Robert Maynard (born 1962) is an American businessman. He has co-founded companies such as 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.
Maynard was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2001. Since then, he has been active in advocacy for fellow patients, lecturing and writing about his experience with the disorder.[1]
From 1985 to 1987, he attended the Northern Arizona University, where he graduated with honors, received the Wall Street Journal Award, and was named a Distinguished Military Scholar. He was also inducted 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 the ISP Internet America, which within four years grew to over 145,000 subscribers.[citation needed] Though it began in Maynard's home, the company went public in 1998.
After departing Internet America, Maynard founded Dotsafe, a provider of internet filtering for educational sites.[2] In 2005, he co-founded LifeLock[3][4] with Todd Davis, which provides identity theft protection software. He resigned in June 2007 following a controversial story published in Phoenix New Times about his past. The story involved bankruptcy, an FTC investigation, and identity theft.[5][6][7]
Personal life
In the late 1990s, while he was the Chief Executive Officer of Dotsafe, Maynard had begun to suffer from an undiagnosed illness affecting various aspects of his life and work. After Dotsafe folded during the 'dotcom bust' in 2001, he sought medical advice and was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder.[8][9] In an interview with Adam Mendler of Thrive Global, Maynard recalled his experience with depression and the electroshock therapy used to treat him.[10] "I was originally diagnosed with Major Depression, which was why I underwent ECT. It was the side effects of the electroshock treatment – mainly the mania – that led doctors to my Bipolar diagnosis. I was 40 years old.".
Maynard still actively speaks and writes about Bipolar disorder.[9][11] " The most important thing people need to know is that this is a deadly, tragic illness with a mortality higher than many cancers. It is not a personality defect. My advice? Get the best treatment possible, and don’t stop until you are stabilized."
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
