Zac Stern was a part of closing VC deals in NYC while still in college at the prestigious NYU Stern School of Business. He was hired upon graduation as an associate with a name-brand VC firm.
All that focus on achievement didn’t keep him from falling in love. It was a long-distance relationship spanning half the globe that served as the inspirational kernel for Zac’s creation, OFFICIAL, the next generation of social media to build healthy relationships. Zac has tapped into a famished market of people hungry for knowledge on how to prioritize their relationships and keep them healthy. OFFICIAL is seeing success as a forward-thinking, altruistic, relationship model for coupleship.
What is OFFICIAL all about?
OFFICIAL is the next generation of social media specifically designed to keep relationships healthy. Finding someone is easy. Keeping them is special. OFFICIAL looks to fill the void that remains once a relationship is formed by fostering a lasting and healthy relationship between an individual and significant other. OFFICIAL is built for couples looking to prioritize their relationship.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I was a student at NYU’s Stern School of Business (no relation btw), interning, and then working for a venture capital firm and was offered a full-time position upon graduation.
From a personal side, I was dating someone long-distance at the beginning of 2019 while still in school and studying abroad. I was in London, and she was in NYC. What was ironic was that I met her two weeks before I left to study abroad. So, we started our relationship with a lot of calls, texts, and facetimes because we couldn’t be together. This led me to realize that I needed a way to remember everything, so I started making a notes tab on my phone to remember things she would say, then I made another one to remember things about her family or other tidbits. At that same time, as we started getting more serious, she would come and visit, and we would travel together around Europe. We would research places to visit within cities and create Instagram-saved folders.
What we quickly realized is how inefficient our process was: we still had to find where every place was and research all of the addresses. What we ended up doing is favoriting every spot on one of our phones’ maps so that we could see once we got to our destination how close we would be to everything. While it was tedious, it was the only option we had so we smiled and just did it. I knew there had to be an easier way. Also, many of my friends were in relationships and what I noticed was that everyone wanted to be the “perfect” couple; the couple that had the best dates, cutest photos, the best sex. I realized that there was nothing out there for couples to help them be better, and that’s how I got the idea for OFFICIAL.
What are your plans, how do you plan to grow this company?
Long term, when I think of OFFICIAL, I view it as a platform that helps people with every relationship they may have, whether it’s their most intimate with their partner, or even with themselves. For me what this means is that I won’t be done until OFFICIAL can truly help people across all facets of their lives and to create a new term within social media. I believe that social media is a wonderful thing, but I want to create the first relationship media company.
Our goal is to make couples’ lives better by helping their relationship and making them stronger. We plan to do that by helping establish date nights, enhancing communication, and remembering the little things.
We are now developing future features to enhance intimacy, demonstrate what a healthy vs. toxic relationship may look like, and educate the user on relationships and their partners.
There is nothing like this out there and that’s one of the most critical parts, we know that we have to get this done right and perfectly to allow for our couples to be happy. We plan to grow the company as quickly as we can. I have 1000’s of ways that I want to make OFFICIAL better. There is no shortage of ideas, merely a shortage of time!
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
My biggest mistake was trying to do too much too quickly and thinking that I had to do everything, instead of owning one thing and being the best at it. When we first launched our product was in its beta stage and what we quickly realized was that people weren’t using 50% of the features that we built. At first, I was disappointed, but then I realized that it was because we did it the quick way instead of the right way.
Going back, I would have focused on the app’s key features, instead of trying to give the user everything at once. I tried to move too quickly and get things done, instead of getting it done the right way first and doing it perfectly.
That being said, I don’t think there would ever be a truly perfect time to launch. No matter the amount of time spent trying to perfect things, mistakes are inevitable. We made mistakes and we learned a lot from this initial launch.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
We would be arrogant to say there are no competitors within our space, but our competitors have different end goals than we do which makes things a lot easier. Our biggest competitor focuses extensively on curating dates within NYC for couples, and their content is wonderful, but I would rather try to help people long term than just help them find where to go on a Saturday night. Also, OFFICIAL is not just available in one city or specific geographical region. We have established national partnerships that allow us to provide content for users around the USA, and soon, internationally. This allows anyone to go on and find content from us.
We also realized that there are no platforms that are designed to share our most tender moments with couples, Instagram does a remarkable job but there is a stigma about posting too much of your significant other.
We separate ourselves by trying to establish a platform for couples to do more together and be happier together. Our goal isn’t photos posted, messages sent, or even swipes. Our focus is helping people live a happier life, and our success at doing that is our most important KPI.
What is one thing that you daily to grow as an entrepreneur?
Entrepreneurship is a wave of emotions and the best way to ride them is to find some sense of structure within your life to make sure that you are doing what you love while still having time to be a person and living a sustainable life. Shortly after going full-time on OFFICIALl, I realized that I needed ways to release my stress and frustration from work, so I ultimately started working out two days a week, which then led to four, which then led to six/seven. It became part of my routine and now I always have something to look forward to. This is my me-time. This has allowed me to know that even when times are tough, I still have this time to myself. This allows me time to clear my mind on a daily basis.
What are three books or courses you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
Zero to One – One of the best startup books I have ever read, it goes over the difficulties of how hard it is from going and starting something from scratch. This book really hit home for me after re-reading it because of how difficult it is for OFFICIAL to establish a new market category, the relationship market.
Zapp – This is the first business book that I read and truly understood. My father gave me this book, which he had given to him when he started to work for Xerox. The book is simple yet powerful, it goes into how people can see each other as managers and what to do to effectively manage people both up and down.
Algorithms to Live By – This book isn’t about startups or business, but I love it because it goes to show that even what we consider random within our lives can still be explained by rules we cannot understand at times. This book really goes to show that by changing perspectives we can understand what is truly random, and what we can explain.
If you only had $100 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
For me, if I only had $100, I would spend the $100 to incorporate the company and then hire some college interns for credit to help. From there I would create a marketing firm to help guide companies towards marketing for a younger audience. At which point I would take my VC experience and consult on pitch decks and how to raise money. I would then take the profits from everything, hire the interns, and then grow the business into a full consulting agency for startups to help them grow dramatically and teach people the guerrilla marketing I learned throughout this process.
How can we get in touch with you?
If anyone wants to find me they can on Twitter at @sternzac, or by checking out our website www.getofficial.co, if you want to reach out to the team and chat more, reach out to contact@getofficial.co or our Instagram @getofficialapp!
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