Why ABC’s ‘Shark Tank’ is coming to DC this Saturday

Local startups, get ready: Shark Tank is coming to D.C.
This Saturday, 20 local companies will have the chance to pitch Scott Salyers, a casting producer for the ABC show.
Why the District? “They are visiting major markets across the country to try to identify more diverse companies,” said Steven Jumper, the partner and president of strategy at Ghost Note Agency, which is organizing the event and picking the lineup of contestants.
In February, Jumper ran into one of the show’s producers at the two-year anniversary party of New York coworking space Silicon Harlem. Shark Tank later contacted Ghost Note, which also runs the local Technoir pitching events series, to seek out minority-owned companies in D.C.
For the casting event, Ghost Note is partnering with Values Partnerships, the D.C. Social Innovation Project and General Assembly, which is hosting in its downtown campus.
A young African-American entrepreneur in Philadelphia recently made a huge splash on Shark Tank. The appearance on national television drove his scholarship-finding app, Scholly, to the top of the iTunes App Store for about a week.
Update: 4/10/15, 10:53 a.m.
There will be two casting call events on Saturday. The other one will take place in the morning at The Hive 2.0, where 50 to 75 companies will present.
The two calls are closed, but the closest open casting call will take place in Salisbury University, May 9.
(h/t to Network For Progress founder Jim McBride and the lively DC Tech Facebook community for additional reporting.)