Nucleus — Company History
For agents: Internal history of Nucleus, the church website builder + comms platform. Provides context for the ownership structure (near-50/50 JV with Foyyay Inc. via Tentmakers Inc.), the product lineage (Nucleus Giving was originally RebelGive; Nucleus Media was originally Storytape), and the launch dynamics (Charter 49 / Charter 55 lifetime pricing).
Sensitivity callout: the ownership structure detail (Tentmakers Inc. 49.5% / Foyyay Inc. 50.5% in Nucleus LLC, an Idaho LLC) is internal only — don’t reference in customer-facing or external content. The broader brand story (Charter 49/Charter 55, 1,000+ signups in first week, the founding journey) is fine to share publicly. When in doubt, abstract.
2016 — Conception (The Twin Website Framework)
Nucleus was conceived by Brady in 2016 around a methodology called the Twin Website Framework.
The pitch: churches shouldn’t have one website — they should have two.
- The external website (e.g.,
hopechurch.com) — for people checking up on the church, making great first impressions, giving newcomers the information they need to plan a visit. - The internal website (e.g.,
hopechurch.info) — mobile-first, dedicated to the existing congregation. Built around next steps — moving people from passive spectators to active participants.
The internal site was the strategic anchor. The whole framework was about next steps.
Inspiration: Church on the Move, a large and influential church whose internal site at cotm.info exemplified the pattern — mobile-first, internally focused, next-step-driven.
March / April 2017 — Launch
Nucleus launched as a product in late March / early April 2017. The launch was very successful.
- 1,000–1,100 paying customers signed up in the first week
- Lifetime pricing offer: “Sign up for this new software, and your pricing will never go up”
- Charter 49 customers — signed up in the first 49 hours of launch, locked in $49/month forever
- Charter 55 customers — signed up before the launch week ended, locked in $55/month forever
Initial development partner: Mossio, a software agency based in Tampa, Florida. Brady and the PCT team didn’t know how to build software at the time; Mossio was the build partner.
Launch numbers (March / April 2017)
- New MRR: $52,871
- Customer count: 1,000–1,100 paying customers in the first week (Charter 49 + Charter 55)
Late 2017 — Storytape (initial launch)
PCT also launched Storytape.com — unlimited stock video for churches — in late 2017. This was the initial launch; a much larger “Storytape Social Launch” followed in 2018 (see below).
Storytape initial launch numbers (2017)
| Day | New subscriptions |
|---|---|
| Day 1 (Tue) | 115 |
| Day 2 (Wed) | 49 |
| Day 3 (Thu) | 47 |
| Day 4 (Fri) | 39 |
| Day 5 (Sat) | 2 |
| Day 6 (Sun) | 3 |
| Day 7 (Mon) | 20 |
| Day 8 (Tue) | 54 |
| Total | 329 |
- New MRR: $24,643
2017 — Nucleus closed period
After the initial launch, signups were shut down for ~1 year. The product had real customers using it, plenty of issues to fix, and the team was figuring out how to actually build software in real time. The methodology behind the product was strong and customers loved it — but the build was rough.
2018 — Permanent opening + Foyyay Inc. transition
Nucleus opened permanently in 2018.
Prior to this, Eric DM’d Brady on Twitter — a common occurrence in PCT’s inboxes, but Eric’s portfolio caught Brady’s eye. Brady contracted Eric for design work to fix Nucleus’s font and styling issues. The work was excellent.
Mossio (the original Tampa agency) was clear they weren’t built to support long-term software development. PCT transitioned away from Mossio and started working with Foyyay Inc. — Eric’s American-based company — full-time. Foyyay Inc. became the dedicated dev team for Nucleus.
