How To Break Into the Investment Fund World

Alright guys, in this video we're going to talk about the 3 different ways to get into venture capital, hedge funds, private equity, you know, those illustrious high finance careers that everyone talks about, right? And we're going to talk about what steps you take to get there.

And we're speaking from a little bit of experience here. Former JP Morgan employee, I started multiple funds. We have a lot of family actually works in this industry and runs deca-billion-dollar funds, $100 million funds. We actually have a lot of people around us that do this, and so we're gonna share a few examples in this video. So without further ado, down to opportunity door number 1 you see here. Door number 1 is you are born in the Rockefeller family. So if you have this great rich family, you're a son of a billionaire, Awesome, you're probably— your mom or dad can just call up a fund or a school and you're gonna get in and you're gonna go and your dad's name is gonna be on the building of the school. It's gonna be awesome. You're gonna love it. So if that's you, this video is probably not for you, but kudos and go, good luck. We'll probably work together in the future.

Yeah.

That's door number 1. If that's you, congrats. Let's move on though to door number 2 here. Of the traditional— I call it the traditional route.

Yep, that's— I, I would call it that as well. Do you know what these numbers 1 through 10 represent? Those are years of your life. All right, so 1 through 4, let's talk about it. This is just your standard degree. So this video may be for— you may be just starting off in college, you may be kind of later down this row in your career, mid-career. Um, still, it's important. Pay attention. Right? So to get into this industry, there's something that happens in between year 3 and 4 of college, okay? And that's an internship. But this isn't just any internship, okay? This is like a high-tier internship. This could be an internship at a fund, it could be at a bank, it could be, you You know, just something that makes you legit.

Consulting firms, Bain Company, McKinsey, you're going to Citigroup, you're going somewhere cool right here, yeah.

And the funny thing about this is, so that's in between year 3 and 4, you apply somewhere right here, and somehow prior to this, you need to have enough experience to help you qualify for that internship, right?

So you gotta be at the right school with the right degree, you hopefully have done something crazy here to build up to this, Internship, your junior internship, which is gonna just propel your career for the next life, and you think it's the greatest thing ever.

Yep, that's right. And what that internship does—

We're speaking from experience. Me and Lincoln have both done this, and we actually landed incredible internships between our junior and senior year. I went out to Silicon Valley. Actually, we both went out to Silicon Valley. We were both out there, and you were at JPMorgan, another firm out there. And tell us what happened there.

It's important to know that people get these analyst jobs by doing an internship there, right? So these, they obviously recruit from their internship class, right? And then if there's any jobs left, then it's usually just word of mouth recommendations. But if you just go and submit your resume on somewhere, you're not gonna get the job, okay? Like there's tens of thousands of resumes that go through, right? But yeah, so you kind of have 3 years of your life just being like grunt analyst, okay? 2 years as just a junior analyst, and then maybe the last year senior analyst. You get to feel a little special, so that's nice.

You're working a lot of hours here. Your internship, you're going to be working to the bone throughout a summer, hoping to get an offer at the end of the internship. And then when you graduate here, you become an analyst. And what kind of hours can you expect depending on your—

Oh man, 60 to 90, right? Depending on what you're in. Right? Real estate's not as bad. Hedge funds, brutal. Investment banking, brutal. Right? So, yeah.

Pick your poison.

Pick your poison.

So, you got about 3 years here. Maybe 2 to 3 years.

2 to 3 years as an analyst. Yep. And then— so then in year 8, so after you've been an analyst, this is the traditional route still, you're going to go and get an MBA.

Alright. Because here, they're going to tell you, thank you so much for your work. But we can't really promote you unless you have further education and you complete your MBA.

But to get into an MBA, and it can't just be any MBA, right? It's got to be Ivy League MBA, right? You need to be like a Harvard, Stanford, or just some very reputable school. Like, a lot of people will say, hey, if you don't get top 10, it's not even worth it, right? That's what a lot of my mentors—

I've heard that so many times, yeah.

So, not only just any MBA, but a top 10. And something you do have to do to get in this program is, one, have pretty good grades here, have this rockstar internship and work experience, then you gotta take this beast called the GMAT, man. Sometime when you're working through as an analyst, right? While you're working 60 to 90 hours a week, you need to go and you need to study every evening for the GMAT, right?

And then start doing interviews and applying. I'm laughing just because this is— This is crazy, right? And so you finally— but you did it. Like, you studied your tail off and you're so happy and you're like, man, I made it. I'm in my MBA program. You're there for, depending on what you're doing, usually about 2 years, sometimes 3, depending on it. Maybe if you're doing a working or a night MBA. You do your MBA and I— oh, we forgot to talk about debt. You're probably getting—

Let's talk about the cost. That's exactly what I was gonna say here. So average cost undergraduate degree, let's say $30K maybe a year?

That's cheap though. I would say, I think average is like $90K. Oh wait, a year? Are you saying a year?

A year.

Oh, a year. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, okay, a year.

Let's call it you're in debt $120K, right? Unless of course you were in this pile and your parents paid for your school.

Then get off this video. We don't even— get off this video.

Yeah, right. Um, so you're down not $120, $120K. There's, there's thousands behind there, right? This, this analyst years, they pay pretty good. Um, you know, you're probably close to 6 figures, uh, $60K to $120,000, yeah, somewhere around there. Of course, if you're living in San Francisco or New York or London, just know that that entire paycheck goes to rent though, and you can't really pay off any of that debt. But then of course studying for the GMAT, you gotta pay a little bit, maybe $2K on prep because you can't learn it alone. That stuff's hard. How much does an MBA cost?

I've seen anywhere from— Well, I've seen $200,000 to about $400,000 total. And then you gotta calculate opportunity cost. You are losing 2 years of salary.

Yeah.

