Changemaker Spotlight: Marcus Bullock Is Building Connection, A Tech Business, and Second Chances

September 8, 2026

By Robert Roche, VP of Marketing at The Last Mile.

“I went from being the job seeker to the job giver.”

Marcus Bullock said it with the energy that runs through almost every part of his story. At 15, he received an eight-year sentence in adult maximum-security prisons after an armed carjacking. During those crucial teenage years, instead of experiencing the journey to adulthood, he learned how to survive incarceration.

Bullock came home in 2004 and faced challenges in finding someone willing to hire him. Eventually, he built a successful contracting company, employing other returning citizens along the way. Then he poured his money into an idea he barely knew how to build.

Today, Marcus Bullock is the founder and CEO of Flikshop, a technology company helping incarcerated people stay connected with their families and communities. He has become a speaker, justice-tech entrepreneur, and advocate whose work centers on a deceptively simple question: what happens when someone in prison knows they have not been forgotten?

To understand why Bullock has spent years trying to answer that question, it’s essential to go back to the beginning.

Early Entrepreneurship On The School Bus

Bullock grew up around Washington, D.C., before his family moved across the city line into Prince George’s County, Maryland. By middle school, he found himself surrounded by classmates whose families could afford things his family could not.

He wanted the Jordans. He wanted the clothes. He wanted the social currency those things seemed to provide. His first response was entrepreneurship.

Bullock began selling candy to classmates on the school bus. “Once I graduated to Snickers bars, it was on,” he told me. He made it clear that he was selling the king-size Snickers, of course.

Looking back, Marcus can see where the boundaries in his life began to blur. Older kids around him were also making money, although they were selling something very different.

At 13, Marcus was kidnapped in his neighborhood by men who forced him into the back of a car. They drove him around for hours while demanding money he did not have. Marcus remembers wondering whether they were going to kill him.

When they finally released him, he ran home in tears. The next day, he made a promise to himself. “They would never catch me slipping again,” he recalled. He bought a gun and started carrying it everywhere.

Two years later, Marcus and a friend committed an armed carjacking. “It went from zero to 60 real fast,” he said.

The Moment Eight Years Became Real

Marcus was 15 when a judge sentenced him to eight years. At first, he could not comprehend what that meant. His teenage mind remained fixed on ordinary milestones outside.

Surely, he thought, someone would let him out before Christmas. Then came New Year’s. Valentine’s Day followed. It took years for the true reality to hit.

About two years into his sentence, Marcus met a man who had already spent 31 years in prison. “When he told me that, I realized something,” Marcus said. “If they would make a man serve 31 years, they would definitely make me serve all eight of mine.”

His perspective on prison changed almost immediately. The fences felt permanent, and the armed towers looked different. Conflicts inside suddenly carried much greater weight.

Marcus became convinced that he might die there. He called his mother and urged her to stop visiting and writing.

That same weekend, his mother showed up. “You can’t out-criminalize my love for you,” Marcus remembers her telling him. She promised to send him a letter or photograph every day for the remaining six years of his sentence.

“That was when things began to shift,” Marcus said. The change took months, then years. Her consistency slowly began to compete with the anger he carried inside.

That was when things began to shift. Over the months that turned into years, my mom began to instill a piece of love inside of me that was battling regularly with the hate I was swallowing inside.”

Marcus Bullock

His Mother Kept Sending Him Images Of A Better Future

Marcus’s mother captured everyday moments through her photography. She sent him pictures from church and introduced him to her coworkers in her letters. Sometimes, she would take snapshots of something as ordinary as a cheeseburger.

“One day you’re gonna eat this fat, juicy burger when you come home,” Marcus remembers her writing. Those photographs offered something prison could rarely provide: They allowed him to picture himself somewhere else.

“My mom was like Instagram before there was an Instagram,” he told me. Marcus began writing back with greater depth. His letters explored relationships, business ideas, love, and his dreams for the future.

He also started reading everything he could find. “This is my opportunity to learn,” he remembers thinking.

When a new computer class opened inside the prison, Marcus immersed himself in unfamiliar software. His curiosity eventually earned him a position as a teacher’s aide. While he was fascinated by the technology,t his mind kept returning to the same instinct he had carried since childhood.

“I remember thinking,” Marcus told me, “What kind of problem can you solve with this thing?” Marcus did not know it yet, but that question would eventually shape his life after prison.

Marcus Bullock Came Home Ready to Build

After serving a full eight years, Marcus returned home at 23. Freedom initially felt so unreal that he expected to wake up back inside his cell. Even walking down a street felt overwhelming. Cars seemed to move impossibly fast around him.

Over time, that disorientation gave way to gratitude. “I feel so blessed to have experiences that some of my friends would chop their right arm off to have,” he said.

