#128 ChurchSpace: Airbnb for Churches

Beck: Pitch 4 

There’s loads of money to be made renting unused space. Airbnb, Vrbo PeerSpace they all take excess capacity, and make it available to anyone with a wallet.

But what if I told you, there's another opportunity hidden in plain sight – nearly a trillion dollars in valuable real-estate that sits empty 70% of the time.

That underutilized asset, local churches.

Today’s founder, Emmanuel Brown, is building the airbnb for churches. Now Emmanuel doesn’t want to play God, he just wants to help churches pay the bills. After all, he grew up as a pastor's kid. Or PK for those in the biz. He saw exactly how hard running a church can be.

Can I get a founder market fit anyone? [air horns]

Can Emmanuel go from the pulpit to the pitch room and convert our investors, or will they say, hell no. Leaving him in fundraising purgatory?

Let’s meet the investors!

Jillian Manus with Structure Capital

Jillian: Literally he sat down, and I was like, I'm in. 

Mac Conwell with Rare Breed Ventures

Mac: As a unicorn hunter, I want to see every unicorn. 

Beck Bamberger with Bad Ideas Group

Beck: [slaps table] I gotta start my muffin business.

Real quick, if you’re not following the show already, hit that subscribe button and turn on notifications. The Pitch for ChurchSpace is coming up after this. Amen.

Jillian: Dum da da da. 

Mac: Perfect timing.

Beck: Hello.

Jillian: Hello! Hi.

Beck: Nice to meet you. Hello.

Jillian: Hi, I'm Jillian.

[hellos]

Jillian: So who are we meeting? 

Emmanuel: Emmanuel Brown and Church Space. 

Jillian: Is it like Peer Space?

Emmanuel: Similar. Yes.

Jillian: Okay. That's one of our companies.

Emmanuel: Yes.

Jillian: Okay.

Emmanuel: I'm familiar. 

Mac: Well, the floor is yours, sir.

Emmanuel: Thank you. Well, as you know, I'm Emmanuel Brown, the co-founder of Church Space, and we're the Airbnb for churches. I grew up as a pastor's kid which, as you can imagine, was really challenging. I mean, let's be honest, who really wants to memorize bible verses every night before bed or get shipped off to bible camp every single summer? But in all seriousness, being a pastor's kid was challenging because I witnessed the burden that church real estate became to my parents who represent one in three church leaders who leave the ministry due to the stress of financial responsibility. And with nearly a trillion dollars that's tied up into church real estate equity in America, the average church is empty 70% of the week. There's nearly half a million of them in this country and church real estate is the largest untapped and most unexpected commercial real estate supply source in this country. And that's exactly why we built Church Space, a two-sided marketplace that helps churches turn their underutilized real estate into on-demand space for locals. Over the last 18 months we've experimented a ton, and we've learned that churches are great supply sources for all types of events. But where we really found our secret sauce was by helping churches turn their underutilized commercial grade kitchens -

Jillian: Yes.

Emmanuel: - into on-demand space for food entrepreneurs. Now food entrepreneurs can find ways to cost effectively use space in their community, while helping churches to earn $60,000 per year of new revenue that they otherwise would have never seen. Now, this is a massive opportunity, and we have nearly 8000 customers that have signed up to our platform, and we just released the latest version in Houston, Texas in November. And now we are wrapping up our 1.2 million dollar round to scale to three new markets this year; that's Dallas, Austin and Atlanta. And to hire the rock star team to help fuel that growth.

Mac: You said to round off the 1.2. How much of that do you have committed so far?

Emmanuel: Sixty. Sixty percent of it.

Beck: Oh. Okay. And what are the terms for that?

Emmanuel: It's 8 million post. 

Beck: Mhmm. Hm. Hmmm.

Mac: So you mentioned that you had 8000 sign ups?

Beck: And not churches, specifically.

Emmanuel: Correct.

Mac: These are users?

Emmanuel: Yeah.

Jillian: For how many churches? 

Emmanuel: Yeah, so we have about 350 churches that have signed up to the platform.

Jillian: Okay.

Emmanuel: But we recently closed a large denominational partnership to add 1200 churches to the platform this year. So that's - one of our go to market strategies is by working with what is called denominations. These are large umbrella church networks that house dozens, hundreds or thousands of churches under one denomination.

Jillian: So is that similar to a mega church?

Emmanuel: No, it's not. So a mega church is a large individual church.

Jillian: Okay. 

Emmanuel: A denomination essentially is a faith organization -

Jillian: A franchise?

Emmanuel: A franchise.

Emmanuel: Correct.

