Our Mission

From managing a family business at the young age of 15 to handling over $5 billion in assets, Ryan’s journey with finance has been truly inspirational. After getting a master’s degree in business administration and finance, Ryan went headfirst into the banking industry. He started with a financial analyst position and moved all the way up to become one of the youngest vice presidents for J.P. Morgan Chase & Co in the Michigan area. Having more than two decades of experience in leadership, business operations, and financial analysis helped Ryan develop extensive expertise in financial operations and trading. Being at the core of operations helped him understand the harsh reality of finance which we, as consumers, are never exposed to. Post the global financial crisis of 2008, Ryan noticed how many banks offered to deliver a fixed rate of 1-2% upon investing funds for a set amount of time. While this deal seemed pretty promising to everyone, they failed to understand that for every 1% they made, the bank was leveraging at least 5-6% out of the prize pool. The corporate banking world was shaping to be more interest-centric than consumer-centric. Consequently, he went on to build something that could streamline the investing journey for the masses and was free of any complex rules or regulations. Ryan continued to work on highly profitable ventures and heavily impacted Detroit’s housing development sector, generating over $25 million in revenue across multiple locations. He had always wanted to create a platform that offered greater flexibility in trading strategies and allowed even small-scale investors to access significant capital without much leverage. Ryan believes everyone should have access to the financial markets, regardless of experience or capital. He wants to bring innovative strategies and fresh perspectives to the table that could ultimately help propel this prop trading firm forward toward success.His collaboration with leading finance veterans has helped him build a strong foundation for successful trading decisions in different market conditions, and use data analytics tools and software development approaches to create intelligent Algo-trading models that can identify valuable opportunities despite market complexity.With Smart Prop Trader, Ryan aims to offer one key advantage that is currently missing in the industry: Simplicity. Unlike all the other prop trading firms that get you caught up in their complex functionality, with Smart Prop Trader, he strives to build a feature-rich yet easy-to-use platform that can help bridge the investment gap between large and small-scale investors. 

Blake Olson is a finance veteran, forex educator, and the CEO of Smart Prop Trader. He has dedicated himself to understanding all the complexities users face when starting their trading journey. Like any aspiring trader, Blake began his journey by emulating the most successful industry players and honing his craft along the way. Over the years, he gained an in-depth understanding of trading strategies by learning from hedge fund managers and self-tutelage. He then finally found a strategy that was consistently profitable. After discovering this, he began working as a trading educator for multiple firms while also publishing trading content on his YouTube channel (Trade Connect VVS), which eventually gave birth to his trading education firm, VVS Academy. Blake continued to seek out more and more profitable strategies while teaching thousands of traders his ways in the arts of Elliott Wave, Wyckoff, Smart Money Concepts, and other profitable strategies. Blake knew he was great at trading on his accounts but decided to test his luck with prop firms.After making over 30% in his first month as a funded trader at FTMO (back when they had a 70% profit share and a profitable trade percentage criteria), Blake expanded his funded account portfolio to collect millions of dollars under management at several prop firms.Falling in love with the prop firm model and pushing the industry further, Blake decided to join forces with other traders to create his own funding company and shape the industry into what it is today. The Funded Trader was born and eventually became one of the top worldwide online prop firms. Blake continues to be heavily involved with and improve the prop firm industry by interviewing prop firm founders, making review and prop firm ranking videos, as well as helping the entire industry become more competitive for the benefit of traders across the globe.