"Just start doing it" with Simon Knauber of Glass Canvas

We welcome Simon Knauber, Director of Finance and HR at Glass Canvas, which is a faith-tech and consulting company behind ministry products for the Church, including Tilma Parish and Tilma Diocese. Their software is more than just technology, but a way to create more ministry impact by helping dioceses and parishes serve their people better and create more meaningful encounters with their faith.

This includes delivering Ministry, marketing and tech expertise for Dioceses, churches and ministries, while equipping teams with unified infrastructure, formation resources, and ongoing mission support.

It’s a lofty mission that’s rooted in a lot of cool and innovative  tech—to say nothing of the unique value proposition that Glass Canvas delivers to the faith community. 

I’m excited to learn more about Simon, Glass Canvas, and the incredible tech behind empowering the Church to form resilient disciples in our modern age.

Boast AI accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

Visit Boast.ai, sign up for our Blog newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly #InnovatorsLive sessions and the latest news to fuel your growth.

Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.

Transcript

Paul Davenport:

Hello, and welcome to What the Tech? from Boast AI, where we talk with some of the brilliant minds behind new and exciting tech initiatives to learn what it takes to tackle technological uncertainty and eventually change the world.

Today I'm thrilled to welcome Simon Knauber, Director of Finance and HR at Glass Canvas, which is a faith-tech and consulting company behind ministry products for the church, including Tilma Parish and Tilma Diocese. Their software is more than just technology, but a way to create more ministry impact by helping diocese and parishes serve their people better and create more meaningful encounters with their faith. This includes delivering ministry, marketing, and tech expertise for diocese, churches, and ministries, while equipping teams with unified infrastructure, formation resources, and ongoing mission support.

It's a lofty mission that's rooted in a lot of cool and innovative tech, to say nothing of the unique value proposition that Glass Canvas delivers to the faith community. I'm excited to learn more about Simon, Glass Canvas, and the incredible tech behind empowering the church to form resilient disciples in our modern age. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Simon.

Simon Knauber:

Hey, thanks, Paul. Good to be here.

Paul Davenport:

Awesome. I'm thrilled to have you. Now, I know I just read through quite the resume, but I'd love to learn a little bit more about Simon. How did you get into the tech space to begin with? How did you find Glass Canvas and I guess just what drives you?

Simon Knauber:

Yeah, good question. A bit of my background actually, I didn't study anything in tech. I actually have an engineering background, which is naval architecture and ocean engineering. So very far from tech, just building boats and maritime structures, things like that.

Story for me is I worked in that a little bit, moved to Canada. My family's here. I'm not originally from Canada, I'm a German citizen. Yeah, moved to Vancouver area, which is where my family is, and was looking for a job in engineering actually, and just couldn't seem to find anything. And at the time I was just really trying to discern where should I go, what should I do? My brother-in-Law, his name is Jason, who's actually the CEO of Glass Canvas that produces Tilma, he said, "Hey, crazy idea. Why don't you come work for us?"

And at the time it was an agency, it was doing branding design, content development strategy for faith-based nonprofits. And my initial reaction was, "I don't know. It's a pretty small company. And I knew saying yes to that would mean saying goodbye to an engineering career, but it just felt really felt right and praying and discerning into that just felt like, yeah, this is an open door that I want to walk through. And I'm really glad I did. I've been here seven and a half years now, and walked the journey of going from agency to becoming a product company and learning along the way.

Paul Davenport:

That's super interesting. One thing that I want to call back to was, again, coming to Vancouver, not necessarily finding a career in your field in engineering where you really wanted to, but still finding opportunities within the ecosystem. Boast started out as a Vancouver company and I think that's how a lot of the folks in our network actually find their way into the careers that they're in today. It's not necessarily where they intended to start off, but there's so much innovation happening in that community and in that corner of Canada, and I mean, part and parcel with the innovation funding that is available in Canada, that I think you can change course and find something that's a good fit, if not what you originally had in mind. Also with immigrant communities, we have a lot of founders, again, especially in the Vancouver region. I'm thinking back recently, we had Ilya from Van Hack on a couple episodes ago. There's just so much opportunity.