Mac: You can partner with them and get to all of the churches.

Emmanuel: Exactly. 

Beck: So which religions encompass this? Christian, Catholic?

Emmanuel: Yeah. So right now we're focusing on Christianity, specifically.

Jillian: Yeah.

Beck: Yeah.

Emmanuel: There's about half a million in this country. We're laser focused on that vertical because that's what we know best.

Jillian: Yeah.

Emmanuel: I mean, faith ecosystems are completely relational, right. So our network connecting with them, establishing that trust, that's how we win, as pastor's kid. My cofounder's also a pastor's kid, as well. 

Beck: So I get the understanding of the real estate being totally underutilized.

Emmanuel: Yes.

Beck: Yes. Absolutely, from the church perspective. But what are the other demographics of who would use this? A food entrepreneur, but I'm assuming that's a small thing. So who else?

Emmanuel: Yeah. So there's almost about half a million food entrepreneurs -

Beck: Okay.

Emmanuel: - in this country, but we've helped churches share their space for weddings, funeral - I mean, the funeral industry is recession-proof. Right? Like that's never going to stop.

Beck: That's right. Death is always.

Emmanuel: We've seen corporate conferences, local community gatherings.

Beck: Local conferences?

Emmanuel: Yeah. I mean, churches have these large auditoriums that -

Beck: Well, they're huge. Yeah. Exactly.

Jillian: And stages.

Emmanuel: Yeah, and stages. The secret sauce is they come with built-in audio-visual capabilities as well. So it's very turnkey in that sense. We've helped churches share their parking lots. So this is really a large opportunity when we start to think about all the different space types that exist under one facility. And we really believe in local utility, How can we dream with assets that already exist in our community? And we're leaning heavily into that community-led growth. So one of the fixed advantages that we have is the churches we work with have a membership size of about 50 to 250 people in the church who can become brand evangelists - no pun intended.

Jillian: Yeah.

Emmanuel: And carry on that mission that is not only beneficial for the church but for the community that they're a part of. 

Jillian: So how do you deal with insurance, what does the church policies cover, what do you cover? 

Emmanuel: So I'll zoom out to talk about why this is the best time to build this business. So there was a huge mindset shift during the pandemic for churches across the world, but specifically here in America, because they could not use their buildings.

Jillian: Right.

Emmanuel: So it was a cash drain for about two years where pastors started to think about how do we utilize this space in a way that serves the core purpose of why we exist in the community, and can also help to offset some of the cost. Churches are now really leaning into this idea of sharing their buildings in more progressive ways, which we're really excited about. But some of the limitations are no different than how a PeerSpace host or Airbnb host may set their home - their house rules. No smoking inside, some churches on our platform do permit alcohol, some don't. In terms of insurance policies that churches have, it covers basically any event use because churches have people coming to their space all the time for events. We took a page out of PeerSpace's book and we partner with Thimble as well.

Jillian: Oh good. Oh good.

Emmanuel: For insurance of the users.

Jillian: Good.

Emmanuel: So we have kind of a 360 insurance coverage plan there. Users opt in to Thimble on that end and churches have their policy that covers them on their end as well.

Mac: Tell us a little bit about your business model. 

Emmanuel: Yeah.

Mac: How do you make money? 

Jillian: Oh, I don't want to know that. Come on. God, Mac, you're so invasive. Okay. Sorry.

Emmanuel: No, it's fine. At the moment, it's a simple take rate of 20%. We learned that that's a little bit low. Churches - churches are actually willing to allow for our take rate to be 25%, which is a little bit higher than the market standard.

Beck: Yeah.

Emmanuel: But we're also experimenting with a new business model with the food entrepreneurs that we've learned based on data that we collect, which is a subscription model. Allowing food entrepreneurs to use it like a hot desk. So where you use a kitchen in North Houston today or this week, and next week they'll use another in-network kitchen in South Houston. They can go to Austin for south-by-southwest and be connected to the Church Space kitchen network in that sense. 

Mac: So you mentioned your take rate right now is 20%.

Emmanuel: Correct.

Mac: But go as high as 25.

Emmanuel: Yep.

Mac: What's the average value of one of these transactions?

Emmanuel: Yeah. So there are two different types of transactions: there are recurring transactions that happen on our platform, and that ranges really anywhere between 2500 to 3000 a month. That can be a brand new smaller church who's renting space from an established church that's renting on a recurring basis, and then for one-time users the average order transaction is between 150 to 200 dollars per hour. 

Beck: So you said you've got 350 churches so far.

Emmanuel: Yep.

