Well you've whet my appetite - I look forward to learning more, particularly to see if you managed to overcome the dual chicken-and-egg problems before going out of business.
I like the post-mortem meme sweeping startup world; I find them very enlightening.
Egg 1: trading lots of shares (check, tens of million shares daily)
Egg 2: track record on trading strategy that is scalable and profitable (probably was profitable then stopped once volatility disappeared or the market changed, but definitely scalable, trading tens of millions daily).
Chicken 1: Volume-based discount (we don't know for sure, but tens of millions of shares daily is enough to qualify as a high-tier class on many houses)
Chicken 2: Clients (check, billion dollar hedge fund)
True: Egg 1 and Chicken 2
Probably true: Egg 2 and Chicken 1
"Fresh out of college... trading tens of millions of shares daily for a billion-dollar hedge fund." "The mid 2000's when I finished college..." "My firm finally went out of business in 2010 for a number of reasons."