Changing Diapers While Changing the World

A year ago, I spent my first Father’s Day without my dad after losing him to esophageal cancer. This year, I celebrated Father’s Day for the first time as a dad myself, just days before launching Roar Social , a social media platform that will make the world a better place for my 7-month-old son.

Building a family and Roar Social simultaneously has been the most challenging and rewarding experience of my life. Embarking on the journey to fatherhood through surrogacy required significant time and resources. When the time finally came for my husband and I to have a baby, I realized it was also the right time to birth Roar Social – an idea that had been percolating in my mind for decades.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to make a difference in the world. My mom, a special education teacher, and my father, a public servant and economics professor, instilled in me the value of giving back. As a 12-year-old kid obsessed with my Apple II computer, I dreamed about using technology as a tool to help people make a positive difference in the world. I revisited this idea throughout my many careers. In 2011, while working closely with early digital influencers, I saw firsthand how powerful social media could be. I thought this power ought to be channeled into an engine driving social impact – but I determined the marketplace wasn’t quite ready.

Flash forward to 2020. The pandemic raged, and Gen Z showed us just how much they cared about social issues. I knew the moment was finally right. This generation had a voice – now they needed a tool. It was time to listen to that 12-year-old boy who wanted to use technology for good.

It took nearly three years and a lot of talented people to bring Roar Social to life. The first six months we had just a small, scrappy team working around the clock. We built a demo prototype, then our Alpha, then our Beta. As the platform became more and more fully realized, our team’s excitement and determination grew – we were building something truly special. Now, in 2023, the deeply-troubled state of legacy social media only further confirms that a disruption is needed. Roar Social aims to upend the social model – not just with new features, but an entirely new mission.

At the same time, my journey to fatherhood was equally filled with unpredictable and emotionally grueling twists and turns. Embryo creation didn’t come easily, and then we stalled out on finding a gestational surrogate. COVID made an already-complicated process nearly impossible. We were already eager to become parents, but our urgency exponentially increased when my dad got sick.

In December 2021, when my father lost his voice, we first thought it was laryngitis. Jeffery, usually very talkative, had to rest his vocal cords, so our almost-daily phone calls slowed to a trickle. A few weeks later, we got the devastating news: It wasn’t laryngitis, it was esophageal cancer – and it was inoperable.

In the summer of 2021, I visited my dad at his home in Buffalo. He was weak from several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Sitting next to him, I explained to him the new social media platform I had been building.

I told my dad the idea for Roar Social was simple. We were reimagining social media as a powerful engine for social impact. We would offer users the same entertaining viral content they enjoy on TikTok, but every post had a purpose, and every action raised money for “Hero Causes” that users cared about. By replacing the “like” with the “give” through seamless micro-donations, and by gamifying the experience (“Gamified Giving”) we were revolutionizing social media and philanthropy at the same time.

I’ll never forget my trepidation as I finished describing Roar Social to my dad. He was a very risk-averse man. I was certain my dad would tell me that it was impractical to start a family while simultaneously launching a startup.

Dad could barely speak, but he squeezed my hand and whispered the most powerful words a son could ever hear: “I’ve never been more proud of you,” he said. “Your idea is going to change the world. Go do it. You have to make the world better. And don’t worry about the timing with the baby. You can do both. I know you can.”

My dad passed away a few weeks later, but his encouragement propelled me forward.?While I’m sad that my dad was never able to witness the unveiling of Roar Social, I’m grateful he survived long enough to see my team start building the platform. As we move Roar Social quickly towards its Beta launch this summer, the overwhelmingly positive response so far has echoed my dad’s encouraging words. I believe now, more than ever, that Roar Social is the right platform at the right time. Our $10 million in seed funding is a vote of confidence in me, my team, and our belief that social media can unlock humanity’s huge potential for altruism.

Just a few months after my dad’s passing, my husband and I finally met an amazing gestational surrogate. This surrogate changed our lives. In November 2022, my son Zachary was born. We gave him the middle name “Jeffrey,” in honor of my dad, so he would always feel connected to his grandfather, even though they never had the chance to meet.

Parenting an infant while simultaneously building Roar Social has been exhilarating, exhausting and insane. But those heartfelt words from my dad, among the last he ever spoke to me, inspire me each and every day to be a better father. Being a father has been the most rewarding and emotional experience of my life.?It’s been surreal in the most amazing ways.?Because of Roar Social, I won’t just get to tell my son Zack to “make the world better” – I’ll be giving him a powerful tool to do it.