Beck: You're raising 1.2 million round, you have 60% of that raised, there's 8 million customers who have said, hey, I intend -

Mac: 8000.

Emmanuel: If there's 8 million customers, I would not be here today!

Beck: 8 million post. What have you made so far? 

Emmanuel: Yeah. So in 2023, we just closed with 150k of gross revenue.

Beck: Okay.

Jillian: And what's your burn?

Emmanuel: 30,000 a month.

Jillian: And how many team members? 

Emmanuel: We have an amazing team of seven folks. We actually just hired two new people last week. My cofounder, her background is in PR and marketing, branding, which is essential for a marketplace. She owned and operated a PR firm. Her and I actually have a small exit together from a project that we worked on prior to Church Space called Church Space TV, which in the beginning of the pandemic, we pivoted Church Space to become a streaming platform -

Beck: Oh yeah.

Emmanuel: - and then we sold that to a small production company in Houston, Texas.

Jillian: That's cool. 

Emmanuel: And myself, my background is in startups. For about the last eight years, I've worked in a biz, dev and ops capacity at various startups, and the last startup I worked with was acquired in 2019.

Jillian: Which one?

Emmanuel: It's called Black Lapel. It was a menswear -

Jillian: Yeah, that's cool. 

Mac: You mentioned you have 30k burn. What's your runway?

Emmanuel: About eight months, right now. So we have about 250k in the bank.

Mac: Nice. 

Beck: What's the exit for this? 

Emmanuel: So there's a lot of white space in this category, with church real estate, and we know that we can own it. One potential exit strategy, honestly, I know Peer Space has a few churches on their platform.

Jillian: They do.

Emmanuel: But they're really focused on creative usage of space and we think an acquisition from them, could be a great exit strategy for us, to add another element of supply to their platform. Also there are faith-based PE funds that are really interested in what we're building and we think that could be a potential exit strategy for us down the road.

Beck: Hmm! 

Mac: Interesting business model, really smart. Marketplace makes tons of sense. How you make this a billion dollar business?

Emmanuel: Yeah. There's a ton of cross-pollination that's gonna happen between churches and food and events, and we believe that we can not only disrupt the ghost kitchen industry, but the small events market, and make churches the physical home for all community flourishing, where people work, eat, play out of their local church. That's how we become a billion dollar business. We also need to have about 500 churches or more on the platform who are active and all hitting that 60k or more threshold. That's to get to a point where we feel like we can be acquired. To get to the billion dollar status, we need 35,000 churches on the platform. 

Beck: So you said there's 1.5 million of these food entrepreneurs.

Emmanuel: I said about half a million.

Beck: About half a million. Okay. Half a million. So that - it concerns me a little bit cos then I'm thinking like, all right, it's, you know, it's half a million and what percentage of those will go to one of the cities that you have that is also like, cool, I want to go to a church, you know, instead of doing it in my own home. And so I'm - I'm a little bit stuck on that, just because I'm thinking from - there's almost needing to be, I would think, like, a little bit of a kick in the culture, a TV show on Netflix or something, for people - another Bear, you know, on HBO, or something for people to be like - [slam] I gotta start my muffin business. Yes. And I need to go to this church to find and build my - you know, something - I don't know if it's hot enough.

Mac: I think the better question is, so you identified these food entrepreneurs. But what are the other top two or three other users that you see that use your platform for these churches?

Emmanuel: Yep. What we call internally church-to-church rentals. So there are thousands of church planting networks, these are churches that are just starting out and they need a physical place to go, they have a congregation, they have membership; they don't have a building. That's one. It's also recurring revenue. Does very well for us.

Beck: True.

Emmanuel: We don't have to spend much to any marketing on them.

Beck: How many of those are there? 

Emmanuel: There are about 5000 or more of them that exist in the United States.

Beck: Okay.

Emmanuel: Beyond that, small events industry. Right, so weddings, funerals, birthday parties, baptisms, things like that. 

Mac: And if you were doing a pie chart, right, what percentage would be church-to-church, what percentage would be food, and what percentage would be the events?

[pause] 

Emmanuel: I think church-to-church is going to be the largest percentage of that pie, just because there is so much natural connectivity and adjacency for a church to want to use another church to get their -

Jillian: Sure.

Emmanuel: - ministry started. But then we believe, after that, food entrepreneurship can be the next big category for us, and then events. 

Jillian: So correct me if I'm wrong but, from what I understand, the church congregations are shrinking exponentially.

Beck: [whispers] I was just going to get on this. [normal voice] Like, that's going down. Is the -

Jillian: That's going down.

