John is a co-founder and co-owner of Tucson's leading urban mushroom farm, Desert Pearl Mushrooms. It started as a small agricultural hobby among friends and alumni from the University of Arizona, evolving into one of the largest producers of specialty culinary and medicinal mushrooms in Southern Arizona. The farm produces a wide variety of fresh, dried, and powdered mushrooms, as well as growing supplies and liquid herbal extracts for restaurants, local grocers, farmers markets, and online sales.John manages his family's business, The De Lorenzo Group, including its real estate and lending activities and a few other Tucson-local interests. He has experience in residential and commercial real estate investment, ownership, property management, private lending, renovations, and development. John is currently involved in a few ventures that purchase, improve, and sell real property, and previously participated in the acquisitions, renovation, and sales of several midsize multi-family residential apartment complexes, commercial offices, and industrial spaces, as well as several single-family residences.In other startup experience, John helped fundraise various capital commitments and subscription agreements for agricultural and retail ventures in Arizona and California and has sourced additional funding in hard money loans for purchases and repairs of real property, manufacturing, and agricultural equipment in Tucson.Aside from real estate, John earned bachelor’s degrees in both Chemistry as well as Italian Language & Literature from the University of Arizona where he gained invaluable experience from his studies in analytical organic chemistry working in the Henry K. Hall, Jr. Materials & Organic Polymers Laboratory, located at the same university. He loves a good work-life balance that includes spending time with his family, learning the guitar and piano, working toward his blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and refining his technical skills on the computer.