Three D.C. female entrepreneurs have been chosen to pitch at the third and last Vinetta Project semi-finals on July 25. The three were chosen from dozens of applicants and one winner will go on to the 2016 Venture Challenge final in September for a shot to win at $20,000 in venture capital investment from GSP Financial Services along with a free month of office space at Cove and other in-kind awards. The Vinetta Project is a national organization that aims to connects female entrepreneurs with the capital they need for their startups.
We're seeing increasingly competitive applications for each showcase," Amelia Friedman, D.C. Vinetta Project co-director and co-founder of mobile app building platform Hatch Technologies told DC Inno. "We were particularly impressed by the impressive traction and diversity of this group of companies."
The applicants came from a welter of industries. Drones, biotech, cybersecurity, real estate, fintech and education all had an appearance, with consumer and enterprise services for companies and the government both.
"D.C. is such an interesting and unique market in terms of the extraordinary wealth of professional talented women," Anna Kohanski Mason, the other co-director of the Vinetta Project in D.C. and the director of investment for the Rise of the Rest program at Revolution told DC Inno. There's a "continued rise of high-potential female founded tech companies in D.C."
The last semi-final will host pitches by Ting Shih of mobile digital healthcare startup ClickMedix, Shally Venugopal of home mortgage lending platform startup Myolo and Stacie Whisonant, co-founder of PYT Funds, which mixes crowdfunding with banking for broader student loan lending markets. The winner of the semi-final will compete against finalists Alexandra McManus and her construction industry data analytics startup Prescient System and Saureen Desai co-founder of Shiplync, a platform for managing shipping logistics in real-time.
"Founders with immensely promising startups have come out of the woodwork to apply," Friedman said. " "The judges will have a tough time."
Update: The winner of the last semi-final is Stacie Whisonant, co-founder of PYT Funds, who will go on to compete in the final pitch competition.
