Markets by Grant | World Religions

9 min readApr 5, 2022

Hello and welcome back to Markets by Grant. Today, I’m continuing my theme about startups’ journey to the center of the consumer’s private life. My last piece was on family, and this one is on faith — what I view as two of the most closely-held and value-oriented aspects of a consumer’s life.

My thesis on the space, broadly, is that this deep, dark core is a frontier for consumer tech innovation. Why? Because more than fleeting emotional experiences of happiness or safety, these two areas are wellsprings of a consumer’s source of meaning. They’re existentially important–and while there are risks to building tech which touches these sensitive parts of our lives, I believe there are disproportionate benefits.

Anyway, I explain myself better in my intro piece.

Religion is a giant topic (and I’m susceptible to rabbit-holing) so I’ve further split my market analysis here into two parts. I find this topic fascinating, but I won’t delude myself into thinking everybody does — and therefore, I definitely won’t delude myself into thinking that everybody can make it through all my thoughts on religion as a market in one sitting. Hence, the breakout (you’re welcome).

Welcome to 1 of 2: Today’s piece is a macro-level view of the global state of religion today. On my next one, I’ll get into the dollars and the startups.

Defining Things

Without further ado, let’s dive in. Religion. A giant topic. How am I going to define it? I could go broad and bucket anything remotely ‘spiritual’ into religion, anything dogmatic, anything which lays out philosophies to live by. And if I wanted to really play with the boundaries and make some bold claims equating Keto diets and SoulCycle to religion, maybe I would.

But I’ll keep it simple and define religion here as the traditional institutionalized world religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and the long tail of all other world religions–from Sikhism to Taoism, all the way to Zoroastrianism.

And the next natural question–what is the state of religion today? Anecdotally, there’s a sense that the world is secularizing — or, in business terms, that the religious market is shrinking. Is this a promising space for startups? That question is harder to answer than you might think, and a blanket statement won’t do it justice, so let’s look at the data.

Looking at the Data

Fortunately for us, the Pew Research Center has been tracking this information for decades, and is the definitive source of data on the state of world religion. Unfortunately for us, some of their databases and visualizations were pretty lackluster for my purposes — so I made a science project out of it and built a map-based dashboard on world religions in Tableau, using data from various Pew studies (this is what I mean when I said ‘rabbit hole’). Take a look and play around with my global dashboard…it would mean the world to me.

Markets by Grant | World Religions Dashboard

A few quick disclaimers.

You can best appreciate my magnum opus in full-screen mode on a computer monitor
At the foot of the dashboard, you’ll see a section which defines the measures I’ve used in my analysis
Note that I’ve only included the ‘major’ institutionalized world religions. It’s not a complete picture, but it is representative of >90% of the world’s religious people
And while I’m on the topic of generalization, I might as well note: given the super macro-global nature of this analysis, most everything I say from here on out will be, to some extent, a generalization

As we review the data, we’ll seek an answer to this question:

If I had a startup targeting religious consumers, which religious groups and countries would I want to target?

IMO, there’s really no practical use aggregating data on religion to the global, or even continental level. Nobody starts their market targeting efforts by validating that there are a lot of humans on earth, and the people who do (ie: Santa Claus) don’t have much choice in the matter.

Instead, I’d use a number of more specific lenses to evaluate the promise of religion as a market, at a country level:

How big is the market today?
How big is the market going to be in 10 years?
How much, in magnitude, is the market going to grow?
How fast is the market going to grow?
How fast is the market going to grow relative to population?
How devout are the people in this market?
How willing and able to adopt tech are people in this market?

As you can see, I’ve structured the measures in my Tableau dashboard around these questions as well. The trouble is, answering any one of them alone probably wouldn’t get to the point, and answering all of them might point us in conflicting directions. Here’s what I mean, using Christianity as an example — and feel free to follow along in Tableau!

Example O’Clock: Christianity as a Market

First, which countries are the biggest markets today?

The US, Brazil, and Mexico are looking pretty good.

But how does this change from now to 2030? Looking at percentage change will show us the relative velocity of how religions are growing/shrinking in certain countries.

Based on this analysis, we can see that the growth of Christianity is set to skyrocket in Sub-Saharan Africa.

But then again, so is overall population. After all, it’s of no use looking at percentage change in a vacuum. We should evaluate percentage change in religious populations net of total population changes to identify what’s just a byproduct of an already growing/shrinking country, vs what actually represents disproportionate change in religious populations.

When you take this view, you discover that Christianity in many countries in Africa, while growing in absolute terms, is outpaced by population growth. Still, Tunisia looks good.

But there are only 20,000 Christians in Tunisia today! Aren’t we abstracting too far away from the core question of magnitude? Sometimes, it’s better to look at the raw numbers–ie: how many total people are going to be added to each religion, in each country?

When you take this lens, The DRC, Nigeria, and the Philippines look pretty good.

But let’s cut to the chase. The number added is only part of the total picture. The real question is: how many total Christians are going to be in each country in 2030?

From this perspective, we’re back to the US, Brazil, and Mexico.