Beck: Keep going. Keep going. Yes. Yes.

Jillian: I'm just wondering if church-to-church should be your primary market because that is a shrinking market. 

Emmanuel’s case for faith! Coming up after this.

-

Welcome to church friends. We’re so glad you decided to spend a part of your weekend with us. Before our service continues, go ahead and greet your neighbor. Then have a seat and prepare for today’s message from Brother Emmanuel.

Jillian: I'm just wondering if that church-to-church should be your primary market because that is a shrinking market. 

Emmanuel: So let me clarify. Statistically, there are more Gen Zs that have converted to Christianity than there have been millennials and the prior generation.

Jillian: Oh.

Emmanuel: So it's a little bit of a myth in America that faith is desecrating.

Beck: God is up and to the right. 

Emmanuel: Hockey stick growth. The Gen Z Christian community on TikTok is huge.

Jillian: Yes.

Emmanuel: It's huge.

Jillian: Of course. 

Emmanuel: But let me tell you a story. So I was in Houston, Texas, visiting one of our host churches and I was hungry and was looking for a place to stop for lunch. I literally drove around the corner and found a food truck park.

Jillian: Yes.

Emmanuel: I stopped at that food truck park and I ordered some great Jamaican food, ox tail, rice and peas, it was amazing. But I spoke to all the food entrepreneurs.

Jillian: Oh yeah.

Emmanuel: And by law, they need a commercial kitchen to be connected to, and I asked them, like, where do you guys connect, how do you find that? And they had no clue anywhere in the area that was close by, and this church was around the corner with a commercial kitchen. So talk about local utility and being able to unlock value for our customers in a real way.

Jillian: Okay. 

Emmanuel: That industry has grown by 30% compound annual growth rate.

Jillian: Are you kidding. I didn't know they had to have a commercial kitchen.

Emmanuel: Yeah. Yeah. 

Beck: My question is on defensibility.

Emmanuel: Sure. 

Beck: Obviously we've got the pastor's children, we've got that aspect. That's good. That's good for the story.

Jillian: God coverage. 

Beck: God is covered -

Emmanuel: Infallible.

Beck: - on the PR front; this is good. But, how deep is the moat of the defensibility here?

Emmanuel: Sure. So the moat goes deep, and where it goes deep is we spent about the first 12 months of our business in heavy R&D, around churches as non-profits generating extra income. It can be a little bit of a gray area depending on -

Beck: Tax wise and -

Emmanuel: Tax wise. So we built in what we call our IRS safeguarding tool into the platform that helps churches to navigate those challenges. A lot of the times, churches are eager to earn the extra revenue. Beyond a certain point, there are real concerns about what do I do with all this extra cash we just made, and our platform helps to solve that issue for them. So, it helps to create a stickiness and brand loyalty; they don't want to go to another platform potentially to - to run that risk. But also, we spent a lot of time with non-profit lawyers figuring that issue out, so we feel like we have a head start in that regard, too. 

Mac: Beck, what you thinking?

Beck: I think this sounds like a bad idea, which I like, you know, as a - a bad idea. I'm... I'm not in the faith space, but I like the connectivity of this, of the utilization of space in these various markets, and in the creation - I think the bigger why here is a little bit more in the creation. Imagine if your local community is able to hire seven more people or able to start these seven businesses. So as I'm thinking about it, it's like, oh, imagine the headline of like this cookie company started in a church basement out of a kitchen and now they're a billion dollar cookie company or something. That is similar to what of course what WeWork used to be, is like, hey, all these small companies were built inside. So I'm liking that. I'm selling myself on it, a little bit.

Emmanuel: I love that. 

Jillian: So why couldn't PeerSpace just do this themselves? Because they do have a number of churches already on the platform. 

Emmanuel: I mentioned it earlier: faith communities are relational. You have to have - to scale in this industry -

Jillian: Okay.

Emmanuel: - you have to have trust, you have to have credibility, you have to have skin in the game.

Jillian: Okay.

Emmanuel: Maybe you can get a handful of churches on a one-off basis, but to get into denominations, and that's where the real money is -

Jillian: Yeah. I agree.

Emmanuel: - you have to know people.

Jillian: Do they want to spend time doing that?

Emmanuel: Exactly.

Beck: Well, they'd have to hire a pastor's child.

Emmanuel: And I'm hard pressed to believe that there's anyone out there that's more passionate about this than I am.

Jillian: Awww...

Beck: I can tell. 

Josh: Why are you so passionate about it?

