#201: Robert Marks (Projector) — Keepsake and Personal Streaming for Legacy

Robert Marks founded Fidelity Voice and Data in 1999 with just a $600 investment, which he grew into a business generating over $30 million in revenue, making it one of the largest telecommunications and cloud services competitors throughout the Midwest. The company focused on providing high-speed Internet access to various industries. After selling the company in 2015, Robert turned his attention to giving back to his local community through various philanthropic initiatives. In 2020, however, Robert’s entrepreneurial spirit led him to solve a deeply personal problem during the pandemic—centered around the difficulty of sharing personal media with family. He raised $1.2 million and founded Projector as a keepsake company, building a personal streaming platform for legacy and memory preservation—the platform he wished had existed. The company now has thousands of subscribers, and Robert is in the process of raising a larger venture round to scale Projector. In our conversation, we unpack Robert’s journey as an entrepreneur, his transition from B2B to B2C, the nuances and opportunities within the keepsake and legacy market, how AI serves as technological leverage to lower the barriers to building companies, the lessons he imparts as an educator, the importance of corporate culture, his love for Cleveland, and much more! ----- LINKS: https://www.linkedin.com/in/-robertmarks/ https://projector.app/ ----- SPONSORS: Impact Architects & Ninety Impact Architects & Ninety Lay of The Land is brought to you by Ninety. As a Lay of The Land listener, you can leverage a free trial with Ninety, the platform that helps teams build great companies and the only officially licensed software for EOS® — used by over 7,000 companies and 100,000 users! This episode is brought to you by Impact Architects. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations throughout NEO, Impact Architects helps those leaders — many of whom we’ve heard from as guests on Lay of The Land — realize their visions and build great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much, that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love! As a listener, you can sit down for a free consultation with Impact Architects by visiting ia.layoftheland.fm! ----- Stay up to date by signing up for Lay of The Land's weekly newsletter — sign up here. Past guests include Justin Bibb (Mayor of Cleveland), Pat Conway (Great Lakes Brewing), Steve Potash (OverDrive), Umberto P. Fedeli (The Fedeli Group), Lila Mills (Signal Cleveland), Stewart Kohl (The Riverside Company), Mitch Kroll (Findaway — Acquired by Spotify), and over 200 other Cleveland Entrepreneurs. Connect with Jeffrey Stern on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypstern/ Follow Jeffrey Stern on X @sternJefe — https://twitter.com/sternjefe Follow Lay of The Land on X @podlayoftheland https://www.jeffreys.page/