Founders from across the DMV competed for funding Friday as the region’s predominant tech and startup event concluded its 10th anniversary edition.
This year’s DC Startup & Tech Week consisted of panels, keynotes and workshops at venues across the city and Northern Virginia. Following tradition, the week’s final programming was a pitch competition involving university, early-stage and growth-stage companies.
The winners: GovRat, Nowy, Aloe Therapeutics
GovRat, a software startup out of the Catholic University of America, won a $1,000 check in the university track. This was senior-year student Luke Gilfillan’s second time participating in a pitch competition, and he plans to use the money for AWS server costs and customer outreach. Also, he added, for groceries.
“This is a solution that we have to a lot of people’s problems,” Gilfillan told Technical.ly. “We’re really, really grateful for this.”
Nowy, a startup converting social media posts about destinations into a booked trip with hotels, itineraries and flights, won $1,500 in the early-stage category. In the growth-stage track, the cancer therapeutics startup Aloe Therapeutics won $2,500.
DC region leaders in the public and private sector came to judge the competition, including Cvent founder and CEO Reggie Aggarwal, Deputy Mayor of Economic Development Nina Albert, Maurice Boissiere from DataTribe and BLCK VC, and Esther Lee, founder and CEO of the startup support organization Refraction.
These winners join startup founders like The Laundry Basket, a laundry subscription service that took the top prize in 2024, and career connections firm GoPursue, which won in the early-stage category in 2023.
They bested other impressive finalists, described below.
The finalists
University-stage
- LayerPure, a startup out of George Washington University manufacturing membranes used in water processing
Early-stage
- BeautyPro Funnels, a platform for solo beauty professionals that automates bookings, payments and marketing
- IntraIntel.ai, a tool that automates data synthesis using agents to enhance decisionmaking and help users get insights faster
- Go Now, an app for people to book last minute appointments and reservations (everything from dinner reservations to fitness classes), so companies don’t miss out on business due to cancellations
Growth-stage
Scroll down for more pics from the competition.
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