Robert Maynard (born 1962) is an American businessman. He is the co-founder of LifeLock, Internet America, SurchX, and several smaller companies. Internet America and LifeLock both went public and were subsequently sold for substantial returns. His most recent company, SurchX, was sold to Interpayments in 2020.
Although he had many signals of illness in early life, Maynard was not diagnosed with Bipolar disorder until 2001, by the time he had already founded Internet America, which went public in 1998. In 2005, Maynard co-founded Lifelock with Todd Davis. In 2007, he resigned from his position at LifeLock and relocated to Hawaii in 2008, where he started a water sports company named Kandoo.
Maynard also regularly speaks and writes about what it is like to live with and overcome bipolar disorder.[1]
Early life
Maynard was born in 1962 in Phoenix, Arizona, and enlisted in the US Marine Corps in 1981, where he served until 1985. He then took a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the US Army Reserve. He served as an officer in the Army's 12th Special Forces Group for nine years.
From 1985 to 1987, he attended Northern Arizona University, where he graduated in five semesters with honours, including the Wall Street Journal Award, Distinguished Military Scholar, induction into Beta Gamma Sigma and nomination for the Truman Scholarship for excellence in leadership and academics.[citation needed]
Career
In the late 1990s, Maynard had success as the founder of Internet America, an ISP he founded from his home. Within 4 years, the company had grown to over 145,000 subscribers.[citation needed]
Shortly after departing Internet America, Maynard founded Dotsafe. It became a provider of Internet filtering for education and uncovered multiple online predators.[2] Following his diagnosis, Maynard co-founded LifeLock in 2005, along with Todd Davis. LifeLock specializes in identity theft protection. The system created by Maynard and Davis was intended to detect fraudulent actions for a variety of financial services.[3][4]
Maynard also registered the website iValidate.me, which he thought might become an online consumer-direct credit bureau when fully launched.[5]
Post iValidate.me, he gathered a team of friends and former employees around him and founded SurchX in Phoenix, Arizona. SurchX is an enterprise SaaS company that levels the playing field for merchants against bigger players by allowing them to recover their credit card processing fees through surcharging, which is now legal in 44 states. SurchX was sold to Interpayments in 2020.
After the sale to Interpayments, Maynard became debilitated by his illness for four years. He has subsequently recovered and launched The Secret Agent in January 2025.[citation needed]
Personal life
In the late 1990s, while the Chief Executive Officer of Dotsafe, Maynard began to suffer from an as-yet undiagnosed illness that affected his work. Maynard has said on his website that the condition affected all aspects of his life and even led him to a divorce. After Dotsafe folded during the dotcom bust in 2001, Maynard sought further medical advice on his condition and was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. [citation needed]
Maynard has been an advocate for patients with bipolar disorder since then. His disorder was a major factor in his leaving LifeLock. In an effort to seek a cure, he underwent Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT). Maynard claimed that this therapy was the main reason for many of his confusing statements about his past, as the treatment affected his memory.[6]
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