Startup Revival is where we’ll speak with entrepreneurs and investors and innovators in the tech ecosystem who are partnering with Jesus Christ to build breakthrough technologies. A note from our sponsor: “Regent Bank’s core mission is to show God’s love to our employees, clients and communities and to become a cornerstone in the communities we serve. We fully support Startup Revival’s mission to advance the Kingdom through a faith-tech-investing lens.”

On this episode is Craig Bradley, founder of AO Lab, a nonprofit building digital infrastructure, tools and platforms designed to make Scripture more accessible to believers everywhere.

Religion and technology aren’t historic bedfellows in Silicon Valley. This is obvious for anyone living there. This is largely due to a very naturalistic worldview that permeates the culture. But in 2016, faith-based apps began to get some attraction with $6 million invested in such startups, according to Pitchbook. When Covid came around, investments in faith-tech startups exploded. By 2021, it had hit $175 million, as startups such as Pray.com, Hallow and Glorify attracted millions. (Watch my podcast w/ Pray.com co-founder Ryan Beck.) Some more recent reports show funding continues apace as $140 million was invested in 2024.

But Bradley isn’t just building another faith app. AO Lab is building the infrastructure underneath the apps. AO Lab runs the popular Free Use Bible API, which allows developers to build Scripture directly into websites, apps and other digital products without having to pay copyright fees. The platform gives developers access to more than 1,200 Bible translations, including the relatively new Berean Standard Bible (BSB), a modern translation published by Bible Hub and the Discovery Bible team. The Free Use Bible API has been requested nearly 80 million times. Its flagship product is Seed Bible, a platform that turns Bible study groups into shared digital experiences. Hope you enjoy our discussion!

Learn more about AO Lab and Craig:

Free Use Bible API: https://bible.helloao.org/docs/
Seed Bible: https://seedbible.org
AO Lab Website: helloao.org
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aolab

Startup Revival is where we’ll speak with entrepreneurs and investors and innovators in the tech ecosystem who are partnering with Jesus Christ to build breakthrough technologies. A note from our sponsor: “Regent Bank’s core mission is to show God’s love to our employees, clients and communities and to become a cornerstone in the communities we serve. We fully support Startup Revival’s mission to advance the Kingdom through a faith-tech-investing lens.”

Ryan Collins is the author of “The God of Tech" and former CEO of Bethel Technologies, the world’s first Christian bootcamp and currently the Chief Revenue Officer at UpApp.

I can’t say enough about Ryan’s book. He explores many Christian inventors, from Charles Babbage (1791-1871), considered the “father of the computer,” to Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), the greatest physicist between Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, to Michael Faraday (1791-1867), who discovered the chemical benzene and invented the ‘Faraday induction’ to Galileo (1564-1642), the father of modern physics to Gary Starkweather, the inventor of the laser printer.

In the book, there is a reference to a presentation Starkweather gave in 2017 where he told students to “see the angel in the marble.” This pays tribute to Michelangelo’s vision of uncovering or chipping away at the marble to uncover the already-made statue. In other words, partner with God, and He will reveal His glory. Science is after all, the study of His creation.

You can learn more about Ryan here:

Book: Amazon

Website: https://ryancollins.info/

IG: @ryancollins05

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanccollins05/

Startup Revival is brought to you by Regent Bank

Interview coverage—

2:22 – The importance of partnering with God to build tech that is not apart from Him.

5:01 - How the Lord partnered with believers to create the foundation of science: which is to study God’s creation and allowing Him to reveal things to us.

5:34 - Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, the Christian inventor who discovered the foundational science for wi-fi and satellite.

7:25 - Ending 150 years of the Maxwell epoch, and being on the cusp of the next epoch of scientific discovery and tech innovation.

8:18 - Gary Starkweather and “seeing the angel in the Marble” a Michelangelo quote. Romans 1:20 - God’s invisible attributes his divine nature can be seen in creation. 1 Colossionas 1:16-17 - all things were made through him.

11:00 - During the last 150 years, society has slowly taken God out of the equation.

13:39 - Be receptive to what the Lord is saying to you. The bible says my sheep know the voice of the shepherd and they follow it.

14:25 - Ryan’s background and the honor and privilege of work.

18:56 - From conversations with God, knowing him deeply to starting a Christian coding school.

24:19 - Learning experience from Bethel Tech, the first global Christian bootcamp.

28:48 – Counterfeit science, and what happened after politicians/scientists standardized the theory of evolution in 1958 and removed God from humankind’s origin story.

31:46 - Darwin’s theory of evolution as the origin story just means we’re in a perpetual zero-sum game against each other – removing the Imago Dei – no longer seeing humanity as our brothers and sisters but rather people we need to beat in the survival of the fittest.

38:47 – Quantum physics – still out of reach to be relevant?