About the Principals

The six members of the Volt Capital team have been working together for 10 years starting and selling technology companies. One of the driving factors of success in all of the previous businesses was the ability of the team to build innovative technology and practically apply it to solve a problem for customers.

At their most recent venture, Corvigo, they attacked the problem of junk email. Corvigo’s patented Intent Based Filtering (IBF) junk email filtering technology relied on artificial intelligence (AI) and other machine learning techniques to accurately identify junk email it had never “seen” before. The predictive IBF technology worked by scanning the text of an email message and determining the intent of that message. Message intent is key because the goal of junk email senders was and continues to be getting the reader to take some sort of action. IBF detected that intent and blocked the message.

Corvigo packaged IBF in an email filter and sold it to corporate IT departments to eliminate junk email from employee inboxes. Two years after Corvigo was started the company was acquired for $40M.

After seeing the ability of a computer to accurately predict and respond to junk email messages, the team was encouraged that their knowledge and experience could be applied to other applications of machine-based prediction – stock market analysis.

Combining software with innovative approaches to hardware utilization and distributed processing techniques, Volt has built a prediction system that combines many facets of AI to determine broad market movements.

Phil White

Engineering

Phil focuses on uptime, reliability and scalability of Volt’s trading system. Phil is an experienced Software Architect who specializes in enterprise and carrier-grade software systems. Prior to Volt, Phil was a Software Architect at Tumbleweed Communications and co-founder and Software Architect at Corvigo, Inc. While at Corvigo, Phil designed and implemented the software systems on the award-winning MailGate, an enterprise-grade spam-filtering appliance. Phil has also held senior positions at Openwave, where he made significant contributions to their wireless carrier grade MMS messaging server, and Radiate, where he designed, implemented, deployed, and managed a distributed network of Internet advertising servers. Phil holds a degree in Computer Science from Rose-Hulman.

Scott Loughmiller

R&D

Scott focuses on the relationship between Volt’s investment returns and designs of the trading system. Scott has done extensive work in several areas of artificial intelligence including the development of intelligent systems in imperfect information environments. Prior to Volt, Scott started the research department at Tumbleweed Communications and was co-founder and CTO of Corvigo, Inc. At Corvigo, Scott oversaw the research and engineering departments. Scott has held CTO and VP Research positions at a variety of other software companies. He holds a degree in Computer Science from Rose-Hulman, where he studied AI under Dr. David Mutchler.

Mike Olson

Engineering, R&D

Mike focuses on algorithm creation and implementation - the inner workings of Volt Capital's trading system. His specialty is in Artificial Intelligence (AI), with broad experience ranging from neural networks to expert systems. Prior to Volt, Mike was research lead at Tumbleweed Communications. Prior to Tumbleweed, he led the development of the inner workings of Corvigo's patented Intent-Based Filtering engine for detecting junk email. His broad experience in developing intelligent systems ranges from digital content delivery routing for unstable non-persistent environments, to the Mobius Project, where he created an AI engine for creating dynamic music based on user moods and intent for the gaming industry. Mike holds a degree in Computer Science and a degree in Mathematics from Rose-Hulman.

Jeff Ready

Finance, Marketing, Trading

Jeff is responsible for finance, marketing and trade execution at Volt Capital. Prior to Volt, Jeff was VP Marketing at Tumbleweed Communications and before Tumbleweed he was CEO of Corvigo. Prior to Corvigo, Jeff held a variety of positions with Silicon Valley technology companies, ranging from VP of Marketing to COO. These include a software publisher, where he helped grow the fledgling consumer line into the most downloaded software set on the Internet, boasting over 25 million users, before seeing it through to an acquisition. He holds a degree in Economics and Computer Science from Rose-Hulman, and has received a variety of awards for entrepreneurship and innovation.

Jason Collier

Infrastructure

Jason focuses on growing and maintaining Volt’s computer hardware infrastructure. Computer processing drives Volt’s system. Jason is responsible for hundreds of processors which run calculations 24x7x365 at Volt’s facilities. Jason brings years of experience creating and deploying complex IT solutions in wide-variety of environments. Prior to Volt, Jason was Director of IT at Tumbleweed Communications where he oversaw support and management of a multi-country corporate network. Prior to Tumbleweed, Jason was VP of Technical Operations and co-founder of Corvigo. Prior to Corvigo, Jason was VP of Technical Operations at Radiate, where he was responsible for architecting an infrastructure that would grow to handle 25 million data transactions a day from millions of individual computers worldwide. In addition, Jason ran all technical operations for Tofaute & Spelman LLC, a law firm with 12 offices across the Midwest.

Ehren Maedge

Operations, Sales, Trading

Ehren is responsible for business operations with a focus on investment operations, sales and trade execution. Prior to Volt, Ehren was VP Operations at Tumbleweed Communications and co-founder and VP Operations at Corvigo. At Corvigo, Ehren setup process and procedure for all departments along with the establishment of department metrics and measurement. Prior to Corvigo, Ehren was CEO of Radiate, where he led the company from zero to $15 million in annualized sales before guiding the company through an acquisition in late 2001.