Telling the stories of builders in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. Jeffrey Stern is a NYC transplant, entrepreneur (co-founder @ Axuall; founding team @ Votem), product manager, investor, and optimist who believes telling the stories of those most inspiring builders around us is one of the best ways to learn and to inspire more to build.
Lay of The Land #201: Robert Marks (Projector) — Keepsake and Personal Streaming for Legacy
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👋 Hello – My conversation today is with Robert Marks. Robert 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! With Love, Jeffrey |
Lay of The Land
Telling the stories of builders in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. Jeffrey Stern is a NYC transplant, entrepreneur (co-founder @ Axuall; founding team @ Votem), product manager, investor, and optimist who believes telling the stories of those most inspiring builders around us is one of the best ways to learn and to inspire more to build.
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