Emmanuel: Yeah. So. So for two reasons. Growing up, my parents had to make some really challenging financial decisions around family life, church, building costs, and eventually they - for a season of their life, ended up stepping away from what their passion was, which was helping people. My cofounder, her and I connected around similar origin stories. After her mom acquired her church building in Houston, Texas, she was a pioneer in Houston, Texas, she was one of the first women church leaders on the radio. She acquired her church building; recently, after that, her parents got divorced, which is not all too unfamiliar in this scenario. Her family downsized from a six-bedroom house to a two-bedroom apartment for her family of six, and her mom then passed away because of the stress of all that stuff that happened. And the origin and root of that was the church building. So I want to solve that. There's also a large mental health crisis amongst pastors that is kept behind closed doors, and they're supposed to be the beacon of hope that other people lean into in their times of distress, and they don't have anyone a lot of times. 

Beck: What's the smallest check you're going to take? Like, 25k?

Emmanuel: 25k.

Beck: I'm in for 25k.

Emmanuel: Can we make that 50?

Beck: Let's do diligence and let's - let's do that.

Emmanuel: Okay. Okay.

Beck: And the reason I am in - I am, It is a bad idea and you know, I'm bad ideas over here. So I like you a lot.

Emmanuel: Thank you.

Beck: The story is very clear, the passion is clear, the size of the market is huge. I want to gather up more intel on what you pointed to, Jillian, because this is my lack of education of going like, is actually church going on the rise? Is there that third market that you're talking about of the church of the churches? I also want to dig a little bit more into the food utilization space, because, again, if there could just be like a Netflix show or a something that could maybe jettison that further, that's in. But yes, I'm excited.

Emmanuel: Awesome. We're excited too. Thank you. 

Jillian: I am right now in for 50. Okay. I could go up from there, truthfully. 

Emmanuel: Sure.

Jillian: But my heart is saying come into this, and so right now my heart is leading the way, but then my head will follow on.

Beck: Yes.

Emmanuel: Yes.

Jillian: Okay? Okay.

Emmanuel: Very clear about that. Thank you.

Jillian: Fantastic. And I do have to clear with Peer Space -

Emmanuel: Yes.

Jillian: - that this is not a conflict. 

Emmanuel: Yep. That makes total sense.

Jillian: Okay. Okay. 

Emmanuel: Yeah. 

Mac: I want to get to know you. You seem like a dope person.

Emmanuel: Thanks, Mac. 

Mac: And people I know and think very highly of think very highly of you.

Emmanuel: Thank you.

Mac: I think you've built a very intriguing business. But due to my faith and the way I've looked at like faith-based investments, I've stayed away from it.

Emmanuel: Yeah.

Mac: Just - it's a thing. It's a no from me, because like I tend to stay away from this space.

Emmanuel: Sure. It makes sense.

Mac: But I do want to get to know you.

Emmanuel: Let's do it.

Jillian: Fantastic. Okay.

Beck: Thank you.

Emmanuel: Thank you all so much.

Jillian: Thank you so much.

Beck: Thanks for a great conversation.

Jillian: This was so lovely, Emmanuel. I love your mission.

Emmanuel: Thank you. 

Jillian: And I'm very excited that - that Beck's involved, because, Beck, this is a TV show. Come on.

Beck: What?

Jillian: This is - the church, the faith based audience is so huge.

Beck: Yes. 

Jillian: I was in the publishing industry for a time -

Beck: Recession proof.

Mac: Yeah.

Jillian: - and the number one books are always faith-based books. There's - that's it. 

Mac: The thing I kept thinking about is, if you work with these churches, that means you get a connection to the congregation.

Jillian: Right.

Mac: Every church congregation has local business leaders.

Jillian: Yes. 

Beck: I do love where there's like such a deep connective fiber to a certain audience. So if you get in with one, if you get in with one of your 1200 congregation, you're easily sold to the five next, because they're all super connected.

Jillian: A congregation is a sales and recruiting -

Beck: Exactly. I like the cyclical element of this. Oh, how do we get that new rec room? Oh, oh! We'll do it through that. Oh!

Jillian: We're going to rent out our kitchen.

Beck: We want to keep doing that. Let's not - let's make sure we market this. Hey, you want to be a food entrepreneur? Yes, you do. Come and pay us [inaudible] a month.

[crosstalk]

Mac: For a lot of the larger churches - 

Beck: There's something - 

Mac: - at the end of the service, they do their updates. They talk about community events -

Jillian: Absolutely.

Mac: - they talk about things happening in church. It wouldn't be much for a church to be like, oh, and just to announce, you know, as we're getting ready to kick off -

Beck: We’re on ChurchSpace-

Jillian: The campaign -

Mac: - the building of our next building or whatever campaign, we're going to be using ChurchSpace, so if you see people here using it, if you would like to use it -

Jillian: Yeah. 