So awesome to hear that you were able to tap into your family network as well and that Jason was able to help you get onto the Glass Canvas team. But I'd love to know too a little bit about Glass Canvas. So was Jason the founder, who is on the founding team, and just how did this whole agency turned platform come together?

Simon Knauber:

Yeah, great question. Jason was ... It was his brainchild, although there's two founders, really primary initial founders, Pierre de Fleuriot and Jason Jensen. And really it started by Jason seeing the secular companies in the digital space just doing a very good job at communicating, but us not necessarily aligning with their values. And then looking on the flip side, seeing the church and ministries where his perspective was, "Wow, they have a great message, but they're not doing a good job at communicating that." And it feels like they're on outdated tech and not really having a strong presence in the digital space, as it relates to even branding and messaging. And the content is good, but it's not packaged in a way that's very consumable. So the desire grew to, hey, we want to help the church. We want to help ministries communicate the great message that they have.

And that was the beginning of Glass Canvas. Over the years we worked with a lot of different ministries, and several of them needed tech solutions that were pretty custom. They needed a website that had a form builder or an event manager and things like that. So we decided early on to just build it on our own tech stack as opposed to on something like WordPress. And the way that we structured those deals with clients was we would retain the IP, they would sponsor the feature, and then with that structure we could then give that to the next ministry for free.

And so they seemed to really enjoy that. They were okay with that arrangement. But the problem was that over the years we had built quite a bit of tech, and our business model was such that we were an agency billing hourly, so every fix was $150 an hour and that was just not sustainable. And no one wants to pay for bugs, everyone wants to pay for features. And there's just with tech, you get tech rot and different things, or you're building a feature and you end up cutting corners in certain areas. So we had to make a decision, we either double down on our technology or we deprecate it altogether. And we went the route of deciding, hey, we think that technology is a critical part for ministries and in this space, so we want to pivot to actually becoming a product company first and then an agency company second, to still be able to offer those services for enterprise customers.

So that was initially pivot, and since then we've just become full product company software as a service, and have built out what is now Tilma.

Paul Davenport:

And again, I like that you guys doubled down on the R&D investment, and to actual really develop a strong tech platform that addresses an acute need too for the church community.

 I'd love to know a little bit, you addressed it a little, and I think some of it might seem a little obvious. I mean, I was raised Catholic. I don't associate the church necessarily with having high-tech as a top priority. It's all about the messaging. And like you even said, the content is there, the delivery, and the just ability to do more with the content that you have, I feel like that's something that we address in the business world, but when it comes to those non-off-the-shelf use cases, when you have the church community, it's not a great fit if you're looking for something that's a pure play business solution. Could you talk to me a little bit more about the unique needs of the church that Tilma is trying to solve here?

Simon Knauber:

Yeah, for sure. Really what a lot of ministries use to digitally engage the people they're trying to reach is they're using sales and marketing tools. Which are they're effective for that, which is sales and marketing, generating leads and running them through a pipeline and funnel acquisition, all that stuff, but-

Paul Davenport:

My whole afternoon, Simon. Yep.

Simon Knauber:

Yeah, yeah. And you have companies like HubSpot that have built their whole ecosystem around that. And there's a lot of great tools in there that has a lot of crossover with what ministries need, however, there are unique ministry needs that aren't solved by a sales and marketing tool. Because the goal for a ministry is to try and engage people, but then ultimately get them into on-the-ground ministries, connecting them into groups, and sharing resources that actually help them along in their faith journey.

So that on the ministry side, which is where we've actually partnered with a lot of different ministries to get their content and be able to serve it through our platform directly to the user. And the more we understand our user around what are they interested in when it comes to volunteering, what are their backgrounds, their expertise, or what are they going through, sending them a survey of just like, "Hey, where are you at in life and what are some big, big boulders you're working through?" It might be, Hey, I'm struggling with my marriage." And we say, "Hey, great, we have a great marriage mentorship partner with this ministry. Why don't you check them out or we'll connect you?"

