Student-Made Dating App Cerca Raises $1.6M in Funding

Cerca has completed a seed round that raised over $1.6M for the app’s continued development, led by a venture firm under Sam Yagan – former CEO of Match Group and cofounder of OkCupid. With the extra money, Cerca plans to continue its growth through on-campus activations and in-person events, while steering clear of heavy AI integration.

Cerca was founded by Georgetown University seniors Myles Slayton (CEO), William Conzelman (CMO), and Carter Rocket-Munk (COO). The app’s key feature is its use of mutual contacts to suggest matches, using users’ phone contact lists to reveal shared connections with potential partners. Each day, users are shown a limited selection of four profiles, with mutual interest revealed at 8 p.m.

Originally revealed back in April, Cerca was meant to be an app that pushes back against the impersonal nature of most swiping systems. Cerca taps into users’ phone contacts to surface profiles with shared connections, and each day, users are shown just four profiles at 8 p.m. Mutual interest is revealed simultaneously, and anonymity persists until both parties opt in.

Cerca already counts over 20,000 users aged 18–30, with a strong campus presence at Georgetown and USC. The success is rooted in both peer-to-peer referrals and offline activations, with future plans for in-person events in large cities like New York or major university campuses. This funding round will likely allow Cerca to plan new events to spread word of mouth about the platform, something that becomes even more important given the team’s avoidance of using AI in favour of doing the hard work themselves.