Press Background
Steven B. Volk, Chairman & CEO
Executive Profile
Steve Volk is currently Chairman and CEO of Vmedia Research, Inc. a company he founded in December of 2002. Vmedia Research brings high quality, full length video entertainment to mobile consumer electronics. The technology behind that vision is a new miniature optical media that delivers the quality of big screen entertainment to mobile phones and other personal consumer electronics devices.
Volk is a well known entrepreneur who has founded and successfully funded several storage technology companies. Under Volk’s leadership, these companies invented and developed significant new technologies and storage form factors including the 2.5 inch hard drive found in virtually every laptop and notebook computer today, and the 1.8 inch hard drive utilized in Apple iPods and many other MP3 music players.
Volk was founder, Chairman and CEO of DataPlay, Inc., which developed a new optical media and miniature optical storage engines for the music industry. DataPlay’s innovative optical media format allows content to be molded like CD album (ROM) and recorded like a CD-R. Ultimately, the music industry’s problems with peer to peer networks and the MP3 revolution eclipsed DataPlay’s media, which was widely regarded as the mobile equivalent of the CD. However, the format has survived and is being revived for other applications that take advantage of it’s small size and large recordable capacity.
In 1990, Volk founded Intégral Peripherals, Inc., which invented and developed the 1.8-inch hard drive used today in notebook computers, Tablet PCs and mobile consumer electronic devices. The 1.8-inch PCMCIA removable disk drive was designed and patented by Intégral Peripherals. Intégral licensed its technologies and patents for the 1.8-inch hard disk drive to the major hard drive manufacturers. Today, the 1.8 inch hard drive segment is a billion dollar business.
Prior to Intégral peripherals, Volk was a Vice President and co-founder of PrairieTek where he was responsible for the introduction of the 2.5-inch disk drive form factor, the dominant storage device in today’s laptop and notebook computers.
Prior to PrairieTek, Volk founded TallGrass Technologies, a pioneering and highly successful tape and disk subsystem storage company that was acquired by Exabyte Corp. in 1996.
Volk holds 22 patents in data storage and he continues to invent and develop new storage technologies. His accomplishments have been recognized by the technology and business communities. He was a finalist for the Rocky Mountain Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1995 and 1996, and winner of the award in 2001.
In addition to his business interests, Volk is a highly regarded Shelby automobile racer and collector. He is one of the founders of the Shelby American Collection, the premier collection of Shelby American racing cars from the period of the 1960s. The Shelby American Collection is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of Shelby automobiles and the history of the Shelby American racing team. The permanent collection includes over 40 rare Shelby automobiles and is housed in a 10,000 square foot building in Boulder, Colorado.
Steve Volk Executive Profile 02-08.pdf
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