Robert Maynard Jr.

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Robert Maynard
Robert Maynard Jr.
Robert-maynard-jr.jpg
Robert Maynard Jr.
Born1962 (age 6263)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materNorthern Arizona University (B.A.,1987)
OccupationCEO
Known forCo-Founder of LifeLock, Founder of Internet America & SurchX

Robert Maynard (born 1962) is an American businessman. He is the co-founder of the companies LifeLock, Internet America, Dotsafe, Kandoo, and SurchX. Both Internet America and LifeLock went public and SurchX was sold to the financial technology company Interpayments in 2020.

Contents

After displaying many symptoms of Bipolar disorder early in his life, Maynard was diagnosed with the disease in 2001. Since then, he has served as an advocate for fellow patients, lecturing and writing extensively about his experience with the 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.[ citation needed ]

From 1985 to 1987, he attended Northern Arizona University, where he graduated with honours, received the Wall Street Journal Award, and was named a Distinguished Military Scholar. He was also induced into the Beta Gamma Sigma honor society and nominated for the Truman Scholarship for excellence in leadership and academics.[ citation needed ]

Career

In the late 1990s, Maynard co-founded, from his home, the ISP Internet America, which within four years grew to over 145,000 subscribers.[ citation needed ] The company went public in 1998.

After departing Internet America, Maynard founded Dotsafe, a provider of Internet filtering for educational sites, which uncovered multiple online predators. [2] In 2005, he co-founded LifeLock [3] [4] with Todd Davis, which provides indentity theft protection software. In 2008, after moving with his family to Oahu, Hawaii, he started the water sports business Kandoo.[ citation needed ] Maynard also registered the website iValidate.me, which he thought might become an online consumer-direct credit bureau when fully launched. [5]

After registering iValidate.me, he and a team of friends and former employees in Phoenix, Arizona founded founded SurchX, an enterprise SaaS (Softtware-as-a-service) company that allows merchants to recover their credit card processing fees through surcharging, which is now legal in 44 states. [ citation needed ]

After the sale of SurchX to Interpayments in 2020, Maynard became debilitated by his illness for four years. He subsequently recovered and in January 2025 launched The Secret Agent, an AI business automation and security platform.[ citation needed ]

Personal life

In the late 1990s, while the Chief Executive Officer of Dotsafe, Maynard began to suffer from an undiagnosed illness that affected all aspects of his life and work, and eventually led to his divorce. After Dotsafe folded during the dotcom bust in 2001, he finally sought medical advice and was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. [ citation needed ]

Seeking a cure, he underwent Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), which he claimed on his website was the reason for many of the confusing statements he would later make about his past, as the treatment affected his memory. [6]

Maynard is still an active speaker and writer about Bipolar disorder. [6] [7]

See also

References

  1. Maynard, Robert (Jan 23, 2024). "I get depressed over bad things". Quora. Retrieved Jan 23, 2024.
  2. Buyikian, Teresa (August 23, 1999). "Yet Another Dot Com Tempts Agency Contenders". Ad Week.
  3. Debbie Carlson (31 January 2014). "Protect financial information from theft". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 30 May 2014.
  4. Emily Jane Fox (19 December 2013). "4 things to do after your credit card has been hacked". CNN Money. Retrieved 30 May 2014.
  5. "Official website". iValidate. Archived from the original on 2014-07-20.
  6. 1 2 "Being Bipolar". RobertMaynardjr.com. Retrieved 2019-10-14.
  7. SurchX (2019-06-05). Robert Maynard Founder of SurchX Delivers Heartfelt Keynote at 2019 Phoenix Startup Week . Retrieved 2025-01-14 via YouTube.