzzFeed (Runner Up)

Biggest Social Impact
Twitter (Winner)
Tim Cook's Public Coming Out (Runner Up)

Angel of the Year
Kickstarter Backers of Oculus VR (Winner)
Cyan and Scott Banister (Runner Up)

VC of the Year
Jim Goetz (Sequoia Capital) (Winner)
Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures) (Runner Up)

Founder of the Year
Stewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson and Seguei Mourachov (Slack) (Winner)
Brian Acton and Jam Koum (WhatsApp) (Runner Up)

CEO of the Year
Marc Benioff (Salesforce.com) (Winner)
Marissa Mayer (Yahoo) (Runner Up)

Best New Startup of 2013
Product Hunt (Winner)
Shyp (Runner Up)

Best Overall Startup of 2013
Uber (Winner)
GoPro (Runner Up)

ABOUT TECHCRUNCH
Founded in June 2005, TechCrunch is dedicated to obsessively profiling startups, breaking tech news, and reviewing the apps and hardware from startups everywhere. TechCrunch is read by more than 12million startup fans monthly and followed by more than two million on social media. CrunchBase is TechCrunch's open database about start-ups, entrepreneurs, and investors, which is used by more than 2 million people each month. The company hosts major conferences and events, including the Disrupt series in San Francisco, New York, and Europe, the annual Crunchies awards, and meet-ups worldwide.

ABOUT THE CRUNCHIES
For eight years running the Crunchies Awards, founded by TechCrunch and co-hosted with VentureBeat, have honored the most deserving startups, founders and investors across 20 categories from Best New Startup to Founder of the Year. Each year, community luminaries come together to celebrate a new year in tech with an award ceremony and after party. The 2014 Crunchies Awards were held on Thursday, February 5, 2015 at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall, sponsored by Yahoo! and digital partner, Intel.