FaithStreet, Tether, and more

January 31, 2023

Good Morning!

Welcome to the first edition of Faith Factor, your weekly summary of Christian-related founder, startup, and VC news.

Startup of the Week: FaithStreet

Founded by Sean Coughlin and Glenn Ericksen in 2011, FaithStreet is a congregation engagement platform with three aspects: discovery, giving, and community. They have built a church directory with over 320,000 churches, enabling those who are looking for a new church to easily discover their options. Their platform also helps churches create a more streamlined giving process for their members by including features like personalized options, text giving, goal setting, and more. Finally, FaithStreet offers a community-focused app that is meant to keep congregations involved with both their church and each other throughout the week through features like prayer cards, sermon archives, and more. According to their website, FaithStreet's directory has helped over 10 million people find a new church.

Faith-Based News

Startups

  • Tether raised an undisclosed amount of early-stage funding for their discipleship platform from Crescent Ridge, Henry Kaestner, Impact Foundation, and Pinetops Foundation.

  • ArenaCX raised $4.2 million in seed funding from Eagle Ventures, Sovereign's Capital, Beyond Capital, and Triangle Tweener Fund (link)

VC/PE

  • M25 participated in Hummingbird's $1 million seed round

  • Sovereign's Capital participated in Komunal's $8.5 million round (link)

Incubators and Competitions

  • Praxis launched Redemptive Labs, 3-day local learning experiences for leaders, themed around the topics of business, nonprofits, and investing/philanthropy (link)

Impact News

Startups

  • Green hydrogen firm Hystar raised $26 million in Series B funding (link)

  • Telesair, which is working on new developments in respiratory care, closed a $22 million Series A round (link)

  • Peppy, which offers personalized support through a digital healthcare platform, raised $45 million in Series B funding (link)

Around the Network

Select Articles

  • WVU Study: Faith Drives Religious Entrepreneurs (link)

Select Podcasts

  • Faith Driven Entrepreneur: The Secret to Staffing (link)

Job Board

All Levels

See you next week!