Female-Founded CarpeDM Raises Over $1 Million

CarpeDM, an online dating platform for professional Black women, has raised over $1 million in its pre-seed financing round. 

The platform was started by two friends and Howard University School of Law graduates, Naza Shelley and Sali Hama. The Black woman-owned, female-led company helps Black women, and those looking to date them, to find romantic connections.

The company, part of the Techstars portfolio, received the largest share of funding from Elevate Capital. 

“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”, said Nitin Rai, founder of Elevate Capital and Managing Partner.

Other investors in CarpeDM include Virginia Venture Partners, Conscious Venture Fund, Overlooked Ventures, Forefront Capital, Pipeline Angels, Gaingels and CAV Angels.

“We sought startups with extraordinary teams that were demonstrating promising early traction in solving problems that address large markets, which describes CarpeDM perfectly” said Keith Camhi, Managing Director of Techstars.

The platform offers a subscription service with background checks on 100% of users. These checks include verification of identity, employment, income and criminal history. 

Successful applicants will have matches handpicked by matchmakers and algorithms. They must then have short video calls with these matches to decide whether to continue being matched, and whether to date offline.