How a friendship, a drive-through, and an unexpected calling became Truthly.
Instead of going to college when I was 18, I moved to Charlotte to be in a Christian band. The plan was simple: preach the Gospel from the stage and share its hope with my generation. We did tour, but not as much as I would have liked. So most of the time, I worked at the Chick-fil-A down the street.
That's where I met Jake.
I was taking orders in the drive-through. He was a regular — first job out of college, sleeping on his buddy's couch, one of the nicest and coolest guys I had ever met. One day, I noticed something on his passenger seat: a prayer book. I had one too. I kept it in my car so I could pray with it before my shift.
I asked if he went to church in the area. He said he was Catholic. I told him I was too. He said he was dating a Protestant girl who was learning about the Catholic faith and was probably going to come into the Church. I said I was dating a girl in the exact same situation.
We both sort of looked at each other. We knew we were supposed to be best friends.
We started going to Mass together at St. Ann, and that's where the Holy Spirit got to work. Jake and I spent hours with our girlfriends, walking through their questions about the faith — researching, reading, talking late into the night. Both of them eventually went through RCIA (as it was called then) and came into the Church. We were both married at St. Ann. And by then, we were so fired up about what we'd been learning and what we'd seen God do that we started doing street evangelization. We were literally going out on the sidewalks to talk with strangers about Jesus and His Church.
Then real life called. We had to get real jobs. Jake built a corporate career in tech, eventually becoming a startup executive. I went to college, then Notre Dame Law School, clerked for two federal judges, and joined a Charlotte firm doing corporate litigation.
Years passed. We were both heads-down in our careers, doing our best to be good husbands and dads along the way.
Then one day, Jake texted me. He wanted to get coffee.
He told me he'd just been on a Cursillo retreat, and he'd come away with a clear sense that God was calling him to do something big. This was right when AI was starting to gain traction. He'd been thinking about it — how this technology was going to reshape how people learn, how they ask questions, how they search for truth. And he kept coming back to the same thought: what if it could be used to help people learn and share the Catholic faith? We both remembered what it had been like, sitting up late with our girlfriends, trying to find good answers to hard questions. We would have given anything to have had a tool like that.
Jake pitched the idea. A Catholic AI tool — built to use this technology for good. I said yes almost before he finished.
I'd been in my career for a while by then. I'd been praying a lot. And I was feeling that particular kind of emptiness that creeps in when you're living for the next paycheck, or for the one after that. I felt a deep pull to give my life to something larger — to actually do the thing God made me to do. So Jake's "crazy idea" didn't feel crazy to me. It felt like an answer.
But it wasn't just excitement. It was conviction. We knew millions — eventually billions — of people would be bringing their deepest, most important questions to this technology. We didn't want them to just get affirmation back. We didn't want them to just hear what they wanted to hear. We wanted them to encounter the truth.
So we went all in. Jake left his career. With four kids at that point, he sold his house to fund Truthly's first stretch of growth. I worked nights and weekends — more than my wife wanted, for longer than she should have had to put up with — until I was finally able to leave the firm and focus on Truthly full-time.
Today, Truthly is one of the fastest-growing startups in the world. Thousands of people are using the app. Every day, we hear from people whose lives are being changed — people encountering the Catholic faith for the first time, coming back to the Church, learning their faith more deeply, finding answers to questions they've had for years. We've already seen more than we could have imagined.
And we know God is just getting started.
More than an app
Truthly isn't only an AI app. We're also creating cutting-edge Catholic media. We're building real, in-person community. Because the goal was never just to build a tool. The goal was to share the faith with as many people as possible, in ways that will actually make a difference.
And more than all that, Truthly is a movement.
A movement of Catholics and seekers who want truth above all else — who pursue it, who share it with love, and who let it shape every part of how they live.
A movement of people who aren't content with the shallow life the world is selling — who want the eternal things instead: truth, goodness, and beauty.
A movement of people who aren't afraid to take risks for the Gospel, who are so in love with Jesus that they can't help but talk about Him, who are obsessed with building the Kingdom of God, because they believe — really believe — that it's the only way the world gets renewed.
A word to you
If you've read this far, I want to say one more thing — and it's the most important thing.
God has a plan for your life. It may look big and public, or it may look quiet and hidden. It may be in your family. It may be in your parish. It may be something you can't yet imagine, sitting somewhere in a future you haven't met. He made you for a purpose — and He's waiting on you to say yes.
Truthly is ultimately a story about surrender. About trusting God when the road ahead is unclear. About saying yes before you know where He is leading…
There were moments of uncertainty, sacrifice, and holy risks... But through it all, God kept reminding us all of something simple: He does not ask for perfection. He asks for trust.
Our hope is that whenever someone encounters Truthly, they see what can happen when ordinary people fully abandon themselves to God.
Jake often shares this prayer with us because, in many ways, it became the prayer behind everything we are building:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Surrender to Jesus. He will take care of everything.
— Zac, co-founder, Truthly