James Irwin

About James Irwin

I conceive and build enterprises from scratch in sectors where no playbook exists. Complex, specialized, and often new; the kind of markets where the asymmetry between risk and reward is widest and the ability to architect across every function is the differentiator.My career has followed a deliberate pattern: identify inefficient, complex, specialized, or nascent markets and apply cross-domain expertise to architect the entire system from blank paper. Finance, operations, regulatory, science, sales; the sector requires all of it at once, and I deliver across every function.Three healthcare finance platforms. Two laboratories. A vertically integrated cannabis campus coordinating 16+ government agencies. An international telecom carrier across six cities in three countries. A nanotechnology R&D operation from my garage achieving sub-25nm particle sizes with 6x bioavailability gains. A nonprofit turnaround.I identify opportunity through cross-domain pattern recognition. Test the thesis with a proof of concept, develop the vision, write the deck and financials, recruit the team, raise the capital, and execute.Started on Wall Street selling complex securitizations and derivatives to institutions such as PIMCO, CALPERS, Safeco, the State of Washington, and others; telling stories with math. Built companies financing hospitals, pharmacies, and home health providers nationwide. Took regulatory navigation from healthcare into telecom, then cannabis, where I pioneered, designed, built, and managed a vertically integrated operation including a molecular manufacturing laboratory and condensed a three-year EIR into nine months. Each domain informed the next.Academic credentials include a BS in Economics (University of Colorado Boulder) and MBA in Finance (UCLA Anderson), but my education was broader: pre-med through organic chemistry, biology, neurobiology, physics, calculus, as well as accounting, finance, econometrics, Latin, French, Spanish, and the social sciences. My record precipitated an invitation to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship.I integrated this breadth in an honors thesis applying the second law of thermodynamics to diminishing marginal returns. That cross-domain analytical and creative instinct has permeated every thread of my career.Whatever I build next will require all of it simultaneously: the finance, the science, the regulatory navigation, the laboratory work, the capital formation, and the analytical framework I first applied to my own biology. Every career builds on the one before it. This one requires them all.

Experience

1. Founder & Managing Principal

   Demeter Finance

   Mar 2023 — Present · La Jolla, CA, US

   Conceived and built a special situations private credit platform targeting U.S. cannabis, an asset class with no standardized underwriting framework due to regulatory fragmentation across 40+ state and local jurisdictions, federal banking restrictions, inconsistent collateral enforcement, and operating volatility that renders conventional credit models unreliable.• Led institutional-grade diligence on a $72MM stranded loan portfolio for a U.S-based alternative asset manager. Work included borrower-level operational review, regulatory risk mapping, collateral valuation under forced-liquidation assumptions, and downside scenario modeling calibrated to cannabis-specific failure modes. Bid was accepted.• Assembled a six-person team of experienced cannabis operators and credit professionals spanning originations, underwriting, workouts, legal, and regulatory; built specifically to challenge assumptions and surface second-order risks invisible to generalist lenders.• Paused capital formation and deployment when sector fundamentals deteriorated and institutional liquidity exited the space. Chose discipline over deployment.• Rebranded from Resurrection Financial to Demeter Finance.

Education

• University of Colorado Boulder

  Bachelor of Science - BS, Economics

• UCLA Anderson School of Management

  Masters of Business Administration - MBA, Finance