A Catholic prayer app raised $105 million in VC funding, hired Mark Wahlberg, ran a Super Bowl ad, and hit #1 on the
App Store — beating TikTok and Netflix. How did rosary beads become a tech unicorn?
Topics covered:
- How Hallow 'baptized' the
Calm/Headspace wellness playbook with traditional Catholic content
- The Notre Dame founders who went from McKinsey and Goldman Sachs to selling the rosary
- Peter Thiel, JD Vance, and the politics of faith-tech funding
- The 'liturgical engine' — why Hallow grew while
secular wellness apps crashed post-pandemic
- Celebrity endorsements gone wrong: the Liam Neeson and Russell Brand fallout
- Is
gamifying prayer the new evangelization or the new indulgence?
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
01:00 - The staggering numbers
behind Hallow
02:30 - UX breakdown: wellness app meets ancient tradition
04:30 - The founders: McKinsey to monastery
06:00 - $105M in
VC from Silicon Valley's conservative elite
07:30 - The liturgical engine: why Lent beats 'Stress Awareness Month'
09:00 - Mark
Wahlberg, the Super Bowl, and celebrity risk
11:00 - Culture war crossfire: critics from left, right, and academia
14:00 - 40%
non-Catholic users and the case for digital evangelization
15:30 - Can you scale prayer without losing its soul?
This episode was
produced with NotebookLM from research by Claude.
This podcast episode was generated using NotebookLM's audio overview feature. The source material was researched and curated by the host, with AI assistance in audio production.
