The last few months have been an absolute whirlwind. God has us on a crazier ride than I ever could’ve imagined. This Lent, Hallow was the first faith-based app to ever crack the top 10 apps in the App Store overall coming in at #3 – beating Netflix, Spotify, Instagram, Amazon, Tiktok, YouTube and so many more of the largest apps in the world. It took us almost two years from launching Hallow to get to 1 million prayers prayed in total on the app. This Lent we had over a million prayers prayed each day. We just crossed 225 million prayers prayed in total and, as of last week, now over 10 million downloads.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. All credit belongs to Him and to the incredible team of folks we have working so hard here at Hallow.
We’ve also been humbled and blessed to be able to close an additional $50 million Series C fundraise bringing the total funding raised for Hallow to $105 million. The round was led by Goodwater Capital, the largest consumer tech-only venture fund in the world that also happens to be founded by two incredible men of faith and explicitly rooted in the mission of Micah 6:8: “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” The name Goodwater comes from the combination of Good News and Living Water, reflecting their mission to empower entrepreneurs to change the world for good.
Every decision we’ve made in building Hallow has resulted from deep prayer and conversation with our faith advisors, and this new round is no different (read more about our structure as a Public Benefit Corporation here).
This round and these milestones are exciting. We’re thrilled to partner together with mission-driven partners, team members (we’re hiring! Join our team here) and creators to invest even more heavily in building an experience that helps the world to build a daily habit of prayer. But with each of these milestones, something has become more and more clear over time.
This is not why we do this. The numbers are not what we’re working for. It’s not the vision for Hallow.
The vision for Hallow is not numbers, but individuals – not millions of downloads, but each one of us as children of God. The vision for Hallow is Sarah.
Sarah is a young married mom of three little girls. She became tragically addicted to alcohol and stimulants and was involved in a longstanding affair. She’d never really taken her faith very seriously. Her husband found out about the affair and left. She was alone, ashamed, and depressed – thinking often she’d be better off dead. She saw a post about the app and something moved her. She figured she might as well give it a try. She realized, she told us, that in her darkest hour – when everyone she knew had left, everything she cared about had been destroyed – that the only person there with her in the darkness was Christ. She began praying with the app over a dozen times a day. And in her words, He picked her broken pieces up off the floor and put her together again. She cut off the affair. She got sober for the first time in years. She prayed for her husband’s miraculous forgiveness and, in his own experience in adoration, he forgave her. Their family has been reunited.
She told us, “I know you probably get these stories all the time, but I just wanted to let you know, that if you never do anything else in your life, please know that you saved me. I don’t think I’d be standing here alive today if it were not for this app and the grace that God gave me through it.”
This is why we do this. This is what we’re working for. This is the vision for Hallow.
If we spend the next 30 years and are able to be a part of just one more person like Sarah’s journey back to God, if we help God reach out to just one more of His lost ones…then it will have all been infinitely worth it.
And I don’t think Sarah is alone. I think there are millions and millions of Sarah’s. Honestly, I think we’re all a bit like Sarah in our own way. We’re all a little lost. We’re all a little stuck. We’re all a little bit further from God than He invites us to be.
But our faith is one of hope. And if there’s anything that this experience has taught me, it’s that there is no valley that God cannot reach. There is no darkness that the Light cannot overcome.
I cannot wait to see what He does next.
AMDG,
Alex at Hallow
Note: Sarah’s name has been anonymized for privacy