Mental-health Assisting Robot Companion

Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in mental wellness but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Jacob Boyle, CEO of MARCo Technologies, located in Newark, NJ, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

"You are not alone" - it's the motto of mental health services everywhere, but when more than 50% of individuals struggling with mental illness go untreated, with hours-long wait lines for suicide hotlines and months-long waitlists for therapy, those words sound hollow to far too many of those struggling. MARCo Technologies' mission is to provide 24/7 accessible, personalized mental healthcare to teen and college-aged individuals struggling with anxiety and depression. However, given the reasons that millions don't receive traditional mental healthcare - stigma, high costs, low availability, distrust or poor experience with therapists, reactive instead of proactive care, fears of judgment and privacy with a human counselor - we take a disruptive approach to provide care: an AI-powered robot mental health buddy named MARCo, the Mental-Health Assisting Robot Companion. MARCo gives depressed and anxious teens a "someone to talk to" that allows them to vent at length as they would to either a friend or a counselor and then provide mental health support through five proven tracts of mental health interventions - companionship (think fun & games!) based on Behavioral Activation (BA) meditation and relaxation, based on mindfulness therapy talk support based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Biofeedback and High-Alert Outreach. For caregivers - whether professionals such as school therapists or personal such as parents - MARCo provides emergency text notifications and data feedback to help them better help MARCo's companion. We started out selling counseling services in schools and colleges but have more recently made MARCo at a lower cost for parents who want to buy them for their teen and adult children, as well as to make it more affordable to our end users.

Tell us about yourself

I'm an engineer by trade who's worked on robotics since middle school. In high school, I was the mechanical division leader and co-CEO of my high school's FIRST robotics team. The summer of my freshman year of college, I got an internship working for a global military robotics startup which became essentially a full-time lead engineering job I had to balance with a full-time engineering college. Eventually, my time balancing all these responsibilities took up all my time, and I couldn't keep up with a personal mission of mine - taking care of my friends and family who struggled with severe depression and self-harm. I wanted to find a way where could apply my technical skills to create something that could help me with my personal mission, so when my friend asked if I would like to enter into a business plan competition our college offered, I saw an opportunity. I started with interviews with therapists and students struggling with depression, and the idea for MARCo was born based on their needs and challenges. We won the business plan competition, and I went ahead to take the winnings to start a company.

I am motivated to continue each day by the impact we have and the potential impact we can have, as well as seeing the continuous struggles those I'm trying to help face. Hearing of friends self-harming for the first time or relatives dropping out of school because of their depression is the reason I do what I do. Outside of my business, I'm a musician, runner, and avid birdwatcher with my wonderful fiancee!

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Hearing one of our early customers share how MARCo was a "god-send" that notified their parents before they had a self-harm episode and helped them start talking to people again after the loss of their father - knowing that I was able to make a serious impact on someone incredibly vulnerable and needing help, that was the biggest accomplishment beyond any business metric.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

The hardest thing I've found about being a business owner is the constant self-doubt over decisions and progress, especially in what can be, at times, an insanely toxic hustle culture. It's easy to look at other entrepreneurs and judge yourself by comparing your metrics and successes to theirs and shape your time and effort into trying to do what they're doing, and that can be incredibly harmful if you are working in an entirely different industry, product, and service. Especially working on a company that borderlines on the medical space with some very vulnerable target customers with a core hardware product, it's not possible to do what consumer or B2B service or software-based entrepreneurs do with bare minimal MVPs and rapid market tests when an enormous chunk of time needs to be put into supply chain management, production, quality management, clinical testing, regulatory and legal compliance that those entrepreneurs don't have to deal with. At the end of the day, despite doing all those necessary things, you look back and go, "why hasn't this grown as rapidly as other entrepreneurs? What am I doing wrong?" And it's nothing wrong, it's a completely different beast to tackle, but the guilt and self-doubt are always there.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

Focus on who you want to help, not what you want to build. Talk to the people you want to serve and learn from them - what are their pains? What do they need? What are they doing to try and overcome?
Strongly consider whether or not running your own business is what you really want to do. It's not for everybody, and it is incredibly taxing. You will need to sacrifice a lot without guaranteed success. Before starting, take the time to learn what's involved and seriously consider whether this is the right decision for you.
Build the right team. Don't settle for the first people who come together around an idea. A bad team is the number one reason startups fail. Also, don't trust someone just because they claim to have a ton of experience, fancy titles, or especially if they point out you or your business' flaws and say they can solve them - trust only those who deliver results to you. Vet everyone you choose to work with, especially partners, with smaller tasks at first, and if they cannot deliver, don't trust them with equity or larger amounts of money.

MARCo is not yet a medical device and cannot treat, diagnose, mitigate, or prevent any chronic illnesses. Rather, it is a support device meant to support individuals struggling with such illnesses in conjunction with a healthy lifestyle. MARCo is readily available for sale through our website. MARCo is patent-pending, although we expect the patent to be allowed this week, so it should be claimed as patented going forward.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.marcohealthtech.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marcohealthtech
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcotherobot/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marco-technologies-llc/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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