Bridger Pennington launched three funds and discovered his attorneys never filed Form D, Form ADV, or Blue Sky documents, even when they said everything was done. He built Fund Launch AI to let founders track every filing and deadline themselves instead of trusting lawyers to handle it.
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I launched my first fund and I'm kind of new. I'm like setting this thing up, I'm building it, I'm pretty excited. And I go to launch and I ask my attorney, say, okay, here's all your documents. And I'm like, great. And am I ready to go? He said, yeah, you're ready to go. And then I was like, hey, are we supposed to file our Form D with the SEC? He's like, oh yeah, we haven't done that yet. But yeah, I'll get on that. And I'm like, what if I wouldn't have asked you about a Form D? You told me everything's ready to go. And then he goes and files my Form D. I go, great. And then I was like, hey, have we filed our Form ADV yet? Oh no, no, we haven't filed that yet. Let me go file that. And I'm like, what if I wouldn't have asked you about our Form ADV? If I even knew the words Form ADV? You told me last week, I'm good. Everything's set. And he went and filed my Form ADV. And then we started raising money. I'm like, well, what about Blue Sky filings? Which is, that's a regulatory filing thing you got to do when you raise money. Oh yeah, we can help you with that. I'm like, you never told me any of this. I would have been out of compliance if I didn't do any of these things. When you or me are building an investment fund, you have to know this stuff. No one's coming to save you. You are the general partner. You got to understand this stuff. And so what Fund Launch AI does so well, if you go back to my screen, it maps all of the stuff you need. It's all here. All these little bubbles. Like, And you can go one by one and actually learn and educate and build out your fund. What's our formation date? What's our closing dates? When are we going to file with entities and file with regulatory bodies? All happens here. And you can actually see it being updated live. I'll share one more story. I built another fund. And this is like my third fund I'd built for me. And I go launch my fund. I tested my attorney again. I'm like, hey, are we all done? Are we ready to go? Oh yeah, yeah. Everything's ready. You're good to go. And I go, I don't have subscription documents. Oh yeah, yeah, you need subscription. Yeah, let me draft you some subscription documents. And I was like, dude, you just told me I'm done, ready to go. Where's my subscription documents? Which are, if you don't know, they're right here on Fund Launch AI. This document is how someone subscribes to your fund, how an investor fills out the data to come in, join your fund. Okay? You'll see it down here. There's all these things they sign and agree to and all these questionnaires and stuff like that. These are subscription documents. In Fund Launch AI, it's right in front of you. Here it is. You don't have to ask and follow up. It's like everything is here. Here's your Form D notice of filing here. We do this once we're in legal review, but it's on your canvas. Like everything is in front of you. I can tell, I speak from experience of how frustrating it is working with an attorney, paying them $800 an hour for them to still mess stuff up. What Fund Launch AI does is brings everything into one cohesive thing. And once you're ready, you hit submit for attorney review, go from there.
