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BY ALLISON POTTERMAN

In the landscape of technology, where blistering speed often eclipses thoughtful progress, Mark Varkevisser charts a different course. As the founder at the helm of IAMVC Holdings, Vibration Robotics, and BygHeart, Mark's work is a testament to a future where machines don’t just outperform; they understand, empathize, and amplify humanity’s essence.

Mark’s journey from technologist to innovation architect wasn’t the product of a single epiphany; it was an accumulation of moments shaped by a lifetime immersed in technology and systems thinking. “I didn’t just want to build products — I wanted to build platforms for progress,” Mark reflects. This vision birthed IAMVC Holdings, a venture designed to breathe life into big ideas. It’s an umbrella under which imagination and innovation work in harmony, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible while rooting technology in purpose.

At the core of this ecosystem, Vibration Robotics serves as the catalyst for cutting-edge research and development. The lab isn’t just where machines learn to think faster or act intelligently; it’s where they learn to care. From AI drug discovery to synthetic data generation, empathy is the compass steering every development. “Intelligence without emotional awareness is incomplete,” Mark asserts.

This philosophy finds its fullest expression at BygHeart, co-founded with Ariel Viduya Manosca, where empathy becomes a design requirement. BygHeart isn’t content with machines that merely interact — it aims to cultivate genuine human-machine relationships. The platform is about recognizing emotion in a way that respects and responds to human needs.

Mark is refreshingly transparent about how empathy guides innovation. In the early days of BygHeart, a pivotal shift occurred when initial user feedback described the technology as emotionally flat despite its technical prowess. “We paused development to listen,” Mark shares, underscoring how this moment redirected their approach. BygHeart pivoted to a contextual emotion loop, a breakthrough that transformed mechanical interactions into meaningful engagements. “Empathy isn’t a feature; it’s a feedback system,” Mark notes, highlighting how genuine curiosity about the human experience uncovers innovations that raw data cannot.

Balancing ethical imperatives with financial goals is more of a discipline than a dilemma for Mark. The approach at IAMVC Holdings sees ethics as a competitive advantage rather than a cost. Decisions, like delaying the commercialization of their AI drug discovery platform to ensure ethical validation, underscore that profits built on integrity yield sustainable success. As Mark explains, “Our ROI isn’t just Return on Investment — it’s Return on Integrity.”

Mark’s commitment to empathy stems not from triumphs but from personal challenges. Faced with disconnection amid a life surrounded by innovation, he experienced firsthand the void that soulless technology creates. These experiences compelled him to prioritize emotional intelligence as much as technical excellence, infusing technology with the human touch it often lacks.

“I want people to say that we built technology that felt human,” Mark muses, envisioning a legacy where kindness and precision coexist. As the narrative around Vibration Robotics and BygHeart unfolds, Mark hopes it will center not on technical achievements but on the intent to blend empathy with engineering — and the profound impact of that convergence. Ultimately, it’s the trust they embed within their technology that Mark hopes will define his story: a reminder that the future is not just about what technology can achieve, but about how it makes us feel every step of the way.

Featured Interview

When Technology Learns to Care: Inside the World of IAMVC, Vibration Robotics, and BygHeart

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FEATURING Mark Varkevisser

Below is our interview with Mark Varkevisser.

{Introduction}

What was the moment you knew you wanted to build something of your own, and why was IAMVC Holding & Vibration Robotics & Bygheart chosen as your venture?

There was never just one moment — it was an accumulation of them. I’ve spent most of my life surrounded by technology, creativity, and systems thinking, always curious about how things connect beneath the surface. Over time, I realized I didn’t just want to build products — I wanted to build platforms for progress.

That realization became the foundation of IAMVC Holdings, my innovation and venture ecosystem. IAMVC acts as the umbrella that allows big ideas to grow in parallel, giving structure and shared resources to multiple R&D initiatives while keeping creativity alive.

From there, Vibration Robotics emerged as the core research and development powerhouse. It’s where advanced systems come to life — from quantum-AI drug discovery and synthetic data generation to cybersecurity frameworks and AI orchestration tools. The mission is simple but ambitious: build technologies that think deeper, act faster, and care more.

Then came BygHeart, co-founded with Ariel Viduya Manosca — an empathy-native AI platform that brings emotional intelligence to technology. BygHeart is about bridging logic and feeling, giving machines the capacity to understand and respond to human emotion in real time.

The thread connecting all of this is purpose. Every company, every system, is rooted in the belief that technology should have heart. I started these ventures not just to innovate, but to humanize innovation — to make sure that as our systems evolve, they still serve people first.

How do you ensure that empathy remains at the core of your technological developments?

Empathy isn’t just a principle at my companies — it’s a design requirement. From the very beginning, I believed that intelligence without emotional awareness is incomplete. Whether we’re developing an AI companion that understands tone and context or a quantum-driven drug discovery platform, empathy guides how the technology should feel to those it serves.

At Vibration Robotics, empathy shows up in how we approach ethical design. Every prototype must pass what we call the Human Impact Review — a simple but powerful process where we ask: Who does this help, who might it harm, and how can we design better? This framework keeps humanity at the center of innovation.

