Bill James
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- Full Name
- Bill (William) James, CFA, CMT, FRM
- Title
- Private Investor / Board Member (self-employed / independent)
- Firm
- Independent — self-employed private investor; affiliated with the University of Notre Dame (nd.edu email and on-campus 574-631 phone line)
- Firm Type
- Private / angel investor with an institutional (University of Notre Dame) affiliation
- Investment Stage
- Seed / early-stage (per the supplied listing)
- Location
- Granger, Indiana (South Bend / Notre Dame metro area)
Background
Publicly available records identify Bill James as an experienced investment professional based in Granger, Indiana, just outside South Bend and the University of Notre Dame campus. His professional profile presents him as a "Private Investor / Board Member," and he is described as self-employed, indicating he now deploys and manages capital independently and serves on company boards rather than working under a single institutional employer.
James holds an unusually complete stack of investment-industry credentials: the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Chartered Market Technician (CMT), and Financial Risk Manager (FRM) designations. Together these span fundamental securities analysis, technical/market analysis, and quantitative risk management — a combination that points to a career spent across portfolio management, markets, and risk rather than in a single narrow specialty. His profile summarizes this as "a long history of working at the highest levels of investment."
He is connected to the University of Notre Dame — the source of his `@nd.edu` email address and his campus (574-631) phone extension — consistent with an alumnus who has an ongoing affiliation with the university's finance and investment community (for example as a concurrent/adjunct instructor, mentor, or advisor to its student-managed investment and entrepreneurship programs). Notre Dame's finance ecosystem in this area includes the Applied Investment Management (AIM) student fund, the Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing (NDIGI), the alumni angel network IrishAngels, and the IDEA Center's Pit Road Fund.
*A note on precision:* his detailed employment history and specific board seats sit behind an authenticated LinkedIn profile that could not be accessed for this report, so individual former employers, dates, and portfolio company names are not asserted here. The facts above are limited to what is corroborated by public search results.
Investment Thesis & Focus
- Operates as an independent/private investor and board member, meaning he typically writes personal or small-fund checks and takes an active governance role rather than a passive LP position.
- The provided classification places him at the seed / early-stage end of the market — the stage most consistent with an individual angel/private investor operating out of the Notre Dame startup ecosystem.
- His CFA + CMT + FRM credential set suggests a rigorous, analysis-driven approach that weighs fundamentals, market/technical signals, and downside risk — a "diligence-heavy" investor profile.
- *No published, first-person thesis statement, stated check size, sector list, or geographic mandate could be verified, so those are intentionally left blank rather than invented.*
Notable Investments
- No specific portfolio companies or deals could be independently verified from public sources. His profile indicates he serves as a board member for companies he backs, but the individual company names are not disclosed in the public record reviewed here. *(Listed as unknown rather than fabricated.)*
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