Founder's story
We take what we do seriously — building powerful, beautiful software for the church.
Clearstream was founded in 2010 by Michael Lepinay and Trevor Gehman.
We knew we wanted to build something together, but weren't sure what that something was. In those early years, we did a number of things – website design, live streaming for churches (hence the name Clearstream), marketing services for businesses – anything to get revenue in the door.
A couple years in, we got into texting. We quickly saw that the options for businesses and organizations wanting to using texting were less than ideal. Terrible is probably the right word. Everything was ugly, slow, and bloated with unnecessary features. So we started building the antithesis of that – something well-designed, fast, and intuitive. We released the first version in 2013.
By 2016, Clearstream was being used by tons of businesses, including some Fortune 500 companies. But we had no passion for what we were offering: a text message marketing platform.
However, we had a few churches as customers, and we really enjoyed working with them. We grew up in the church, and felt like we could really make a difference, so it seemed to make sense. So, we pivoted! Since then, we've worked with thousands of churches, including some of the largest in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.
We've come a long way since 2010, but that drive to create something exceptional hasn't changed.
We take what we do seriously — building powerful, beautiful software for the church.
Michael and Trevor
Co-founders, brothers-in-law, and mortal enemies