🙏 Hallow: building a 9-figure prayer app

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Read time: 4 min 12 seconds

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What if I told you one of the fastest-growing consumer apps wasn't about dating, finance, or productivity... but prayer?

Sounds crazy in the hyper-secular world of tech, right?

But Hallow, the Catholic prayer and meditation app, proves that faith-based startups can achieve massive scale.

We're talking 20M+ downloads and $100M+ in funding.

How did three guys ditch high-paying McKinsey and Goldman Sachs jobs to build a spiritual empire from scratch?

Let's explore the genesis, evolution, and growth playbook behind this massive prayer empire.

What you will learn today:

• Why three McKinsey + Goldman Sachs elites walked away from their jobs to build a prayer app

• How a 9-prayer MVP turned into a Headspace for Catholics app

• The growth playbook they used to acquire 20M+ users

• Unique challenges working in the religious space

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From Burnout to Blessing

1/ Corporate burnout

Imagine the scene: Alex Jones and Erich Kerekes grinding away at McKinsey, Alessandro DiSanto deep in the even more demanding world of Goldman Sachs, and then private equity, pulling 80+ hours weekly.

As the sense of burnout loomed over them, they were desperate to find a way to seek more inner peace and refocus on what’s important.

2/ Discovering contemplative prayer

Like many, they turned to the booming mindfulness trend.

Alex, founder and CEO of Hallow, described himself as a “fallen away Catholic”. Despite growing up attending church, he didn’t feel connected with the religion.

To deal with stress, he started trying Headspace and became enthralled with the idea of meditation. However, the act of meditation got him to think a lot more about God and his faith.

Erich and Alessandro also felt something similar, and together, they started exploring the connection between meditation and faith.

They talked to priests, nuns, and brothers, diving into the writings of saints.

Those conversations led them to the rich, 2,000-year-old tradition of Christian contemplative prayer – practices like Lectio Divina (meditating on the bible) and the Ignatian Examen (reviewing your day with God).

3/ Leap of faith

💡 The lightbulb moment: If Headspace and Calm could scale secular mindfulness globally via an app, why not do the same for these powerful, faith-based contemplative practices?

Crucially, they were building it for themselves, a product they needed in their own lives.

Fueled by this conviction and a calling from the Holy Spirit, they took a massive leap.

In 2018, they quit their lucrative jobs in consulting and finance to build Hallow, a meditation and prayer app for Catholics.

Product Evolution: From 9 Prayers to a Spiritual Toolkit

1/ 9 prayer MVP and early validation

The first MVP they launched in late 2018 was quite simple - one screen with nine prayers on it.

Three prayers each for Lectio Divina, the Ignatian Examen, and Christian Meditation.

To validate the idea, the team tapped their networks, especially friends-of-friends and the Notre Dame alumni network, and launched the app to 100 beta testers.

One early story stood out.

A Notre Dame student was struggling with a major life decision—whether to get married or pursue a religious vocation. After listening to sessions on Hallow, she felt she had received clarity from God. She ended her relationship and began seriously considering religious life.

Others shared similar experiences. Many said the app helped them reconnect with their faith.

This kind of feedback, along with requests for more content, gave the team growing confidence that they were onto something real.

2/ Scaling content & features

From that simple MVP, the Hallow team gradually expanded both its content and features, evolving the app into a comprehensive spiritual wellness platform.

• Content Library: grew from 9 to 20,000+ audio sessions

  • Core Prayers: Deep dives into Rosary, Litanies, Novenas, etc

  • New Categories: Sleep stories, music (including chant!), Bible studies (like Fr. Mike Schmitz's popular 'Bible in a Year'), theology explainers, audiobooks

  • Kids Content: Dedicated prayers and curriculum for children

  • Immersive Series: High-quality video productions like 'Holy Week in the Holy Land'

• App Features:

  • Community: Features like 'Prayer Campaigns' allowing users to pray for each other

  • Personalization: Prayer routines, background sounds, playback speed

  • Convenience: Daily Gospel widgets

  • Localization: Deep localization for 8 languages, making it feel native in each region (e.g., Brazilian Portuguese version feels made by Brazilians for Brazilians)

Growth Playbook: Scaling Faith

1/ Finding the first flock (0 to ~100K users)

Phase one was all grassroots, finding their tribe from the ground up.

One of the key early milestones was launching a Kickstarter campaign to rally support beyond their circles. 

The campaign not only brought in a wave of early users, but it also raised $25,709 from 316 backers.

Riding the Kickstarter momentum, the team turned to Catholic influencers with 10K–100K followers to further juice up their growth.

Instead of just paying for generic shoutouts, they invited influencers to record their own prayer series on Hallow and tell their fans to listen to those series on the platform.

