Methods:

Awareness impacts a company’s ability to recruit, among a number of things, and remains a significant challenge.

Over the course of 30 days, the Hot Starts survey collected 4500 page views and over 400 submissions. However, the majority (approximately 80%) of votes were clearly ballot stuffers. That is, selecting the same company across every category.

In order to screen these out, any submission that chose the same company in every category was ignored. Thankfully, there were very few borderline cases.

If you’d like you can download the raw submission data.

EDIT: @ekalvi has put together the raw data in PDF form. You can find that data here

Conclusions:

Fewer than 1 in 10 visitors to the survey actually voted. This suggests that either the survey was too difficult, or, more likely, that even Red Canary’s localized audience of technology professionals didn’t know enough about these companies to evaluate them.

These companies need more visibility.

Overall, Well.ca was the conclusive favourite, but did not win every category. The fact that some companies showed strength in certain categories suggests that despite the small sample size the survey responses were balanced.

This survey highlights perceived strengths and public favourites, not winners. It would be good for all of us if each and every one of these companies succeeded.

I hope that Red Canary can work with these and other young companies to help make that happen. Your feedback is always welcome.