Nucleus 2018 reopen launch numbers
| Day | New subscriptions |
|---|---|
| Day 1 (Tue) | 56 |
| Day 2 (Wed) | 38 |
| Day 3 (Thu) | 40 |
| Day 4 (Fri) | 22 |
| Day 5 (Sat) | 2 |
| Day 6 (Sun) | 5 |
| Day 7 (Mon) | 21 |
| Day 8 (Tue) | 76 |
| Total | 260 |
- New MRR: $31,900
Storytape Social Launch (2018)
Major social-led re-launch of Storytape, building on the 2017 initial release. Built and supported entirely by Foyyay Inc. Owned 100% by Pro Church Tools Inc. at this stage (along with Nucleus).
| Day | New subscriptions |
|---|---|
| Day 1 (Thu) | 75 |
| Day 2 (Fri) | 36 |
| Day 3 (Sat) | 16 |
| Day 4 (Sun) | 2 |
| Day 5 (Mon) | 18 |
| Day 6 (Tue) | 30 |
| Day 7 (Wed) | 48 |
| Day 8 (Thu) | 120 |
| Total | 346 |
- New MRR: $70,762
- Gross revenue: $416,091
- Storytape total MRR (post-launch): $98,950
- Launch annual run rate (USD): $849,144
- Launch annual run rate (CAD): $1.09M
- Storytape total annual run rate (USD): $1.19M
2019 — RebelGive
Foyyay Inc. brought an idea to PCT: RebelGive.com, a church giving platform. The differentiator was a pass-through processing fee model — if processors charged 1.9%, RebelGive would pass that through, not sell it as 2.9% and pocket the difference like other church giving platforms did.
Structure: a new entity called RebelGive LLC was created, 50/50 owned by Pro Church Tools Inc. and Foyyay Inc.. Foyyay Inc. did the dev work; PCT brought distribution. Launched in 2019.
RebelGive launch numbers (2019)
- New subscriptions: 323
- Monthly billing: $11,675 MRR across 130 customers
- Annual billing: $13,162 MRR-equivalent across 193 customers
- Total MRR: $24,837
- Total collected (launch): $169,156
- Annual run rate: $298,044
2020 — The Nucleus merger
PCT was paying Foyyay Inc. significant money (upwards of six figures monthly) to support multiple separate products. The decision was made to merge everything under one entity:
- RebelGive LLC was renamed to Nucleus LLC
- RebelGive the product became Nucleus Giving
- Storytape the product became Nucleus Media
- The Nucleus website builder and the other products were now all under one roof
Ownership of Nucleus LLC after merger: approximately 50/50 between Pro Church Tools Inc. (via Tentmakers Inc.) and Foyyay Inc. — see the precise split in the next section.
The legal structure (current)
Nucleus LLC is an Idaho limited liability company. Ownership:
- Tentmakers Inc. — 49.5% of Nucleus LLC. Tentmakers Inc. is owned 100% by Pro Church Tools Inc.. It wasn’t strategy for PCT to own a US-based LLC directly for tax reasons, so Tentmakers Inc. is the holding entity that holds the PCT side.
- Foyyay Inc. — 50.5% of Nucleus LLC.
So Foyyay Inc. holds the slim majority of Nucleus LLC by 1 percentage point (50.5% vs 49.5%). When summarizing this casually, “approximately 50/50” is fine, but the precise legal split is 49.5 / 50.5.
Foyyay Inc. remains the dev team for Nucleus, located in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
What’s currently under Nucleus LLC
- Nucleus — the church website builder + comms platform. The flagship.
- Nucleus Giving — formerly RebelGive. Pass-through processing fee model.
- Nucleus Media — formerly Storytape. Stock video for churches. Now expanded to include other creative assets beyond stock video like social media templates, worship backgrounds, etc.
- The Launcher — free embeddable widget that lives on any church website (~17,000 churches signed up). Sub-product of Nucleus.
2016 → 2026 — The through-line (final boss mode)
The original 2016 Nucleus thesis was about next steps — getting people moving from passive spectators to active participants, with the internal website (the .info half of the Twin Website Framework) as the dedicated next-step engine.
The 2026 version of Nucleus is the ultimate fulfillment of that original promise. It now solves the next-steps problem on both sides:
- Externally — a great first impression for visitors (the
.comhalf of the original framework, modernized) - Internally — the 7-building-blocks methodology installed on the back of the platform: Assign Levels, Publish Policy, Give Each Ministry a Home, Supply Promotions Playbooks, Create the Weekly Bulletin, Commit to The Church Announcements Formula, Launch Your Central Hub
Ten years of running Nucleus surfaced every variation of how churches stumble on next steps internally. The 7 Building Blocks are the distilled answer.
The Twin Website Framework wasn’t wrong — it was early. The current Nucleus is what that framework was always pointing toward. Final-boss-mode for the original thesis.