Our Team
The AlphaSheet™ Background
Who We Are And Why We Are Doing This
We Believe:
- High performance investment software should be for everyone — not just big Wall Street firms.
- Diversification is not a justifiable reason to own poorly performing funds — they hurt your portfolio.
- Great investment advice isn’t a stock sorting tool — it’s automatically selecting this month’s best stock
Company Mission:
The mission of SumGrowth Strategies®, LLC is to provide a fully automated, subscription-based, Web-delivered, investment modeling/signaling service for individuals and advisors that delivers returns substantially higher than the S&P 500 with meaningfully lower market volatility risk to enable our customers to achieve an earlier retirement and/or higher standard of retirement living without the burdensome time, discipline, and training required of market analysts and day traders.
Large corporations, hedge funds, and other professional financial managers have long held a distinct advantage over the average citizen by utilizing proprietary complex financial analysis algorithms coupled with main frame computers and streaming market data to achieve investment results far superior to the “diversify and rebalance” strategies they sell to the public. We at SumGrowth Strategies say: Its not just for the big boys anymore, our servers will do the hard work for you while you go have a life. We intend to level the playing field by making our SectorSurfer and AlphaDroid online services available to everyone without the need to interrupt their life pursuits to become an analyst, and without the need to pay an arm and a leg for the service.
What We Do:
We provide ready-made momentum strategies and momentum modeling tools for you to configure your own models based on market momentum in both bull and bear markets. Following the close of each market day, our server performs an algorithmic analysis of every subscriber’s strategies to determine if any have a new momentum leader. A trade signal is texted or emailed to subscribers with a new momentum leader in any of their strategies. SumGrowth Strategies, LLC is not a registered investment advisor and does not provide professional financial investment advice specific to your life situation. SectorSurfer and AlphaDroid arsolelysolely algorithmic strategy analysis tools that produce trade signals according to the set of funds you provide for analysis. Strategy performance is hypothetical, based on trading at the market close of trade dates, and does not include associated trading fees or subscription fees.
Scott Juds, President and CEO
Scott has over 30 years’ experience in both hands-on and executive-level positions. Scott is the Founder and President of piTech Engineering, a Seattle electronics and software engineering consulting engineering firm. He was a Founder and Vice President of Engineering for IDX Incorporated, an El Dorado, Arkansas, company which develops and markets optically encoded security tokens, coin acceptors and RFID cashless payment systems. He was a Founder and Vice President of Business Development for MobilServ Technologies Corp., a San Diego, California, company which developed wireless mobile-commerce systems. He was also formerly the Vice President of Advanced Engineering at EATON Corporation, Opcon Division, Everett, Washington, which develops advanced industrial photoelectric sensors and controls.
Scott is the named inventor on over 40 U.S. and foreign patents and is a published author of Photoelectric Sensors and Controls: Selection & Application (Marcel Dekker, New York, 1988), and Conquering the Seven Faces of Risk (FinTech Press 2017). He holds a BSEE from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and an MSEE from Stanford University and is a Registered Professional Engineer in the state of Washington.
Scott is an avid snow skier, water skier, and windsurfer… and as Chief SectorSurfer does “surf his sector of the lake.” He also finds great joy in baking Grandma Juds’ World Famous Blackberry Crisp for his friends using the delicious blackberries picked along the shoreline of Lake Washington where he resides.
Jim Gamache, Chief Technology Officer
Jim has over 30 years’ in both hands-on and executive-level positions. Jim was a Founder and Vice President of Observational Systems, formed in 1977 to develop and market portable data collection systems for researchers in the behavioural sciences. The company was later re-named GageTalker when it moved into the field of, and set new standards for how industrial statistical process control was done. The company was again later re-named as Cimworks and eventually sold in 2000 to GE Fanuc. Jim was also a Founder and CTO of Zorch Software in the field of life science project management. Jim holds a BSEE from the University of Washington.
Jim is an avid snow skier, water skier, and windsurfer. He has climbed Mt. Rainier multiple times, and has seen the curvature of the earth from atop Mt. Kilimanjaro. Jim is well calibrated in the operation of his outdoor grill, pours a mean Martini, and loves to bake in the Lake Chelan sun with his wife Laura.
Bryan Sullivan, Founder and Strategic Business Adviser
Bryan graduated from Oregon State University in 1991 and spent 17 years working at a number of large Wall Street firms such as UBS, Merrill Lynch, and Edward Jones learning industry best practices. After the 2008 market collapse, Bryan wanted to build something different from the complexity and opacity of these traditional firms. In 2009, he founded his own RIA platform for financial advisors where Bryan now serves as the firm’s Chief Executive Officer.
In 2014 Bryan partnered with Scott & Jim to build a platform for Financial Advisors to create automated quant-based portfolio construction and trade signals that would be competitive in any market environment. Bryan is the author of the book, “Protecting Your Money From Yourself: A Retiree’s Guide to Insuring You Have Enough Money to Enjoy Your Retirement.” He has also been featured in multiple media outlets, including USA Today, CNBC, The Boston Globe, The Miami Herald, Yahoo Finance, and The Wall Street Journal Online. Bryan is married and has four children. He is a former president of the Morro Bay Lions Club and remains active as a member. In his free time, he enjoys camping and skiing.