Mac: Granted, like I said, this is my entrepreneur brain, this is where like me as an investor, like, oh, if I was running the company I would do - the founder never said that. So it doesn't mean the founder wants to do that or would do that. 

Josh: Isn't it wild? Some of the most priceless real estate in America is caught up in these churches. 

Beck: Do you know the portfolio that the Scientology - Church of Scientology has?

[everybody: oh]

Beck: Okay, that was one of my uncomfortable experiences -

Josh: Tell me about it.

Beck: No offense to anyone who is in Scientology. And they run you a little film and they - it's like the creme de la creme of the top real estate in the - I was like, oh my god.

Jillian: Wait. And the Mormon.

Beck: Oh! Another phenomenal real estate group.

Jillian: I love Mormons. They are so industrious! 

Stop! Before anyone says anything sacrilegious, let’s cut to break. 

-

Welcome back to the show. Beck and Jillian both made commitments in the room. So they decided to start a small group together. A due diligence small group. 

At the first meeting, they had full attendance. But, after checking with PeerSpace, her portfolio company, Jillian had to back out of the deal.

But Beck could still be a believer…. in this business.

Lisa and I caught up with Emmanuel to hear what happened next.

Josh: Emmanuel, hello 

Emmanuel: hey josh

Josh: it’s been 40 days and 40 nights since you pitched on the show. What have you been up to?

Emmanuel: Um, It’s definitely been a red sea journey to say the least. You know, some miraculous things are happening, the seas are opening up, the skies are splitting, and Churchspace is on its way to the top

Lisa: Oh my gosh

[laughter] 

Josh: We heard the news that Jillian is conflicted out because of Peerspace, which is a bummer. 

Emmanuel: Correct 

Josh: But I'd love to hear what happened after the show with Beck. 

Emmanuel: Yeah. So, so we were connected via email We hopped on a diligence call, where we took a dive deeper into the business and to the model. And the overall vision and how we get there. We had a great conversation about the potential to improve our brand and take it to the next level. And we think Beck brings a lot of value to us in that regard. 

Beck: So I said I was in for the 25k, I’m gonna stay consistent with that. Um, give me, I’m traveling this week and so forth But I want to come back to you by Friday, let’s say. And we’ll take it from here. 

Emmanuel: after that diligence call, it was a few days in between where Beck took to mull it over and think it over. she followed up with us with an email in the green light that she was very excited to make the investment into ChurchSpace. And from there, she wired the cash pretty quickly and we were off to the races. 

Josh: Nice. And did she end up investing the 25K?

Emmanuel: She did. 

Josh: That’s awesome. Well, congrats. That's great. 

Emmanuel: Thank you. 

Josh: You’ve got another investor on the team. 

Emmanuel: I know. We're really excited about that. I think she brings a wealth of experience. So we're, we're excited for what Beck can add to the team. 

Josh: Yeah. tell me about the round overall. I think on the show you mentioned that you'd raised 720,000 of your 1.2 million dollar goal. 

Emmanuel: Yeah, so we're at 750,000 to date. and that doesn't include Beck's investment. And we're very excited because we're in diligence with a couple of funds that have committed some more capital, So we anticipate for the round to kind of have a red bow tied around it in the next few weeks and months ahead. So by Q2, we'll be ready to scale to a couple of new markets by the end of the year. 

Josh: Cool. So on the show, Mac said, I think you've built a very intriguing business, but due to my faith and the way I've looked at faith based investments, I've stayed away from it. Is that type of sentiment something you hear often from VCs?

Emmanuel: Honestly, no. And I appreciate Mac's candor there. 

Josh: Huh

Emmanuel: But I wouldn't be surprised if that was sometimes an underlying reason why VCs who have passed on us did pass. 

Josh: Yeah 

Emmanuel: I think faith can be a polarizing topic. And that's why we couldn't be more excited about what we're building because in a sense ChurchSpace and the platform is the bridge between church and community and people who may be agnostic to the faith or don't want anything to do with the faith. And that's why we're positioning ourselves around this commercial kitchen opportunity because it's solely about the utility And positioning the church in such a way that they can equitably give back to the community in a way where it feels like there's no strings attached and you don't have to believe what we believe But we do want to share what we have with you and that's what we believe is really important to us. 

Josh: Yeah. Have you ran into people who, on the opposite end of the spectrum, are investing because it is a faith based company? vs strictly capitalism reasons.