And so what Tilma is trying to do is really build the technology that's needed in order to engage people on the ground, but then ideally really connecting them to the ministries that already exist to be able to help them get what they need in the season of life that they're in. And there's certain automations that you can do just by being technology. Like if it gets recorded in the system that you got married, six months later we can just send you an email and say, "Hey, here's some resources that might help you for couples that are going through things in their early marriage." And it's just timely emails and that are very targeted to people to help them along their journey.

That's a big, big side of Tilma that excites us, being able to use the technology to do ministry. Another layer on top of that is right now the product is really built and ideally suited for the structural Catholic Church in that there is ... For those who don't know how exactly it's structured, it's a bit more of a structured org chart, where you have a head or a parent and a child relationship between the diocese and the parish. And what Tilma allows us to do is just, because it's all in one platform, that can be a data flow between those organizations and across any of the networked parishes or schools that are connected to that diocese, sort of a hub-and-spoke model. Yeah, so that's really what we're trying to do, trying to solve with Tilma and sort of become the HubSpot for ministry.

Paul Davenport:

My mind, because I've just worked in sales and marketing for so long, is it goes to that more cynical side where the engagement is about closing a lead, whereas you guys aren't taking that approach whatsoever. It is about engagement that sticks and that actually supports the user at the end. It's not about getting them over that finish line for a sale for instance.

Now, I'd love to know too, you've talked about the different kind of church community and org structures that you work within and that Tilma can help support, but outside of that church community, can we talk a little bit about the other technology partners? Or even folks like our team here at Boast, who you've worked with to help fund this innovation or at least help develop the unique innovation that is unique to Tilma and unique to what you're doing at Glass Canvas?

Simon Knauber:

For sure. I mean, we work with a lot of different vendors and partners. And it's been great working with you guys to actually help supplement the innovation that we're doing on our end by securing grants and things like that, which are readily available here in Canada.

But yeah, in terms of other partners that we're working with, the end that we're after at a highest level is just being able to help the dioceses and parishes reach their parishioners and make things as seamless as possible for them. Another maybe more on the solution side that we're offering is we've also partnered with different payment processors just so that, hey, there can be a seamless integration for giving, for example. And then within our software we have reporting that can just show actuals of, "Hey, how many donations did we receive last month?" And just reconciling payments, things like that is just more streamlined.

And there's a lot of innovative partners there too. We've just gotten into an agreement with a provider called tiptap, and essentially they do tap giving, where it's like ... I don't know if you've ever seen those signs where it says, "Hey, $5, or $10, 15." And because us moving more and more to a cashless society, in churches you still have the giving baskets that get passed around, and being able to have a digital solution or an electronic solution to just tap the phone is definitely missing right now or it's a big opportunity.

Again, just making things more streamlined, both on the ministry side, connecting them to the right ministries at the right time and partnerships, but also just on the administrative side of sending emails and giving.

Paul Davenport:

And again, more streamlined. I think that that is something that we can almost say would be the theme of what we're aiming for with all of this. And my mind immediately went to, like you had even said, those giving baskets. I'm like, "That's just what I have in mind." And you had mentioned being the HubSpot for churches, but even just the payment platform and just the security of all of that too, there's so much more than just what even HubSpot could do. I just love that you guys are leaving no stone unturned in making sure that it is a one-stop shop for the dioceses and for the parishes individually as well. So that is fantastic.

I'd love to know, we kind of talked about it, what's on deck for you guys going forward, but on the short term, over the next year, are there any features or any new expansions that you guys are going to be announcing or that you'd like to discuss, just giving us a heads-up about? Because you've already accomplished a lot of really cool innovation, but I'd love to know what else we can look out for.

Simon Knauber:

Yeah, for sure. I mean, in the near future, really right now we have our primary product that we're selling right now, is the foundation is a content management and engagement software where you have a web builder content management system, email tool, form builder and event manager and this giving solution. So that's all in one product. And then what we're building alongside that is really a CRM solution or a database solution of just ... Because customers can just have that side of things, but then integrating a CRM solution to actually just manage all the information about my parishioners or the people that attend my parish or church. It's just a need, a great need for our customers. And for the two to then to be able to speak to each other, this person attended this event, obviously it just kind of flows through. Same with giving information.

