Skip to main content

Opportunities (and challenges) in church tech

Will Robbins Contributor
Will Robbins is an early-stage investor at Contrary.
More posts by this contributor

Americans are rapidly becoming less religious. Weekly church attendance is falling, congregations are getting smaller or even closing and the percentage of Americans identifying as “religiously unaffiliated” has spiked.

Despite all this, now might be the perfect time for church tech companies to thrive.

A combination of COVID-19-induced adoption, underrated demographic trends and pressure to innovate is setting the stage for new successes in the previously sleepy church tech space. Venture dollars are flowing in, and Silicon Valley is slowly showing serious interest in the sector. Hot new startups are finding creative growth hacks to penetrate a difficult market. Major challenges remain for companies in this space, but their odds seem better than ever.

Less religion, more spirituality

Yes, Americans are going to church less often, but that doesn’t mean they’re not staying spiritual. In fact, the percentage of Americans identifying as “spiritual but not religious” has grown faster than any other group in this Pew survey on religiosity. This fact is reflected in other data. For example, the percentage of Americans that pray daily or weekly has stayed fairly flat even as overall religiosity declined. This opens up two distinct opportunities, as well as two challenges.

Opportunities:

  • What tools do the growing “spiritual but not religious” crowd need?
  • Churches are realizing they need to innovate or die. What tools do they need to reach out to their members and gain new congregants?

Challenges:

  • Two demographics: young, tech-savvy and more willing to try a new product, but less involved in church tradition versus older, not as tech-savvy and harder to reach.
  • Very byzantine market: as documented in part one of this series, the market is dominated by small companies waging a turf war with one another. In addition, because churches are so local and hard to sell to, all of the companies to date have been smaller land-grabs rather than anything with scale or accumulating advantage.

Rapidly growing startups in the space are deftly navigating this landscape and taking advantage of these trends.



from Startups – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/33bLKMN
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Axeleo Capital raises $51 million fund

Axeleo Capital has raised a $51 million fund (€45 million). Axeleo first started with an accelerator focused on enterprise startups. The firm is now all grown up with an acceleration program and a full-fledged VC fund. The accelerator is now called Axeleo Scale , while the fund is called Axeleo Capital . And it’s important to mention both parts of the business as they work hand in hand. Axeleo picks up around 10 startups per year and help them reach the Series A stage. If they’re doing well over the 12 to 18 months of the program, Axeleo funds those startups using its VC fund. Limited partners behind the company’s first fund include Bpifrance through the French Tech Accélération program, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Vinci Energies, Crédit Agricole, BNP Paribas, Caisse d’Épargne Rhône-Alpes as well as various business angels and family offices. The firm is also partnering with Hi Inov, the holding company of the Dentressangle family. Axeleo will take care of the early stage in...
Post a Comment
Read more

TikTok’s rivals in India struggle to cash in on its ban

For years, India has served as the largest open battleground for Silicon Valley and Chinese firms searching for their next billion users. With more than 400 million WhatsApp users , India is already the largest market for the Facebook-owned service. The social juggernaut’s big blue app also reaches more than 300 million users in the country. Google is estimated to reach just as many users in India, with YouTube closely rivaling WhatsApp for the most popular smartphone app in the country. Several major giants from China, like Alibaba and Tencent (which a decade ago shut doors for most foreign firms), also count India as their largest overseas market. At its peak, Alibaba’s UC Web gave Google’s Chrome a run for its money. And then there is TikTok, which also identified India as its biggest market outside of China . Though the aggressive arrival of foreign firms in India helped accelerate the growth of the local ecosystem, their capital and expertise also created a level of competit...
Post a Comment
Read more