JP James

Chairman & Lead Investor, Hive Financial Systems

Over the past decades, JP James has helped start, acquire, restructure, and scale stagnant ventures in their management strategy, business process automation, technology automation, and capital solutions. He has built ventures from startup to hundreds of millions in valuation. He owns, invests, and advises fast-growth ventures. JP has co-authored “Data Analytics: Effective Methods for Presenting Results” with Dr. Satish Nargundkar. He has been lecturing on quantitative computational finance at Georgia Tech’s School of Industrial Engineering for 10 years. He has also lectured on big data, analytics, statistics, and actuarial science at Georgia State’s Masters Of Business for six years. JP has also taught and helped implement agent-based modelling, machine learning, reinforcement learning algorithms and backpropagation algorithms, including polynomial regressions, specifically deep learning models, Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), and base quantum computing algorithms in the financial services industries.

JP is the founder and chairperson of Hive Financial Systems, LLC. He invested and helped scale Hive Financial Systems, a financial technology company, providing technology to a portfolio of closely held consumer lenders. The company grew almost 8000% in revenue since 2017, in less than 30 months as of the start of 2020, as one of the fastest-growing companies in the world.

JP designed and built an end-to-end financial automation software including marketing, underwriting, loan management and analytics architecture with capital from multiple venture capitalists and balance sheet financing from several institutional lenders for its closely held portfolio of lenders. He is the co-author of two patents filed on a system for processing loans using machine learning and identifying and processing data impacting enterprise valuation.

He is the chairperson of the board for Libreum International LLC. JP scaled Libreum International into a multi-national conglomerate stretching with multiple global offices and hundreds of employees serving advisory capacities for capital markets, IT/software development, accounting and bookkeeping services, and operational consulting. With over 150 clients spanning 15 years in industries as diverse as fintech, financial services, medical devices, B2B SaaS applications, and tech-enabled ventures in manufacturing, logistics, restaurants, and apparel.

JP is a former partner and shareholder at Lending Science DM Inc. He restructured Lending Science DM, and grew the company over 750% in revenue in 18 months to a mid-market valuation growth of over 1000%, completed two strategic acquisitions, and structured finance with commercial financing in the transaction. Here, JP managed the strategy, hiring, financial strategy, business process automation, acquisition of two companies and provided financing for the potential acquisition of two others, built out the analytics team, marketing team and strategy, and scaling the sales force and operations all of which were non-existent prior to coming on board.

He is the founder of Libreum Capital Management. Libreum was a multi-strategy manager of managers and fund of funds hedge fund focused on the applications of risk management utilizing agent-based modelling understanding bottom up position risk.

JP built a fund and partners and classmates at Georgia Tech. Partnered with and brought in traders in commodities, forex, energy trading, fixed income, merger arbitration, convertible arbitration, long-short equities, and quant strategies. He had worked on trade desks in Chicago, NYC, and South Korea. JP also has experience in sales and administration in Atlanta, West Palm Beach, Mumbai, Taipei, London.

JP has an educational background in computer science and management. He earned an entrepreneurship certificate from the Georgia Institute of Technology. His non-profit activity includes being the TiE Atlanta President (2020-2021) and the co-founder and chair of TiE Atlanta Angels where $4.3MM was deployed in 2.5 years for early stage ventures. JP is also a board member of Atlanta Police Foundation, 21 Century Leaders, Buckhead Club, ARC (Association for the Recovery of Children), and Himalayan Children’s Charity. He is an Active National Member of BENS (Business Executives for National Security). JP lives with his wife, Mary and their four daughters, Evelyn, Nora, Alaina, and Leanna. He has taught Sunday school at Buckhead Church for the last seven years.