Two years ago I founded Sanicms Limited, a technology company dedicated to building tech solutions for Church. Sanicms Limited was structured to be a for profit enterprise but what drove us wasn’t money per se but a need to help the Church reach out to more people in a much faster, cost effective and measurable way.
We bootstrapped and managed to build a Church Management Software and Q&A App for the Christian community.
We encountered challenges like any other startup but these are the reasons we failed.
It’s hard to get timely and genuine feedback
Getting feedback from church leadership took a very long time to come by and when they did they seemed to be cautious to not say something that criticizes the product.
The church’s decision making process is slow
Most decisions have to be made by multiple sitting committee. It would take weeks for such a meeting to be convened and meetings can be dismissed at the last minute.
The church is too cautious
The church is too cautious to try out new things. They tend to focus too much on what could go wrong and pay little attention to gains that can be realized.
The church is unwilling to spend
Most churches were unwilling to make monthly payments for our sanicms.com service ($5 — $50). They preferred buying the product but at a very low price or getting it for free.
Note: Sanicms Limited was mostly bootstrapped but managed to raise $1500 from friends. We were definitely tight on cash but I would not say it’s the main reason we are choosing to close down.
What’s Next?
We will shut down sanicms.com and adopt the tech behind Notisha for something new.
Edit Feb 2, 2017
After thinking deeply about how we did things I strongly feel we were wrong on trying to get permission and feedback from church leadership to roll out the mobile app. We should have gone straight to the users and craft the marketing message in a way they’ll relate to.
I have decided to sell the app but in case I don’t get a buyer I’ll relaunch it with a new twist for the same market, despite the hiccups.
Edit Feb 17, 2017
I’ll be relaunching the app but focus on the core reason why I built the app in the first place (Notisha was to be a Mobile Learning platform)