Christians in tech step into the light

Business admin July 4, 2026 0 Comments

During the recent Boston Tech Week, God was on the agenda.

At “Faith-Driven Investors & Founders,” a meet-and-greet tailored for Christian businesspeople, the proceedings began with a reading from the New Testament and a word of prayer — not your typical kickoff for an event aimed at tech entrepreneurs.

“The objective is for people to encounter Jesus,” said venture capitalist Shane Ray Martin, who has organized similar meetings at Tech Week New York, with another scheduled this fall in San Francisco. “Some people, especially Gen Z, might be hesitant to walk into a church, but they’ll definitely come to a Tech Week event.”

Martin said that working in tech “can be exhausting and isolating…there is also a lot of loneliness associated with working in tech. Jesus offers the opposite. He offers comfort and forgiveness and openness and love.”

What about the usual shaking of hands and swapping of business cards that happen when entrepreneurs and investors meet? “These are what we’re doing with our lives, but they’re not our identity,” Martin said. “Our identity is in Christ, not in the software that we develop.”

It isn’t your standard tech conference elevator pitch, but 40 or so startup founders and venture investors turned out for the Boston event, people who insist on taking their Christian faith at least as seriously as their balance sheets.

And there’s no contradiction in that, said one of the guests, Katherine Arline, founder of Simplicia Labs, a drug discovery startup. In fact, Arline thinks her conversion to Roman Catholicism has given her an almost unfair advantage in launching a business.

“Faith-based entrepreneurship is a cheat code,” she said. “Faith reminds us that it’s no different from the rest of life. Nothing is guaranteed, nothing is certain. … As entrepreneurs with faith, we have the opportunity to choose to take bigger leaps of faith and to rely more on our God.”

This isn’t just a Boston Tech Week thing. Even in Silicon Valley, there’s a new openness to the idea of bringing your religion to work. An article in Vanity Fair last year noted that until recently “Christians were effectively in hiding” in California’s high-tech haven. But the rising influence of believers such as Peter Thiel, cofounder of software company Palantir and ally of President Trump, has given Christians in tech a new sense of confidence.

Even so, it’s not all smooth sailing. Ankur Tyagi isn’t going out of his way to proclaim the gospel.

“I feel like the social permission isn’t there,” said Tyagi, a partner in OnlyExit, a Seattle “hacker house” that helps laid-off tech workers launch new companies. “You can feel judged for showing your faith openly or discussing it.”

One possible reason is the hyper-politicization of evangelical Christianity, and its almost symbiotic union with the policies of President Trump. But there’s no hint of politics at the Boston gathering. The guests are here to praise God, munch on Chick-fil-A breakfast treats, and talk business. Nothing else.

“I’m not living my life based on a political view of a particular candidate who doesn’t really even know me or probably doesn’t care too much about me anyway,” said Martin. “But God does, forever.”

The meeting happened at Sattler College, a religious school that operates on the 17th floor of a skyscraper that towers over Beacon Hill. Named for a 16th Century Protestant martyr, Sattler charges no tuition. It offers degrees in biblical studies, history, computer science, human biology, and business.

Sattler’s founder and adjunct biology professor is Finny Kuruvilla, former resident physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital, and co-founder of Eventide Funds, a socially-responsible investment firm guided by explicitly Christian principles.

“Our tagline at Eventide is ‘Investing that makes the world rejoice,’” Kuruvilla said, ”which comes from a verse in Proverbs that says, ‘When the righteous prospers, the city rejoices.’”

Eventide finds a righteous pathway to profit by rejecting investments in what it sees as morally problematic companies — any involvement in abortion, alcohol, tobacco, pornography, or gambling. For instance, Eventide won’t put its clients’ money into Google, because the company’s search engine makes it easy to find pornographic videos.

Drawing such ethical lines has always been a challenge for believers.

“This has been going on since Jesus walked the earth,” said Sheryl Sleeva, director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at Gordon College, an evangelical Christian school in Wenham.

“We call it vocational formation,” said Sleeva. “How are you going to do this well? How are you going to do this ethically? How are you going to do it to help others?”

Martin thinks he’s found the answer as a partner at B Ventures Group, a Newton-based fund that invests exclusively what it calls “peace tech” — companies that make products designed to reduce conflict between people and nations.

For instance, B Ventures has invested in CulturePulse, a company that generates predictive models of likely behaviors among large groups of people — the residents of a city, for instance. The idea is to predict potential crises so governments can respond before they burst into violence.

For Martin and the others at the Tech Week gathering, a good business doesn’t need to include a crucifix in the logo or a Bible verse in the motto. It just has to provide a honorable products or services, while doing business in accordance with Christian principles. And Christians need to know that they can do good by doing well in business.

“The point is to help Christians to think about their faith beyond Sunday, and how to love people engaged within the marketplace,” said Kyle Keldsen, who chairs the New England branch of C12, an worldwide online forum for Christian businesspeople.

“For years, you’ve had the conversations about bridging your whole self to work,” Keldsen said. “People of faith haven’t always felt like they can do that.” But judging by the Boston Tech Week turnout, this is finally starting to change.