Stephen Gower, Senior Software and Systems Architect
Stephen has 30 years of development experience, holding project leadership and senior software design positions at numerous companies, including: Amdocs Ltd., Deere & Company, and Marsh McLennan. Stephen also formerly developed and operated an online algorithmic investment service called TrendTimer.com from about 2007 to 2015. He first joined us as a part time contractor to help us create our active JavaScript charts in 2016, and then later joined us full time in 2019.
Stephen’s responsibilities include serving on the SumGrowth Index Management Committee, providing monthly Index rebalancing reports to our trading partners, websites development and maintenance, Index and indicator modelling/design, and serving on the Merlyn.AI Quant Team. Stephen holds BAs in Mathematics and Economics from St. Olaf College.
Gary Millhollen, Tech Support Ambassador to Financial Advisors
Gary has over 30 years’ experience trading his own accounts in the markets; from stocks and options to futures, and commodities, and finally ETFs. He studied architecture at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo for 3 years and graduated from Sacramento State University eventually spending his adult career up and down the West Coast from Southern California to Seattle, Washington in commercial construction, including apartments, commercial buildings, school construction, and finally 10 years in his Hotel Construction and Renovation Consulting business.
His life’s training and experience in the physical real-world of exact numbers and engineering was a perfect incubator for his mindset of precision and detail in the markets. His market pursuits and interests kept him in the hunt for the science of financial understanding and finally to the doorstep of AlphaDroid and the AI algorithms of Scott Juds. Gary’s research into wall street and technical analysis lead to the accumulation of his financial Library dating from the late 1970s and numbers over 100. His books on fly fishing and sailing are next in quantity along with a smattering of horse husbandry, fine art, and philosophy. Gary has been married for 40 years and has 3 adult children and 4 grandchildren. He and his wife enjoy skiing, fly-fishing, horse riding together. Gary pretends to be semi-retired.
Stewart Wilson Ph.D., AI Science Advisor
Stewart’s research career commenced at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he received an S.B. degree in physics and S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering. After having completed his formal education, research work at the Polaroid Corporation (starting 1962) and the Rowland Institute for Science (starting 1983) led him to the development of practically useful, yet highly complex, biologically-inspired systems and machine learning architectures. In 1998 he founded the research and consultancy company Prediction Dynamics. Since 1999 he has been an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL. Stewart’s research and numerous professional papers have focused on Artificial Intelligence, Learning Classifier Systems. In April of 2012, Stewart discovered SectorSurfer and found a compelling new hobby. In late 2015 Stewart approached us to collaborate on an experiment to employ a genetic algorithm to select Fidelity sector funds for use in SectorSurfer Strategies. Within a year, proof of concept was established. The evolution of high-performance strategies became a reality, resulting in this posted Strategy-of-Strategies. In 2018 when the company embarked on the development of its Merlyn.AI technology employing genetic algorithms, Stewart accepted a formal position with us as our AI Science Advisor to assist with its design, test, and further improvement.
Carl Fricke, Senior Advisor
Carl has more than 30 years of success as a CxO and senior executive in finance, engineering, science and technology, corporate and business development, and strategic planning. For SumGrowth Strategies and Merlyn AI, Carl identifies and assesses new product and service opportunities, advantageous strategic partnerships, and advises on capital market conditions. He is Chairman of the Investment Committee for the Geological Society of American and the GSA Foundation, consistently performing for more than 10 years in the top half when compared to its peer group. As an LP, Carl provided multiple strategic industry relationships and market intelligence for a Silicon Valley VC firm, Acuity Ventures, focusing on commercial and industrial products using software applications. Carl co-founded and grew a two-person start-up, Levine Fricke Inc (LF), into profitable $36mm+ national environmental engineering firm with nine US offices and 250 staff, becoming one of Engineering News Record’s top-rated firms. He also co-founded & lead international trade finance business, CIMA Capital, in Mexico & South America that produced > $200 million in ExIm Bank loans with < 1% default rate before it was acquired by UPS Capital. Carl earned his B.A. from Augustana College, and two M.S. degrees from the University of Wisconsin- Madison, with post-graduate business studies at the University of California at Berkeley.
Jan Hendrickson, Advisor, Member
Jan Hendrickson is the Regional Managing Director for Ascent Private Capital Management of U.S. Bank in Seattle, offering wealth management and wealth impact services to ultra high net worth families and individuals throughout the Pacific Northwest. She was named a “Woman of Influence” by the Puget Sound Business Journal. Jan was the Managing Partner and Founder at Denny Hill Capital, an early-stage high-growth venture capital firm with a consumer-focus investment approach. She drove portfolio companies’ success through roles as board director, interim executive, strategist and investor. Current and prior directorships include chairman and found board member of investor of global beauty brand butter LONDON, director of the Commerce Bank of Washington, and chairman of Tully’s Coffee.
A native Seattleite, Jan holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington. Community leadership is a passion for Jan, and she is current chair of the Community Development Roundtable, and is a current board member for Forterra and the Virginia Mason Foundation. She is past chairman of the Woodland Park Zoo, current trustee and past president of the Frye Art Museum, past chairman of Wellsprings Family Services, and a graduate of Leadership Tomorrow.