Emmanuel: Yeah, absolutely. There is a whole ecosystem of faith driven investors who invest based on their faith and their investment thesis and perspectives are totally oriented around what they believe. And we have some of those on our cap table, and we're really excited about that. 

Josh: Does it matter to you what perspective they come as an investor, like whether they bring faith to it or whether they come in without faith, but curious to be a part of the business.

Emmanuel: Yeah. You know, you know what, Josh, there, there are people who have faith, and there are those who don't have faith. But broth of those types of individuals can have ulterior motives. So what really matters to us the most is that the individual aligns with the overall mission of the business, which is to get churches and communities connected to transform real estate that's underutilized and to really build the community from within. I think that's what we really believe in the most at churchspace is that community development doesn't start from the outside. It doesn't start by bringing a whole bunch of real estate developers from outside the community to make decisions and to put up really tall, big buildings and say, Hey, we've created something nice and beautiful for you. Use it, but it starts with the resources and the people who are already there and figuring out intuitive and unique ways to take the things that have been overlooked and beautify them and make them available for people in a simple way. 

Josh: Who doesn't want their community to flourish? 

Emmanuel: exactly, exactly

Josh: Like, if you don't want your community to flourish, what's wrong with you? Anyway, yeah, that's really helpful. And I imagine it's nice to have a mix of people from different backgrounds on the cap table. 

Emmanuel: Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. 

Josh: Um, so, Emmanuel, I don't know if you know this about me, but I also was a PK.

Emmanuel: [gasp] I did know that. 

Josh: Was that a fake laugh? 

Emmanuel: I did know that about you. 

Josh: You mentioned briefly on the show that there's a mental health crisis for pastors and nobody talks about it because, well, actually I'm curious why you think people don't talk about it. 

Emmanuel: Mental health is a hard thing to talk about in general.

Josh: right 

Emmanuel: Specifically in the church. It's been stigmatized. I think it's hard for a pastor. For a lot of different reasons to say, I need help. One of those primary reasons is, who's supposed to help the pastor when the pastor is the one who helps everyone else? 

Josh: Yeah, 

Emmanuel: um, so there's a lot of silent suffering amongst church leaders. I think the pastor has a lot of jobs within the church. One is people management, leadership. To be a great orator, to manage church finances and operations. And a lot of times it's a one person show.

Josh: It sounds like you're describing a startup founder right now 

Emmanuel: It is. Yeah. I mean, that's exactly what a pastor is. You have to figure out all of these components and how to grow your church. And it's the same thing in a lot of ways that we're doing in the startup world. How do I get customers or people to come and to donate and to fundraise. 

Josh: yeah

Emmanuel: The pastors who are thriving. In today's society are the ones who have a keen entrepreneurial gene. Like they're really sharp when they come. Yeah. When it comes to having an entrepreneurial spirit, those are the pastors that are doing really well. They're thinking outside the box. They’re being - 

Josh: They're really focused on conversions.

Emmanuel: Yes. They're focused on -

Josh: Conversion rates

Emmanuel: They are. They are focused exclusively on conversion - Uh, but they're pushing the envelope in some really cool ways. and pastors that have this entrepreneurial spirit, not only perform well on our platform, but are performing well in the community. 

Lisa: Well, isn't that what makes being a pastor so hard is that you are essentially running a business, but people don't want to think of church as a business. 

Josh: Yeah. 

Lisa: If we go back to my college days, I did , a consulting project for a church and I surveyed the team that worked under the pastor and the biggest complaint was, he's my boss, but I also need a pastor. And so there was this like, harsh divide between, they see this pastor on like Sunday, but he's this boss all the other days. And so how does somebody manage to be both a shepherd and a leader of people and also run a business, which they just like, it's hard to mesh those two things.

Emmanuel: Yeah. It's challenging to be both spiritually discerning and practical at the same time when it comes to the operations of the church. The interesting thing is I'm seeing this replicated with a lot of the pastors that we're meeting with. And as I'm going through my sales cycles and I hear stories from pastors of what they're going through, I don't only have a firsthand perspective, but in hindsight, I can provide solutions or at least advice outside of just a platform of churchspace. And that makes me feel really good. to be able to support them in a way that impacts their lives outside of their church congregation and looks at them as a whole being and a whole person.

Josh: Yeah, not just a potential customer. 

Emmanuel: Yeah. Exactly 

Josh: What kind of things do you think founders could learn from pastors in running their companies? 

