It's official: This year's DC Inno Madness crown belongs to … CarpeDM, the dating app that provides vetted, hand-curated relationship matches for Black women.
We've spent the day evaluating and tallying up the votes in the final round between Woodbridge's CarpeDM and its final contender, Bladestack, a Tysons cybersecurity firm that works with both commercial and government customers to "cut, slice and dice" through cyber threats over the cloud.
About the competition
Ultimately, CarpeDM snagged 53% of the vote in the final round of the competition, beating out samurai enthusiast Bladestack, which earned 47% of the vote.
The final breakdown differs from what you may see in the online survey. Madness did indeed ensue in the round's final hours, and we eliminated irregular or duplicate votes that resulted from voting irregularities.
But we tip our hat to all 16 companies that participated in this year’s challenge. And thanks to all the readers for casting their ballots and supporting their favorite founder, round after round after round.
About the winner
Founded in 2018 by Naza Shelley and Sali Hama, both Howard University alums, CarpeDM is helping its users find love though a dating app that’s prioritizing meaningful connections over gamification.
As a cohort member of the Techstars accelerator program and one of the Washington Business Journal's 2022 Inno on Fire honorees, the company raised $1.054 million in a pre-seed round during the fall of last year. That 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.
CarpeDM ended last year with 12 employees and plans to hire a chief operating officer to help take it to the next level, including eventually expanding to other markets, like Atlanta and Chicago, and on other mobile platforms, like Android.
