Church AI: Deploying God's Agents

Josh Muccio (0:00)

Welcome to The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. I'm Josh Muccio.

Lisa Muccio (0:06)

And I'm Lisa Muccio. And on the show today, we have Iryll with Church AI. He's raising $600,000.

Josh Muccio (0:12)

That's right. Church AI, which is exactly what it sounds like, AI for churches.

Lisa Muccio (0:19)

But not like the spiritual stuff, right? They just take care of the admin stuff.

Josh Muccio (0:23)

Not an AI Jesus.

Lisa Muccio (0:25)

Not an AI Jesus, no. Every church has admin back office responsibilities, but that can take out so much time of a pastor that he's not able to take care of the people in the church.

Josh Muccio (0:38)

The sheep.

Lisa Muccio (0:39)

The sheep need their shepherd. The shepherd shouldn't be doing all of the back office stuff, right?

Josh Muccio (0:45)

No, shepherds should not be sending emails.

Iryll and his team are the perfect founders to build this. They're all involved in their local churches, of course, and they have a sales background.

Lisa Muccio (0:56)

The question is, will the local church market sound big enough to a bunch of ECs who may or may not be familiar with that market?

Josh Muccio (1:04)

God is infinite. So are these returns.

Lisa Muccio (1:09)

The Pitch for Church AI is coming up after this, featuring a real live pastor.

Josh Muccio (1:14)

Who also happens to be my dad.

Lisa Muccio (1:17)

But first, we are hosting two live events this season, one in SF at Tech Week and another in November in New York City.

Josh Muccio (1:25)

We're also hosting the taping of our next season, Season 17 in San Francisco. You can join us at any of these events. Just go to pitch.show.events for more details.

Welcome back to The Pitch for Church AI. Let's meet the investors. Elizabeth Yin with Hustle Fund.

Elizabeth Yin (1:45)

My best deals have been the ones that I've committed on the spot.

Josh Muccio (1:47)

Charles Hudson with Precursor Ventures.

Charles Hudson (1:50)

We have 500 companies, so you pick it, we have it.

Josh Muccio (1:53)

Mike Ma with Sidecut Ventures.

Mike Ma (1:55)

I got strings. I'm not an easy yes.

Josh Muccio (1:57)

Jesse Middleton with Flybridge.

Jesse Middleton (1:58)

I'm so sick of people that are building stuff for building stuff sake.

Josh Muccio (2:03)

And Yasmin Cruz Ferrine with Visible Hands.

Yasmin Cruz Ferrine (2:06)

This one thing to be the first, but then there will be fast followers.

Elizabeth Yin (2:15)

Church AI.

Michael Muccio (2:16)

Nice job. Good snaps.

Elizabeth Yin (2:19)

Yeah, yeah.

Michael Muccio (2:20)

Hey, everyone. Hi.

Iryll (2:21)

Nice to see you guys. Mike. Iryll.

Elizabeth Yin (2:24)

Elizabeth.

Michael Muccio (2:25)

Iryll.

Jesse Middleton (2:25)

Hey, Jesse. Nice to meet you.

Michael Muccio (2:27)

Yasmin.

Charles Hudson (2:27)

Hey, Charles. How are you?

Iryll (2:29)

Doing well. Better than I deserve is typically what I say on sales calls.

So my name is Iryll, CEO of Church AI, and we're building the OS that equips churches to operate on its own.

Four years ago, I helped my friend plant a church, and I learned firsthand how much work that actually is. People think that churches are just small Sunday gatherings. They're really not. Churches are fundamentally small to mid-sized businesses that care for hundreds of people, coordinate volunteers, and they manage donors. This is all being done by pastors and staff that don't have the adequate training, tools, and time. I mean, imagine a pastor on a Monday morning. He just finds out that a family of five has left the church and hasn't gone in three weeks. A volunteer that was really key to his team has quit, and it was too late because he had zero insight. Churches across the country are dealing with this. Churches spend over $60 billion on staff, admin, support infrastructure every year, but they still lose 32 percent of their members annually.

Our platform uses agents to predict member turnover, identify new emerging donors, and automate the admin and operational workflows so that they can stop the bleeding and they can grow on autopilot. At this moment, churches are reporting that they're saving 15 to 20 hours of admin work per week, and they're having proactive conversations and re-engaging 10 to 30 members before they drift away. Our team is uniquely qualified to solve this problem. We combine 30 plus years of deep domain expertise of working in, leading at, consulting these churches with proven revenue scaling experience. And in the last eight months, we've gone from just a concept to a paid validation with an average 40% monthly growth rate. We're closing one in three churches that go through our sales process. And we are raising a $600,000 pre-seed round to become the OS for global churches. Thanks so much. And happy to answer any questions.