So that's in that near term, and then further down, ultimately we'll want to have something directly for the end user, like an app where they can just log in, they can manage their giving information and things like that to just, again, make things more streamlined, easier to manage. And even within that app, potentially being able to serve content directly to people that is specifically related to them. Because currently how often time the parish will communicate to the parishioners, they have a church bulletin, and it just has everything in it and it's a pamphlet. People will look at it, but it's hard to pull out exactly what would apply to me right now because, you have maybe a wedding photographer next to a burial planner or ... Just as a silly example.

But yeah, so just being able to help serve the right thing to the right people at the right time is the general goal. And then building out these tools in order to meet that.

Paul Davenport:

Yeah, and you want to meet them where they're at too. People are in the habit of using technology today. If it's on your phone, that's how you're going to access it. If it's a piece of paper and you have to do digging, to your point about the bulletins and the pamphlet, it's tough. So you want to meet them on their terms and make it as easy as possible to engage with these communities, and I think that is fantastic.

Simon, before we hop off, I'd love to know, for anybody looking to get into a tech role, again, I know that your background was in engineering, you found your way into Glass Canvas and all the great work that's going on with Tilda, but what advice would you give somebody who's looking to start a career in the tech space or even just in Vancouver, in Canada, in this ecosystem? Just advice for folks entering what we constantly hear is a tough market to get any kind of business started or to even, again, find work. I'd love to know from your experience.

Simon Knauber:

Yeah, tech is interesting because it's very quickly evolving, as I think we've seen just with how AI has developed over the last 12 to 18 months, and has just become ubiquitous for most of us now. There's very few people I talk to that don't use ChatGBT just as a primary part of their role now.

So there's definitely some exciting things happening in tech, but to your question of getting into tech, I think it really depends on what role in tech. It can be very varied. As a developer or software engineer, there's a lot of roles and there's obviously the big players, like Amazon and a whole host of tech companies that we all know and are familiar with. But I think really what I've found is as ... I'm also involved in a lot of hiring, so the thing that I definitely value in my applicants is just work experience. Work experience far outweighs schooling for me. So if I see somebody that has four years work experience versus went to university for four years, I will pretty much always go with the person who has the work experience.

And I think that is a little bit of a shift because I think our generation has ... That's just the path, you go, you go to university. And I think what I'm seeing in tech is just, man, you really want people who are good at their craft and that doesn't come from university. I think you learn a lot of theory and you get a broad understanding, but if you want to get into the tech space, just start doing it, start learning, doing projects. If you can point people to different projects you've done, yeah, that goes a long way.

Paul Davenport:

I love that. I think I've said it before on the podcast, but I went to school for journalism. I learned more at my first job out of college where I was at what you would characterize a content mill, where we were writing eight to 13 blogs a day. It was unreal. But beyond the ground experience and the ability to hustle, that's what's gotten me throughout my whole career, being able to dive into the deep end at my first gig, it taught me what you need as a competitor in this space, in the marketing field, but also just again, to hustle, to get it done. That's been the most valuable piece, and I've been able to demonstrate that because I just went and did it.

To your point, you learned a lot of theory in college. I'm not going to say it's not valuable, but I do agree completely. That's what we see here at Boast too. It's the people who just are excited to get their hands dirty and are excited to get their hands on the problem and work on it. So I think that's fantastic. Roll up your sleeves, listeners. That's probably the big takeaway from all of this. You will always find a reason to not get started on something if you search deep enough. Any economy in any market, you can find the downside, but if you just have the hustle spirit or just the mentality about rolling up your sleeves, I think you can get it done, and I love to hear that that's at least very akin to what I think that you hold as an ethos, as a hiring manager too, because what I'm looking for when I'm hiring my folks as well.

Simon, I cannot thank you enough.

Simon Knauber:

Absolutely. Thanks, Paul.