Jason Trost

Founder

Hanson Applied Sciences

Jan 2013 - Current (13 years 7 months)

Founded Hanson Applied Sciences, a proprietary research and trading firm providing liquidity to sporting events and prediction markets worldwide. We apply quantitative research and technology-driven trading systems to deliver consistent, reliable liquidity across a wide range of events and market conditions. Based in London and Malta.

Founder and CEO

Smarkets

Jul 2007 - Current (19 years 1 month)

Founded and built Smarkets, one of the world's largest prediction market and sports betting exchanges. The platform processes $billions in annual volume across 1M+ customers in regulated markets. Built the company from scratch — from writing early code and designing the matching engine to scaling a team of 100+ across engineering, trading, operations, and compliance in London, the US, and Europe. Key milestones: • Designed and launched a proprietary trading desk (2013) to seed market liquidity — the strategic turning point that unlocked exponential growth • Rebuilt the core exchange platform three times, evolving from Python to a high-performance Rust-based architecture • Secured and maintained betting licenses across multiple jurisdictions

Analyst

UBS

Mar 2005 - Jun 2007 (2 years 4 months)

Built software for one of the world's largest fund-of-hedge-funds platforms within UBS's alternative investments division. Worked across Chicago and Stamford offices. This role gave me direct exposure to institutional-grade financial infrastructure, risk systems, and the operational complexity of managing multi-billion dollar portfolios — experience that directly informed the design of Smarkets's exchange platform.

Equities Trader

Great Point Capital LLC

Jul 2003 - May 2004 (11 months)

Proprietary equities trader at a Chicago-based prop trading firm. Traded US equities with firm capital, gaining firsthand experience in market microstructure, order flow, execution, and risk management — foundational knowledge for later building an exchange.

G

Equities Trader

Great Point Capital

Jul 2003 - May 2004 (11 months)

D

Founder

Descipher

Dec 2001 - Mar 2005 (3 years 4 months)

Founded and ran Descipher, an early-stage technology venture to help diagnose medical lab test results, while completing my CS degree at Northwestern. Built and shipped software products over 3+ years — my first experience with the full lifecycle of founding, building, and running a company.

Research Programmer

Northwestern University Computer Science Department

Sep 2001 - Oct 2002 (1 year 2 months)

Research programmer in the Computer Science department at Northwestern. Built software tools supporting academic research projects in Natural Language Processing under Prof Ken Forbus

Research Programmer

Northwestern University

Sep 2001 - Oct 2002 (1 year 2 months)

Exchange Student

Youth For Understanding USA YFU

Aug 1998 - May 1999 (10 months)

Exchange student with a host family in Aschau am Inn, Germany.

About

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