Emmanuel: There's a lot of things founders can learn from pastors, but one of them, because pastors inherently are playing the long game. They're looking at everything with an eternal perspective

Josh: Yeah

Emmanuel: Or at least they should be. And I think as founders, it's important to stay in the weeds and stay really closely connected to what you're building and what you're solving today. But building with the end in mind is so important and it helps you stay motivated and it helps you remember why you wake up every day and you do what you do. milestones are important and closing your round is important. but staying authentic to your mission is the most important thing.

Josh: Anything, the other way around that pastors could learn from startup founders? 

Emmanuel: Yeah, be a bit more scrappy in the sense that, it's okay to throw things at the wall and see what sticks sometimes. it's okay to operate out of the traditional mode that they've operated in for a long time. Be iterative in their approach, and be scrappy. 

Josh: I like that. 

Emmanuel: Thanks

Josh: Emmanuel, thank you so much for, uh, spending the time with us coming out and pitching on our show in Miami. And, uh, congratulations on raising 825,000 of your round. 

Emmanuel: Thank you. 

Josh: I was expecting you to correct me on my math. 

Emmanuel: I, no, it took me a moment to, for it to register. And I was gonna say, Hey, Josh, what do you mean by 825,000? 

Josh: Uh, yeah, I'm glad you asked Emmanuel. Uh, The Pitch Fund is going to be following on, on, on this investment.

Emmanuel: Oh man

Josh: So we'd love to invest 50 K if you'll have us. 

Emmanuel: I would love to, this is so exciting. I love what you guys are doing. I think you and Lisa and the whole pitch team are phenomenal. And Josh, just as a pastor's kid, it means a lot from, from one PK to another. So, so thank you. 

Josh: Yeah. Just two hurting people, just trying to connect, make our way through the world.

Emmanuel: Listen. I, I have a, a great therapist for all the PKs who are still processing -

Josh: Oh, actually yes

Emmanuel: What the heck is, what is going on in life? 

Josh: I need that

Lisa: He needs it. Give him that. 

Josh: We're not. I'm, yeah, I'm serious. 

[laughter]

Emmanuel: Maybe that's our next startup Josh is a -

Josh: Therapists for pastors' kids?

Emmanuel: Exactly

Josh: Talk about a niche market.

This concludes our service. If you are an investor looking for alpha, and omega in your portfolio! You can join our congregation,... I mean, The Pitch Fund.

But seriously, if you’d like to learn more about the fund, you can go to thepitch.fund

And if you’re a founder, looking for that sweet manna from VC heaven. Aka money. Or mula! chedda! cheeze - we want to hear from you! We’re talking to founders right now, for our next big pitch event in June… our best VC panel ever has already signed on for another season, now we just need you. Go to pitch.show/apply and upload your pitch deck or deal memo.

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Next week on The Pitch, it’s Tween Time.

Monica: We are redefining feminine hygiene for tweens. 

Mac: You've done 5 million in sales; you did 3 million last year. Very impressive. 

Monica: Thank you. 

Charles: I think I - I really believe in this category I'm an investor in a company called Aunt Flow 

Elizabeth: And similarly, I'm a personal investor in Ruby Love

Mac: Like Elizabeth and Charles, I have seen a lot of these companies. I've never made an investment in this space. You should be raising more than 500,000, 

Monica: As a black woman, for me to come on here and say, I'm going to become the new Always, that's super audacious.

Beck: Yes!

Monica: And I could be, for sure.

Mac: What makes it audacious?

Beck: Yeah. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Mac: Just tell us what you want. That's what I wanted to hear. 

Charles: I get the sense Mac, her experience might have been a little different. 

[falling noises and responses]

Mac: Great catch! Saved the mic!

Beck: That looked really expensive.

Next week on The Pitch, Monica Williams drops the mic. Hit that subscribe button right now and turn on notifications so you don’t miss it.

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This episode was made by me, Josh Muccio, Lisa Muccio, Anna Ladd, Enoch Kim, and Alma Langshaw. With casting help from Peter Liu and John Alvarez.

Music in this episode is by The Muse Maker, Boxwood Orchestra, The Crashing, Our Many Stars, Indigo Jewel, SNVRS, and FYRSTYX

If you loved our uncut pitch last season, you’re in luck! You can listen to all of season 11 uncut over on our new Patreon. We dropped the entire season early! And you can get into heated debates about it with other listeners in our brand new group chat. Check it out at patreon.com/thepitch. 

The Pitch is made in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Was that a holy take?

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The Pitch, Inc. and their respective employees and affiliates do not provide investment advice or make investment recommendations. The information provided on this show should not be used as the basis for making investment decisions. Listeners should conduct their own research and consult with their own investment advisors before making any investment decisions.