Determined to become an entrepreneur, Marcus knew he needed money first. “I knew the job was going to be my first investor,” he told me. “That first paycheck was going to fund whatever business I was going to start.” Getting that paycheck proved difficult.

Again and again, applications forced Marcus to disclose his felony conviction. Again and again, employers rejected him. It’s a story all too common among returning citizens.

A paint store finally gave him an opportunity. “No one was going to outwork me inside of that space,” Marcus said. Soon, customers began asking him whether he knew painters who could work on their homes. He realized he could connect homeowners with contractors and build a business between them.

That insight grew into a successful contracting company. Eventually, Marcus became the person conducting job interviews. Applicants would nervously warn him that a background check might reveal a felony. Marcus understood what they had been through. “I went from being a job seeker to the job giver,” he said.

Each one of those postcards, each one of our prints, each one of our FlikBooks, each one of our letters adds one more data point. People in prison and these cells, they still matter.”

Marcus Bullock

The Idea That Became Flikshop

As Marcus built his life outside, friends who were still incarcerated began calling him. They remembered the photographs his mother had sent for years, and now wanted pictures of the world Marcus was experiencing.

He realized he had barely shared anything with them. “I felt horrible,” he admitted, knowing exactly what receiving mail meant inside.

“Mail call is the single moment of every day that proves somebody on the outside cares about you,” he explained. “Hearing your name get called was magic.” He began pulling money from his construction projects to send photographs to his friends.

This led to the creation of Flikshop. The platform allows users to choose a photograph, add a message, and press send. For less than a dollar, Flikshop would print the image on a physical postcard and mail it to an incarcerated person.

The idea was simple. Building it was not. “I had no idea how to build a tech company,” Marcus admitted.

He Googled how to create a mobile app. He spent money, built versions that failed, and rebuilt them. At one point, the team discovered they had launched without a basic “forgot password” function, causing a massive debacle. Nonetheless, Marcus persisted in his dream.

That determination eventually carried Flikshop into programs including Techstars and John Legend’s Unlocked Futures accelerator. It also brought Marcus into a much larger conversation about justice, technology, and human connection.

Flikshop Is Built Around a Question of Humanity

Marcus could have continued building his construction company. He told me plainly that the financial opportunity there was far stronger. Flikshop, however, offered something else.

Each postcard represented proof that someone behind a prison wall still belonged to a community. “Each one of those postcards, each one of our prints, each one of our FlikBooks, each one of our letters adds one more data point,” Marcus said. “People in prison and these cells, they still matter.”

That belief now extends beyond family photographs.

Flikshop has grown into a platform that can also help organizations reach people inside. Marcus has also created the Flikshop School of Business to support entrepreneurship and life skills for returning citizens.

His work has placed him on boards and in advisory roles across criminal justice and education organizations. Yet the core mission remains remarkably close to his mother’s original promise.

People will return to families, workplaces, and neighborhoods from prison. Marcus wants to consider what happens before that moment arrives. “People in prison and these cells, they still matter.” He told me. “How do we want them to return?”

Choose a photo

Upload a picture from your phone, camera roll, or social media. Pick a moment worth sharing.

Add your message

Write a personal note, words of encouragement, or a quick life update to go with the image.

Flikshop prints and mails it

Flikshop formats the postcard, handles the mailing process, and sends it to an approved facility.

Your loved one receives it

A simple postcard becomes a reminder that someone on the outside still cares, remembers, and stays connected.

“I Got Now. You Got Next.”

As our conversation drew to a close, I asked Marcus how he advises someone sitting inside with an idea, but with no idea how to achieve it.

Marcus smiled. “I got now. You got next.”

He compared entrepreneurship to running to the top of a building, jumping, and building a parachute on the way down.

Sometimes, Marcus said, he hit the ground. Then he climbed back up.

“The reality is that none of us know what we’re doing,” he said. “Every now and again, my parachute opens up, and this is my soaring season.”

That metaphor feels appropriate for Marcus Bullock. His mother once used photographs to show a teenager in prison that another life remained possible. Years later, Marcus turned that experience into a company designed to send the same message into thousands of cells.

His path from incarcerated teenager to entrepreneur was messy, uncertain, and repeatedly rebuilt. That may also be the point.

Marcus has his moment now. Someone else gets next.

About Changemaker Spotlight

Changemaker Spotlight is a recurring series from The Last Mile highlighting the people, organizations, and leaders driving meaningful change across the criminal justice system. From advocates and researchers to employers, educators, and those with lived experience, we feature individuals whose work is creating opportunity, restoring dignity, and building a more effective path forward.

Know someone whose story deserves to be shared? We’d love to hear from you. Send your nominations to robert.roche@thelastmile.org with a brief description of their work and why they should be featured in a future Changemaker Spotlight.