With BygHeart, empathy becomes measurable. We’ve built AI systems capable of detecting and adapting to emotional states in real time, allowing for genuine human–machine understanding. It’s not about simulating emotion — it’s about respecting it.

And on a leadership level, empathy is the core of how I run my teams. I lead by listening. Technical excellence is easy to teach; emotional intelligence isn’t. By embedding empathy into culture, not just code, we create technology that serves with both precision and compassion.

In short, empathy isn’t an add-on — it’s the operating system of everything we build.

How do you balance financial goals with the ethical imperatives of empathy-driven technologies?

Balancing ethics and economics isn’t a conflict — it’s a discipline. At IAMVC Holdings, we approach empathy not as a cost but as a competitive advantage. Ethical, human-centered design creates technologies people trust, and trust always compounds faster than profit alone.

Each venture under our umbrella — Vibration Robotics, BygHeart, and our other R&D initiatives — operates from a unified philosophy: Purpose drives performance. For example, when developing our Quantum-AI Drug Discovery Platform, we could have commercialized early. Instead, we chose to validate ethically first — ensuring that our AI-generated compounds didn’t just optimize data but improved real-world patient outcomes. That decision delayed short-term revenue but built long-term credibility and impact.

Similarly, with BygHeart, our empathy-native AI isn’t designed to manipulate emotion but to understand it. We turned down several partnerships that wanted to repurpose the tech for persuasive marketing because it conflicted with our core principle — “Empathy without exploitation.”

So the balance comes from clarity. We know who we are and what we stand for. Every business model, licensing deal, or investor conversation filters through that lens. Financial success becomes sustainable when it’s built on integrity, and empathy ensures we never lose sight of the human being on the other side of the screen.

In short, our ROI isn’t just Return on Investment — it’s Return on Integrity.

Can you share a moment where empathy in design led to an unexpected breakthrough?

Absolutely. One of the clearest moments came during the early development of BygHeart, our empathy-native AI platform.
Initially, our team approached the system as a purely analytical challenge — detect emotion, respond appropriately, optimize engagement. It worked on paper, but in testing, people described the experience as “technically impressive but emotionally flat.”

That feedback was the turning point. We paused development and spent weeks simply listening — to users, to therapists, to voice actors, even to individuals sharing their stories of loneliness and connection. From that research, we realized empathy isn’t about accuracy — it’s about attunement. The goal wasn’t just to detect an emotion; it was to respond in a way that made people feel understood.

That insight reshaped the entire architecture. We built a contextual emotion loop — a model that doesn’t just react but remembers emotional states over time and adapts its tone accordingly. The result was extraordinary: user satisfaction jumped, emotional engagement metrics tripled, and the system began forming what testers described as “meaningful interactions.”

It taught us that empathy isn’t a feature; it’s a feedback system. When you design with genuine curiosity about the human experience, you uncover innovations that data alone could never reveal.

That single pivot — born from humility and listening — became the foundation for everything we’ve built since, from ethical AI frameworks at Vibration Robotics to human-centered systems across the IAMVC ecosystem.

What personal experience most influenced your commitment to empathy in tech?

My commitment to empathy in technology didn’t come from success — it came from struggle.
There was a period in my life when I was surrounded by innovation but felt completely disconnected from it. I was building systems that were brilliant in performance yet empty in purpose. Around that same time, I was also navigating personal loss, anxiety, and a sense of isolation that forced me to question what connection really means — both human and digital.

That experience reshaped me. It made me realize that the most advanced technology in the world means nothing if it can’t make people feel seen, supported, or understood. That’s when empathy stopped being a buzzword and became my north star.

When I co-founded BygHeart, that philosophy crystallized — it was about giving technology a heartbeat. But even beyond BygHeart, it informs how we build everything at Vibration Robotics and IAMVC Holdings. Whether it’s a quantum simulation predicting molecular interactions or an AI API platform managing global systems, the question we always ask is: How does this serve humanity?

Empathy, for me, isn’t an emotion — it’s an operating principle. It’s the bridge between the human experience and the systems we create. And I think that’s what defines the next era of innovation: not just what technology can do, but how it makes us feel while doing it.

What story do you want people to tell when they talk about you and your business?

I want people to say that we built technology that felt human.
That when the world was racing to make things faster, we paused long enough to make them kinder.

If someone mentions Vibration Robotics, BygHeart, or IAMVC Holdings, I hope the story isn’t just about algorithms or patents — it’s about intent. About how a group of people came together to merge empathy with engineering, and how that choice changed the way technology interacts with humanity.

We’re proving that innovation doesn’t have to sacrifice compassion — that you can build quantum systems, AI companions, and cybersecurity frameworks with both precision and heart. Because the future isn’t about replacing people with machines; it’s about amplifying the best parts of what make us human.

At the end of the day, I don’t want to be remembered as the founder who built more tech — I want to be remembered as the person who built trust into it.
That’s the story I hope people tell.

Have a story?

This could be you!

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