Gloo’s capital partner program “has also been a really important part of our growth,” Beck said, observing that Outreach was “really our first major capital partner where we made an investment.” Since then, approximately 15 other capital partners, such as Barna and Midwestern, have joined Gloo in its mission.
Scott Beck on How Gloo Is Helping Ministry Leaders Face This Cultural Moment
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Could you elaborate on the advantages of Gloo becoming a public company?
There’s a couple things about being a public company that are really important. One is it does allow us to have more ready access to capital because we’re financially reporting every quarter. It’s all being audited, it’s all being overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission. And so because of all of that, you’ve got investors more at the ready, willing to put [up] capital because the information is so audited and so clear.
So No. 1, it helps on that front in terms of accessing capital. But another thing that it does is it actually makes [it so that] many small investors now have a way to put their money into a company that is mission-oriented. As their money comes into Gloo, we can then put that money into, let’s say, Outreach so that Outreach can grow faster. And who’s helping Outreach grow faster then? The small investor.
By law, that small investor is only able to invest in public entities. So what we’ve really done is we’ve opened up a big quadrant of capital. The small donor has always been able to make small donations, but the small impact investor has now got an avenue through which they can make an investment and not only get a financial return but get a mission return.
So if you think about it, that’s a whole quadrant of capital that has not been available to this ecosystem. It’s the idea that, you know, God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Well, a bunch of those hills where he owns that cattle are small investors, and those small investors can’t get their cattle into the whole system without a public company.
What are notable changes that have happened over the past year when it comes to technology, especially AI?
Well, it’s all accelerating really quick. I mean, if you think about a year ago, we were just starting our data engine. We just had a couple publishers. Now, all of a sudden, we’ve accelerated that. We have over 700 publishers now using our data engine. We have a big joint venture that was announced at the [2025] hackathon with YouVersion as a major partner.
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You saw at the hackathon so much emphasis on translation. And we had 27 different countries represented there. So, you know, the licensing platform, the data engine, and now the chat. The chat capabilities are coming on really quick. And we’re excited to see all of those advancements in the last year.
The other thing that’s happening with AI is that it’s being more normalized everywhere in our society but also in the church. So the church is starting to use it more as a normal tool to extend their sermons, to be able to engage people in the gap, to be able to automate social postings. There’s so many things that are happening where it’s just becoming normalized.
It feels like there’s so much change so fast. How is Gloo helping church leaders face all of these changes well?
I think a couple things. One is with, obviously, tools. So if you look at…what you guys are doing with SermonCentral and some of the AI tools that you’re putting in there, those are both examples of being able to help the pastors just do a better job. The AI is helping them do what they do, which is help congregations and help people flourish.
