Who likes to party? Apparently D.C. startups do — because they threw down in style at last night’s 50 on Fire party. The National Union Building was packed with 400 Washingtonians to celebrate the District’s best and brightest companies and people setting the D.C. scene on fire. We celebrated with the 50 winners and announced our 10 Inno Blazers!
For those of you who may not know, 50 on Fire is our annual awards ceremony that begins with hundreds of nominations from the community. DC Inno selects the 50 most compelling companies and individuals we deem to be the “hottest” in the city. This is gauged by moves they made in expanding and cementing their work in the community in 2017. Then, a panel of judges evaluates the 50 on Fire list and ranks companies in each category. After tallying votes, we have our Inno Blazers, a special designation given to the hottest company or person in each category.
Before we get to our awesome winners, we would like to say a huge thank you to this year’s judges: Tim Hwang from FiscalNote, Andy Medici from The Washington Business Journal and Dominique Taylor from 1776.
Alright…here’s the list of winners and the 50 on Fire video for those who were not able to make it last night!
50 on Fire Winners:
Community:
Rebecca Yarbourgh – Vinetta Project, The Offline Society
Penny Lee – 1776
Jessica Bell – The Washington Post
Melissa Bradley – Project 500
Brian Park – Startup Grind DC & Fishbowl Labs
Leslie Tita – I/O SPACES
Design:
David Shove-Brown – //3877
Gavin Daniels – Wingate Hughes
Education:
Elizabeth Lindsey – ByteBack
Monica Kang – InnovatorsBox
Shanaz Chowdhery – General Assembly
Vadim Polikov – Legends of Learning
Government & Advocacy
Ximena Hartsock – Phone2Action
Archana Vemulapalli – Chief Technology Officer for the District of Columbia
Healthcare & Medicine
Shawn Dolley – Cloudera
Investment
Todd Klein – Revolution
Lisa Cuesta – NextGen Venture Partners
Julia Taxin – Grotech Ventures
Lifestyle
Pia Carusone and Rachel Gardner, Republic Restoratives
Ariel Pasternak – pineapple DC
Alisha Ramos – Girl’s Night In
Jason Fudin – WhyHotel
Febin Bellamy – Unsung Heroes
Marketing & Advertising
Allen Gannett – TrackMaven
Erik Requidan – Intermarkets
Technology
Emily Dresner – Upside Travel
Ryan Croft – TransitScreen
Bill Cronin – Xometry
Amelia Friedman and Param Jaggi – Hatch Apps
Marla Blow – FS Card
The Inno Blazers
Community: Rebecca Yarbourgh, Vinetta Project
Design: David Shove-Brown, //3877
Education: EverFi
Government & Advocacy: Quorum Analytics
Healthcare & Medicine: Avizia
Investment: humble ventures
Lifestyle: Ariel Pasternak, Pineapple DC
Marketing: Speakerbox Communications
Technology: Appian
Check out the winners’ video:
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