And one more question. Not all Christians are the same — some are more devout in their faith than others, and the devout ones might be more eager to adopt my tech. Which big Christian countries have the highest degrees of religiosity?

Looks like the US, Mexico, Brazil, The DRC, Nigeria, and the Philippines

And one more bonus question. Of these countries, which are most startup-friendly, tech-native, and have the highest ability to pay?

This is more of a subjective case-by-case analysis, of course, but one might imagine a ranking of the US, Mexico, Brazil, the Philippines, Nigeria, and the DRC, based on GDP per capita.

That concludes my tirade of circular logic–more intended to orient you to the landscape of the data than to prove a point. But I should still probably make a few, so here are some quick conclusions:

Some Quick Conclusions

Is this market big enough to support my startup?
Yes, it’s giant.

Is it growing?
Yes, although it depends on the country and religion.

Does it matter whether it’s growing or shrinking?
Not in countries with very large religious populations.

Say more about that?
I don’t believe, unless incredibly severe, that a shrinking or volatile market jeopardizes the upside of a startup targeting the space. I would challenge anyone who says that a market with hundreds of millions of customers isn’t enough, even if it’s a little less than ten years ago. Plus, people don’t churn off of religion the way they churn off of consumer products. Bibles and Qurans aren’t piling up in landfills like Furbys, Segways, and Pelotons. In other words, there’s higher customer retention and much less catastrophic market risk (I’ll dive into this argument more in my next piece).

Long story less long, if I was a startup targeting a religious population, and I could pick any market to operate in, I would pick…

The biggest market for my religious population,
which…
Isn’t severely shrinking or volatile
Has a relatively high degree of religiosity (ie: willingness to pay)
Has relatively high degree of purchasing power (ie: ability to pay)
Has a culture of openness to and experience with technology

And wouldn’t it be nice if these elements were positively correlated? Unfortunately, they’re not, which brings up a few challenging paradoxes to navigate as a startup trying to find your customer.

The Paradoxes of Religiosity

Paradox 1:

The individuals and countries with the highest degree of religiosity tend to be the lowest income — indicating a higher desire for religious products but a lower ability to pay.

In this case, Pew does have some pretty interesting visualizations — and while the data are old, I’d be surprised if this didn’t hold true today.

The same negative correlation between religiosity and wealth is observable within-country as well (data for the US):

Is there a bright side in this paradox? Yes. The less-wealthy countries with the highest degrees of religiosity also happen to be the fastest-growing:

But wait, what if attainment of wealth causes reduction in religiosity? In this case, wouldn’t the growth of these countries also bring the dilution of their religious fervor? One might be tempted to draw the conclusion, but the real causal factors are certainly more complex. Plus, of course, population growth ≠ economic growth. And finally, Pew isn’t projecting this to be the case, which is good enough for me.

…And two more quick, high-level paradoxes.

Paradox 2:

The percentage of religious women meets or outstrips that of men in most countries — yet in many of these countries, women have lower levels of access, education, or purchasing power. In other words, barriers to reaching the female consumer can be higher or greater in number than the barriers to reaching a male consumer within the same household. Certainly a generalization, but the point has been made.

Paradox 3:

Religious commitment and practice grow with age, yet new tech adoption tends to decrease with age. Another generalization, but an interesting paradox nonetheless.

…and two more points about the religious ‘user persona’, to aid in our interpretation of the data:

The Global Nuance of the Religious ‘User Persona’

In Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas…

…we’re not in the age of the crusades, manifest destiny, or other forms of large-scale religious conversion (at least, not as much as we used to be). The majority of deltas in religious populations are due to birth rates and emigration. For Islam in particular, growth in Western countries is largely diaspora-driven.

Why does this matter?

Most Western people don’t come to a religion out of nowhere — they grow up with it or move with it to some extent. Thus, the majority of new people being added to each religion on a country level don’t represent truly ‘greenfield’ religious users.
In an annoying VC metaphor, they’re not like early stage startups, starting from ground zero and looking for foundational products to help them accomplish core operations. They’re like growth stage companies — they’ve already got what they need at a basic level, but they’re open to adopting better products and strategies.

In Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia…

…we still kind of are in the age of large-scale religious conversion. Call it the vestiges of communism, volatility from conflict, the specific anti-religious policies of certain countries, the historical “east vs west” divide, or whatever else you may want. As a result of whatever the cause is (another instance of remarkable analysis by me), we see that many east Asian and Sub-Saharan African countries are seeing religious people increasing relative to total population.

So What?

Long story short, the ‘greenfield’ religious user, new to their faith and looking for products to help them grow, is actually a common persona in some countries.

In Short

We’ve got a very large, dynamic, and challenging market with a shifting sea of customer personas who need to be met where they are. Not an easy space for a new startup to navigate.

Now that we’ve boiled the ocean, my next piece will dive into the strategies startups are employing to find and convert the found and converted.

Until then, feel free to roast me in the comments section.
—G

Questions/feedback/ideas? HMU at grant.demeter@av.vc