Jacques Voorhees

About Jacques Voorhees

Jacques Voorhees is a serial entrepreneur in the field of technology for the gem and jewelry industry. He is best known as the founder of Polygon, the first online trading platform for the industry, which revolutionized how the diamond market functions. Polygon launched in 1983, roughly a decade before the invention of the Web. Polygon also worked closely with jewelry industry trade associations, to create websites for their membership. The company built over 20,000 websites for retail stores, and launched the first websites for most of the industry’s national trade associations and publications such as Jewelers of America, and JCK Magazine. After Polygon was acquired by Mediagrif Technologies, Jacques founded Verichannel, a company that builds and operates diamond trading platforms for private groups. Clients have included AGS, IJO, De Beers’ Forevermark, and others. His most recent project is Icecap.AI, a company that uses unusually-sophisticated chat-assistants to function as efficient, customer-friendly sales agents on websites—doing for online sales what instore salespeople do in a physical environment. Jacques lives in Keystone, Colorado, where he is also a prolific writer of novels, in the action/adventure and sci-fi genres.

January 5, 2026

Maybe It’s About The Oil – But Not In The Way You Think

Wars are insanely expensive. Even if, in the first Gulf War against Sadaam Hussein, we’d done it to “get oil” as so many claimed, the economic arithmetic doesn’t work. Even if you invaded Kuwait, for example, and nationalized (stole) all its oil, you’ll lose money.