40 Under 40
How he is using robots to help children with autism
By Staff report
Mar 22, 2019
Richard Margolin is part of the team that began dreaming up what it would mean to give children a cost-effective, inclusive education by using robots.
RoboKind, where Margolin serves as chief technology officer, worked with experts in the autism community and schools around the world to develop two products, robots4austism and robots4STEM, and curricula to pair with each.
“As a company that is breaking ground in the autism space, we had to find early adopters willing to take the risk of being the first schools,” said Margolin.
RoboKind had years of academic research behind it, but schools were afraid of the risk, according to Margolin.
“We thought that areas that are considered progressive in education would be the places to start, but we were very wrong,” said Margolin.
However, RoboKind dodged initial barriers when it shifted its focus from these areas.
“We overcame early resistance when we realized that rural areas were more willing to try new things than big urban schools districts because the rural areas did not have the resources to help these kids,” said Margolin. “They were will to try anything that could make a difference.”
Q&A with Richard Margolin, chief technology officer, RoboKind
What do you hope to accomplish at your organization in 2019? I hope to expand our reach significantly, this year we will more than double our existing number of schools using our robots4autism program, and will expand our newer robots4stem coding course from 20 schools to more than 120 programs. This will expand the number of students we work with from about 8,000 to around 25,000, giving a large number of students access to education technology and curriculum which will help them be more successful and productive throughout their lives.
What can North Texas do better to support your organization? We would love more support from larger companies in North Texas to help schools more quickly implement our technology by helping demonstrate and partnering with schools in the community to help give their students access to more inclusive education. We would also like partnerships to develop new curriculum to expand the populations of students we are working with.
Family: My family is a group of high achievers, I am currently the only person in my immediate family without an MBA. I founded RoboKind with my father, Fred Margolin, and we have grown the company from an idea into something which is more effective and helps more people in a much bigger way than we ever thought possible. My family is close and caring and supportive, but more in a mission driven sense than a touchy feely way. We are all people who are trying to be successful and helpful in everything we do and help each other learn faster and achieve goals. We get things done.
Who would be your dream mentor? Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix. He has built a company which became successful, pivoted and grew to become a disruptive force. While doing that he built a company culture focused on success, and excellence that both acquired and developed extraordinary talent. He has also become influential in funding real and significant change in the education space.
Non-profit or social involvement: Dallas Startup Week, Texas Society of Professional Engineer’s Engineers Week, UT Arlington Engineering Entrepreneurship Program, Jewish Federation’s Leadership Development Group, Gooch Elementary Career Day
About the company
robokind.com
Revenue: $2M
Number of employees: 24
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
By Staff report
Mar 22, 2019
By Staff report
Mar 22, 2019
https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/2019/03/22/richard-margolin-robokind.html
