There was a huge gap in the church software space

As much as the web was heading in the newer direction of user generated content and social media had already taken hold as here to stay, the church at large wasn’t leveraging the web effectively. That was expected, given the fact that much of the church follows the trends rather than setting them.

With SoChurch, I wanted to lead, not follow.

So, after some noodling on the idea with another friend, Craig, I then roped in some of my other buddies, Mike and Ben, to start making a go of it. I wanted Ben to be leading the charge as CEO so I could focus on the areas of product, marketing, and strategy as CSO. We spent weekends developing out our business plan and product designs so we could then identify some influential advisors in the church space. That worked extremely well, and we quickly built some solid buzz and large church prospects.

Here’s a look at some of our (extremely bevelled) marketing from a former portfolio.

The larger challenge was raising the money we needed. This was only my second time dealing with investors, and frankly, I still didn’t really know what I was doing. The team and I all hustled, but even after a very successful launch and paying customers right out of the gate, after a year of building the business while also raising money, my partners and I didn’t raise the rest of the seed round we needed to make it to our next milestones. The biggest stumble we made was not having a technical co-founder in our ranks, forcing us to rely upon an outside development firm and pay them for every iteration of the product. I learned to never (ever) do that again.

While money was running dry, we ended up talking with some of the largest technology players in the church space and formed some excellent relationships that led to later work. But in the meantime, I ended up independently consulting to simply pay my family’s bills while Ben and I figured out what to do with the SoChurch assets. It was defeating, but it was a hard earned lesson during the first year of my hustles—and right on the heels of a successful exit, too.

Of course, I’m grateful for all I learned during it, and that soon led me to starting up a boutique agency with one my partners from SoChurch, Mike. As with anything, you become thankful for where you’ve been so you can get where you’re going. Onward.