After a successful partnership with Matt Fradd from Pints with Aquinas, the team doubled down on this strategy, collaborating with more Catholic creators to both build trust and expand Hallow’s content library.

(btw If you are looking to learn more about influencer marketing or UGC, join Viral App Founders Club where you will get more in-depth courses, community support on this specific topic)

Of course, not every growth experiment was a win. One early flop was handing out Hallow flyers at church events. On paper, it made perfect sense—go where the users are.

In reality? ZERO conversions.

Maybe it was poor attribution. Maybe folks walking out of Mass weren’t in a “download-an-app” mood. Either way, it was a humbling early lesson: not everything that sounds logical works.

2/ The performance marketing gauntlet (scaling to 1M users)

To amplify the growth they were seeing on the influencer marketing side, they started launching performance marketing campaigns, specifically FB ads.

However, it was quite a struggle. They burned through three performance marketers, each one failing to deliver a positive return.

The fourth one finally cracked the code, dialing in Facebook ads and unlocking a sustainable LTV/CAC ratio. With that, performance marketing turned into the growth flywheel that propelled them into their first million downloads.

P.S. Impressive how they persevered after failing three times… I would have given up after the second 😂

 3/ Partnership, celebrity collabs, community fuel (scaling to millions)

Hitting the millions meant thinking bigger. They layered on B2B and partnerships:

• Going Institutional: They went straight to the source: parishes, dioceses, schools, and universities. Partners got promo materials, from banners hanging in churches to postcards in bulletins, embedding Hallow into community life

• Ministry Mashups: Teaming up with groups like NET Ministries built trust and expanded reach

• Leveling Up Influencers: They forged partnerships with Mark Wahlberg and Jonathan Roumie (The Chosen). These celebrities fronted huge campaigns (like the #Pray40 Lent challenge), causing massive download spikes

• Community Power: Features like shared Prayer Campaigns built real connections, boosted retention, and turned users into evangelists

This combo – grassroots, paid ads, deep partnerships, celeb power, and community loops – was potent.

Lent 2025 saw nearly 500,000 downloads in one day, hitting #2 overall on the US App Store 🤯.

4/ Hallow today

While initially geared towards younger users, Hallow found users across all age groups, with a focus on the "fallen away" or spiritually curious. One surprising fact is that ~40% of downloaders aren't Catholic. The need for peace and connection transcends denomination.

Current Traction:

• 23 M+ downloads

• 900 M+ prayers completed

• $100 M+ raised from VCs like General Catalyst and Goodwater

The Challenges: Trust and Pricing

1/ Trust is everything

Hallow has to earn and maintain trust with two very different groups: spiritually curious newcomers and deeply devout Catholics. That means every word, every feature, every partnership needs theological alignment, not just UX polish.

Even something as simple as uploading an audio version of Scripture required clearing copyright and doctrinal review by the Church. The Catholic Church doesn’t move at startup speed, so coordinating with dioceses, bishops, and institutional partners is definitely an acquired skill.

2/ Pricing prayer

Monetization is one of the toughest challenges for any religious app.

Early on, Hallow debated going nonprofit or even making the app 100% free. But to sustain the platform (and pay for 20,000+ pieces of premium content, localization in 8 languages, in-house theologians, and top-tier production), they needed a freemium model.

The compromise: the most popular prayers on Hallow are free. 

Paid subscriptions unlock deeper journeys, exclusive content, and advanced features, but no one is blocked from starting or continuing their prayer life. It’s not just a moral stance; it’s strategic. The free version builds trust, grows the user base, and converts users who want more. Importantly, they made a conscious decision not to include ads, believing they would disrupt the sacred experience.

They had to be upfront with their investors about this strategy and choose the partners that align with this vision.

5 Key Takeaways from Hallow's Rise

1. Solve a personal pain point: The founders addressed their own spiritual ache. That conviction is contagious.

2. Growth is messy (embrace it): Failed flyer campaigns? Three dud marketing hires? All part of the journey. Finding winning channels requires surviving the screw-ups. Don’t give up too easily if the first thing doesn’t work.

3. Layer growth like lasagna 🍝: Network -> Niche Influencers -> Performance Ads -> B2B -> Celebs. They didn't rely on one trick; they layered strategies as they scaled.

4. Niches demand hard-earned trust: Especially faith. Authenticity, navigating monetization sensitivity, and building bridges with institutions are non-negotiable.

5. Your niche might be bigger than you think: Solving a core human need (peace, connection) can resonate way beyond your initial target audience (hello, 40% non-Catholic users!).

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See you next Tuesday,

Leo

p.s. Want to get your startup featured next? Reply directly and let me know what you are building :)

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