Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacob Boyle.

Hi Jacob, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?

I’ve always said that where I am today is the culmination of two major themes that have followed me my entire life: Robotics & Mental Health.

A more professional theme, robots have been something I’ve worked on since I was 11 years old; starting in middle school on my school’s First Lego League team, then in high school as the co-CEO and engineering lead of their FIRST robotics team, and then going off to college for engineering and physics. Because of my background in robotics, the summer after my freshman year of college, I was picked up for an “internship” with an advanced military robotics startup on a multi-million dollar 2-year contract with the US Navy. And I put “internship” in quotes because it was a startup, which meant they looked at me and said “here’s a bright young engineer that we can underpay, overwork, and give a fancy title to and he will do whatever we want.” So I was their lead engineer, managing a team of 10 global engineers on mission critical robotics systems, for two years.

This is where the more personal theme of my life started to creep in, though. On the mental health side, I’ve struggled with severe anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide attempts since I was 13. For a long time I didn’t know what was going on with me until, one day in high school, my dad vanished and it would be 6 months before I found out he had been hospitalized for the same issues I was dealing with. It would be another 3 years until I got help for myself when my track coach found me self-harming after practice and brought me to the school therapist. This was 10-ish years ago, and unlike today there were no mental health tiktoks or influencers talking about getting therapy or how to take care of your mental health. Everything I learned from the school therapist was so new to me; nobody I knew had ever heard of mental health or taking care of it. So I made it a personal mission of mine to be there for any of my peers I saw struggling with their mental health and be the someone to talk to and show them that there is a way to get help and get better.

That personal mission ran into some SERIOUS challenges when I started my job at the robotics startup. For context, I went to school at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) in central NJ. The company was based in Stamford CT, a convenient 3 hour commute. The Navy’s research lab we worked with was on a base in southern Maryland, another convenient 3 hour commute in the opposite direction.

So between full-time college studying engineering, a full time job on a highly intensive project, and commuting up and down the east coast 2-3 times a week, I had no time for anyone else. And as I was doing this, a very large number of my peers in college, at home, and in my family started to develop serious issues with their mental health. I wanted to be there for them, and in many cases I was the ONLY person who knew what was going on. But I just could not because I was not around and had no time.

This all came to a head one day in October of 2017. We were late on a delivery of our robots to the Naval base in MD, so I was under incredible pressure to get everything up and running and delivered. After botching half of the delivery but successfully delivering the other half, the program manager from the Navy revealed what our robots were actually going to be used for: what I thought were supposed to be bomb defusing robots were going to be the bombs themselves. I had a 3 hour drive back to NJ with the weight of that knowledge twisting my stomach into knots, only to get back to campus at 10PM and finally be able to check my missed messages and see that one of my closest friends was thinking of ending her life and I was the only person she told, but I missed it because of all my responsibilities.

I knew I was putting my talents in robotics to the wrong things, and I was so hurt that I missed one of my closest loved ones’ in crisis that I knew I needed to do something differently. That’s when it clicked – what if I put my skills in advanced robotics to make sure that anyone who was struggling with their mental health had 24/7 access to private, personal support while they were waiting to get in touch with someone.

That was the start of what is now my company MARCo Health and MARCo: the Mental-Health Assisting Robot Companion. It’s been a 6 year journey trying to build up this company from the ground up to the point where we have supportive robots across the world helping tens of thousands with their mental health. But the experiences leading up to the first conception are what drove me to be where we are today and keep our mission going.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?

It has been an incredibly rough road. The struggles I’ve faced can really be broken down into three categories:

– Ongoing mental health issues. It’s hard to be a founder & CEO performing at superhuman 110% levels all the time when my brain is chemically disposed to do everything in its power to keep me from getting out of bed each and every day.

– Money – I graduated college with $90 in my bank account after starting a company that made robots that cost a minimum of $500 to build per robot. We haven’t taken on external investment outside of friends, family, and other business partners because investors don’t come within a mile of us (investors HATE hardware, and they HATE mental health because they don’t understand it).

– Finding good people. I always thought I had a knack for finding and keeping good & trustworthy people in my life until I started my business. I had my life savings stolen from me by one former business partner. Another was a lawyer who tried to maneuver himself into control and steal our patents. Another spent all of his time telling me what was wrong with me as CEO and not doing any work, and as soon as he was replaced, we made $250,000 in a few months.

Most recently, and most egregiously, was the betrayal of a longtime friend and trusted business advisor/partner. I had known him for years and trusted that by bringing him on board, he would be able to grow our business 100x because of his history of successes and strong network of connections who adored him. And at first, it seemed to be working – he got us sales, we moved into his office building, he gave us warehouse space and social media space at no extra cost, everything seemed to be going right. Until he started asking for short term loans, or money for “initiatives” that we would get returns on or repayment on.

All said and done, he stole $28,000 from us and forced me to lay off all of my team except two employees. He was embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from unsuspecting companies and individuals into a transnational ponzi scheme that’s now under criminal investigation. And beyond the money, he defrauded us about the ownership of the office space: he was a squatter illegally subletting the space out to us, so when he was found out and kicked out, we lost our office and our assets and inventory were impounded for months. The company was all but shut down for months because of the damage he did.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?

MARCo Health is revolutionizing mental healthcare by bridging the gap between human connection and advanced technology. Our AI-powered social robot, MARCo: the Mental-Health Assisting Robot Companion, offers personalized mental health support, providing a compassionate and effective augmentation of traditional therapy.

MARCo is designed to address the growing mental health crisis by offering accessible, affordable, and on-demand care. Backed by clinical studies, MARCo has proven to be highly effective in alleviating symptoms of depression and anxiety, and unlike mental health apps, MARCo is a physical robot that’s proven to keep clients engaged 11.5x longer than apps only.

We are highly mission driven, as our entire executive board is made up of suicide survivors (or parents of suicide survivors) and mental health professionals. All of us have been directly affected by the challenges with the current state of mental healthcare and are committed to increasing access to quality, low-cost mental health support for all. We are proud that MARCo has reached over 15,000 users in 13 countries around the world.

MARCo can be used in therapy, schools, hospitals, healthcare, and even for personal use. You can buy MARCo online through our store, Amazon, and other retailers for as little as $299.

How do you define success?

I define success as the number of people that the technology I’ve developed helps. As a startup CEO, there’s constant pressure to “be successful” as in make millions of dollars every month and scale your company like wildfire at all costs. But that doesn’t work in the mental health world, and that doesn’t matter to me. The small number of customers who have directly told me MARCo was a literal life-saver mean more to me than any number of zeros at the end of my paycheck.

Pricing:

• $299 – MARCo-Lite
• $499 – MARCo-III
• $999 – MARCo Premium
• $180/yr – Therapist & Professional Dashboard

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.marcohealthtech.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcotherobot/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marcohealthtech
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marco-technologies-llc
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFJ3NvfmJiJ3mq1CEXHSv0Q/videos
• Other: Store: shop.marcohealthtech.com