Our Story

It started with a broken leg

In the summer of 2023, Anthony broke his leg. Raf ended up driving him around most of that summer, and somewhere in all those car rides the same conversation kept coming back. We had been at the same church for years. We still could not have told you what most of the people there did for work. And if we needed a plumber, a photographer, or an accountant, it never once occurred to us to look for one sitting a few rows back on Sunday. It felt strange to bring business into church at all.

So we started asking a simple question. Why is there no easy way to find and support the people in your own faith community, without it being awkward? We said yes, let us build that. Then life got busy, and for a few months nothing happened.

The team came together

In October 2023 we met Antonio. He believed in the idea, and he was looking for something to put his shoulder into. That was the push we needed, and we made it official on October 23, 2023. At the start of 2024, Alex joined to lead the product and cared about it enough to come on as a founder. The four of us have been building together ever since.

The long road

What we built first was big. Much bigger than what you see now. It had messaging between businesses and customers, subscriptions, layer upon layer of features, and somewhere along the way we tried to make it fill the role of a church too. It was complicated. It was hard to explain. And honestly, it did not work.

For almost two and a half years we pushed on it. We barely made any money. The traction never came. By early 2026 we were out of money, out of momentum, and close to out of hope. We were ready to quit. It is hard to put into words how discouraging that stretch was after that much of your life goes into something.

What kept us from walking away was bigger than the product. We believed God had given us this vision, and we were not willing to let Him down on it. One of the founders had also put a serious amount of his own money into this, and we could not look our brother in the eye and quit on him. So a couple of us sat down, felt the full weight of both, and decided we owed it one more honest try.

Stripping it all away

Before we walked away, we asked ourselves one last question. If we stripped away everything, every feature and every clever idea, and kept only the bare minimum, what would people actually want?

We kept landing on the same answer. A place to find local Christian businesses. That was it. We had gotten so consumed with building something complicated that we had buried the one simple thing people were asking for.

In February 2026 we put up a bare landing page to test it. Just a map where a Christian business could drop a pin so other Christians could find it. Nothing else. We ran it for two weeks. In those two weeks we got around twenty sales and inquiries for a product that did not even exist yet. That was almost more than the old platform had done in nearly two and a half years.

Everything changed

We knew then that the Lord was in this. So we started building for real. In May 2026 we took the old platform down for good, rebranded to LocateFaith, and stripped it back to the one thing people actually wanted. It was nerve-racking to throw away that much work and start clean.

Within a month, 500 businesses had signed up, from more than 40 states across the country. People were genuinely excited. After years of pushing a boulder uphill, it felt like the boulder finally started rolling on its own. We cannot take credit for that. Overnight, God turned it around.

Where this is going

Finding a Christian business is where we start, not where we stop. We think about the road ahead in three movements.

First, gather. Bring the Christian economy onto one platform so every Christian business is easy to find, and every customer can support them with confidence. That is the part that is live today. It is what you see when you use LocateFaith right now.

Then, multiply. Help the businesses on the platform grow because of each other, through real relationships, referrals, and mentorship, so the directory becomes a living network instead of a list.

And finally, send. A Christian economy strong enough to be a blessing far beyond itself, measured not by what it keeps but by what it gives away, poured out into causes, missions, and the neighborhoods around it.

We are at the very beginning of that. But it is why we do not think of this as just a directory. We are trying to build something that blesses the world.

Who we are

We are four friends from Long Island, New York, who go to the same church, V1 Church. We are the ones who could not tell you what the person next to us on Sunday did for a living, and decided to do something about it.

• Alex

  CEO

• Anthony

  Community Director

• Raf

  CTO

• Antonio

  CFO

We are still early, and we are still building. Most of us still work full-time jobs while we grow this. LocateFaith is not a church and it is not trying to be one. We just believe the people of God were meant to find each other, support each other, and become a blessing together. A simple map is where that starts. It is not where it ends.