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LOCAL TELLURIDE STARTUP VOLTAIRE RAISES ITS FIRST ROUND OF FINANCING WITH ASSISTANCE OF THE TELLURIDE VENTURE ACCELERATOR

Investors have poured more than $1 million into the Biddeford manufacturer of ultra-lightweight outdoor equipment

Posted originally by the Telluride Venture Accelerator

November 18, 2015

In jury trials, lawyers rarely (if ever) have the luxury of doing exhaustive research on potential jurors during jury selection, and often, issues crop up too late (biases, juror integrity, and other issues) that could have been vetted earlier with the right tools and research.

The Voltaire cloud-based service bridges the gap between the courtroom and the outside world by accessing web-based social content and other public information and applying its proprietary algorithms, heuristics and big data predictive analytics to uncover juror biases, preferences and behaviors.

Using Voltaire allows attorneys to accelerate the timeframe to research the jury pool for jury selection, increases the accuracy of the Voir Dire process, and ultimately helps them to deliver wins to their clients by helping them pick better juries and relate to seated juries more effectively and convincingly.

In 2014, Basit Mustafa, the Founder and CEO of Voltaire, Inc. moved to Telluride to start his business, in part because of the burgeoning entrepreneurial scene sparked by TVA and in part because of Basit’s love for the beauty and outdoor opportunities the area offers. Voltaire approached the Telluride Venture Accelerator (TVA) and was selected by TVA to participate in its Partner Program. Started with one company in 2013, the Partner Program offers local / regional startups with particular promise access to TVA’s community of mentors and investors in exchange for a percentage of their equity.

It is with great pride that TVA today announces that Voltaire has received the first $150,000 from several local investors to kick off the seed round of $750,000 in convertible debt financing Voltaire is raising.

“I’m really excited to have the support from sharp, qualified investors who share my vision for how Voltaire can improve the way lawyers practice law on behalf of their clients,” noted Basit.

“Raising early-stage capital can be a difficult, dangerous, and expensive road to travel, and it’s also incredibly time consuming. With TVA’s support, Voltaire is raising the capital that will allow me to grow my startup quicker, easier and with less risk.”

Voltaire continues to raise its early stage capital through the end of of 2014 and will use this financing to launch pilots in the first quarter of 2015 at law firms located in the Colorado Front Range and the Pacific Northwest.

TVA is currently in the process of selecting the 6 companies to participate in its 2015 Accelerator Program and looks forward to also growing its TVA Partner program which, to date, has helped three local companies raise almost $3 mil in capital.