If you think looking for investors to fund your startup is tough, want until they learn that yours is faith-based. This is the unique challenge faced by Faithbox, a monthly box startup that focuses on Christianity.
Let alone targeting a niche market, the monthly subscription box business model in itself is lucrative, but a tough one. It’s a community-based business model, and being subscription-based means that you need to extra-focus on deliveries, making sure that they are done in timely manner.
Faithbox CEO Willie Morris ‘sat’ with us in a Q&A and talk in brief about his startup and the challenges in making sure that investors take his business proposition seriously, as well as other product-related challenges.
Ivan Widjaya (Q): Hello, Willie! Please tell us a bit about you and your startup.
Willie Morris (A): Faithbox is a monthly box that makes an impact. We help Christians strengthen their faith, discover companies that do good, and give back to the world at large.
Q: Faithbox, Birchbox, etc. – subscription boxes are starting to gain traction in the market. Can you brief us about the market – the potentials, the challenges, etc.?
A: Subscription commerce is tough because the cadence is monthly. Once you start shipping, you don’t stop and time becomes something that is always working against you. The bright side of it is that you’re also building a community every month. For us, that’s the key because we can work with our community to have a huge impact every month.
Q: As a faith-based company, I’m sure you face challenges in growing your business. What are they and how do you overcome them?
A: One challenge is messaging – either people assume you’re not a real business because you’re a Christian business or they assume you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. We’re constantly updating our messaging and putting out content to show people that we are a real business and we’re doing it because we’re passionate about serving and doing some good in the world.
The other challenge with messaging is making sure we’re not including any of our own biases in the content we put out. We never want people to feel like we’re pushing our views on them. We serve people from all denominations of Christianity and we want them to think about their faith through their own lens.
Q: If I’m an individual investor and I believe in your startup, how can I invest in your startup?
A: Email me – [email protected] :) We’re in the process of raising a seed round now.
Q: What’s next for Faithbox?
A: This year we’re releasing a lot more content and expanding into limited edition boxes that we can create around life events, felt needs, and different authors and musicians we work with.
Q: Finally, please share with our readers on what it really takes to build a successful startup.
A: Passion and perseverance.
Many thanks for your time, Willie!