Member-only dating app CarpeDM raised $1.054 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed financing round, which will be used to further the company’s vision for a dating app that prioritizes meaningful connections over gamification — swipes right and left, for example.
The round was led by Elevate Capital with participation from Virginia Venture Partners, Conscious Venture Fund, Overlooked Ventures, Forefront Capital, Pipeline Angels, Gaingels and CAV Angels. Naza Shelley, co-founder and CEO of Woodbridge-based CarpeDM, plans to focus the funds on securing new customers and validating the platform through a more streamlined onboarding process. The goal is to balance the barrier of entry while maintaining the foundation of the service: high-quality, vetted, hand-curated matches for Black women.
“It's of the utmost importance that we're protecting Black women, that we're elevating Black women, and we're providing them an option that I personally think any single would want to use,” Shelley said in an interview. “But we've built this specifically with them in mind.”
Over the course of the year, the team has grown to 12 with the hiring of an iOS developer, a marketing manager and three matchmakers that help curate the connections on the service. Shelley plans to add a chief operating officer and more matchmakers to the team as the year goes on. CarpeDM was named to the Washington Business Journal's Inno on Fire list in 2022.
The capital was raised before global investment firm TechStars selected CarpeDM for the inaugural class of its D.C.-area startup accelerator. Shelley credits the connections made via Virginia Venture Partners and Conscious Venture Fund for getting this pre-seed round funded.
“We believe CarpeDM will disrupt the dating experience for professional Black women by helping them spend less time searching and more time experiencing meaningful connections,” Nitin Rai, Elevate Capital founder and managing partner, said in a statement.
It’s hard to find love. But due to the pandemic, the stigma of online dating is gone. Shelley is shooting to push dating apps past the gamification era to something more focused on connections. No time wasted swiping or vetting the dangers of a potential match.
Now that the pre-seed round is done the rubber is meeting the road as CarpeDM refines the dating app so it can reach $1 million in revenue and begin to expand to places like Atlanta and Chicago.
“We're really here to help take that burden off of our members' shoulders by introducing them to amazing candidates,” Shelley said. “ You should be receiving matches that are curated for you based on your specific needs. And our goal is to make that a reality and accessible to as many people as possible.”