So you're losing 2, maybe 3 years of $100 grand salary as well. I've had one guy, he walked me through, he said his MBA would've cost him $1 million by selling his house, moving across the country, buying a place, getting back. He was gonna go to Harvard. He was like, I was gonna go to Harvard and I calculated it was gonna be about a $1 million cost to go to Harvard. And he had to weigh that cost, right? Good or bad, that's just the cost of what it would be.

Yep.

So here you're at, okay, $120K plus $250K. I would say you're near, you know, let's— I mean, being conservative with all that stuff, I don't know, $370K?

Yeah, at least, right? Yeah, and that's not even— that's just by yourself, right? You've probably at this time, 9 years later, you've either got a wife or serious girlfriend or Kids. Or a dog or a cat. Right? Even kids that you gotta pay for. So a lot of things. But after all of that—

You did it. 9 years of your life.

Good work.

That's awesome.

Then you can— people say you write your ticket. That's when you're actually getting in the industry. You're gonna be an associate. Honestly, analysts, they don't do much. They're not that involved. You're more of just doing stuff for other people. I would say at the associate level is actually when it really starts of you, you know, making a difference, of being involved in deals, right? And actually doing something.

So you start your associate, you know, you're still an associate, you're at the bottom of the tier now, and maybe now you're in the private equity or the hedge fund firm that you want to work at. And from here you might get some stock options, maybe a little bit, and every year your salary hopefully will grow a little bit. What kind of salary are you making here?

You know, guys, the salaries are really good. As an associate, the reason people do this is people make a lot of money. $200 grand, it's usually a base and bonus structure, probably like $150,000 base plus a bonus at the end of the year, anywhere from $60,000 to $100,000 to $150,000. And it just grows up. You do get compensated really well as an associate. And then, but you do that for 3 years.

But defining really well. I mean, $300 grand is great in the corporate world. In the entrepreneur world, that's not that crazy. I don't know. I don't know. Like, we're talking corporate ladder. Yeah, $300 grand salary is awesome. Wow, I did it. Like, go me. In the entrepreneurship space, like, I talked to a number of friends, you're making less than $250,000.

Yeah, like, you're struggling.

Your company's not doing that well. Obviously, like you've got some things to fix. It's pretty interesting how you define well, but anyways, we'll call this well.

Yep.

And you made it.

But you gotta do that for 3 years, and then you just gotta climb the corporate ladder from there, right? VP, you're still not in charge, other people are in charge of you, and there's maybe a couple more roles in between here, but then, you know, that's another 3 years as a VP. You know, you're gonna be at that PM/MD. Okay, like portfolio manager, managing director, managing partner. Like, that's, that's where, that's where you want to be, right?

And you're making millions of dollars at that point. Yeah, yeah, you're doing pretty well.

Go watch our video about how much fund managers make. Or you can do what my friend Bridger here did. All right, so now we're going to talk about route 3, right? So unfortunately, I hate to say it, I was on this route. And Bridger converted me, okay?

Well, I was on the route as well, and we're going to talk about door number 3. I love the quote. Maybe leave this, yeah, leave this up. You can delete this side stuff, but door number 2 here, it's nice. It's a path. You've got to do a lot of work for a long time. And it was very interesting. I was actually at this point, I was at my college, university doing well. I got the sophomore internship and then the junior internship, and I thought I was up and up and doing all this great stuff. And what I decided to do was call a few people that were here, right? They were probably 7 years, 6 years ahead of me on the exact same path. They had done the finance internship, they'd done investment banking or consulting, they had come here. I called them up to see, and they were alumni of the school and good friends of mine, and I called— I remember I called one of them, the first guy, hey, what's going on? Hey, my name is Bridger. I just wanted— I'm a student at the school. I wanted to hear your thoughts and advice on this industry and what you did. And I go, you're like 30 years old now, tell me about your experience. He goes, you know what's funny? He goes, I actually just moved out of Boston. He was doing this whole thing and he goes, I'm working in Texas, I just started a business and I'm totally out of the industry. And I was like, why? What happened? And he goes, well, I was just burnt out. I had a wife and a child at the time and I was about to do a whole MBA program and do the associate and I just like, My wife was gonna divorce me. She was out. And I had to get out of the industry. And I said, okay, well, thank you so much. And he talked with her and I hung up. Called the next guy up. Hey, what's going on? He was, I think, a little bit further down the road, maybe year 11. And he goes, oh, I left that long ago. I said, what? And he said, yeah, about his second— he did the 2 years as an analyst and he said, I'm done. And he went and spun out and now he was working at another company as a CFO or something and doing something else. And it totally spun out of this industry. And I called person after person, and they told— I heard this, I think out of 10 people I called, only 2 were still here. And then they were telling me, okay, the next decade, how they were gonna move up and work and hustle and work late nights and get there.

Right.

And I thought, huh, it's interesting. And I love the quote, you guys have probably heard this before, but people overestimate what they can do in 1 year, and underestimate what they can do in a decade. Most companies that we know of as of today, you see Lyft, you see Uber, Oculus, all these incredible companies coming out, they weren't even a thought 10 years ago. Think about how much you can accomplish in a decade. And I was sitting here at year 2 and a half of my career, 3 or somewhere around there, and I thought, I wonder the next decade if I can work hard and spend time, whatever, and beat these guys. The goal is associate's, let's call it $350 grand a year. I said I bet in 10 years, I bet I can make more than $350 grand a year doing something else because the goal is money, right? The reason we're in this is for money, right? People like to say prestige and other things. The reason you work every day though, if you weren't getting a paycheck, you probably wouldn't show up, right? It's for money. The goal in a career is money and I thought over 10 years, I wonder if there's a different route that I could go and I actually called Lincoln up. I think we sat down for lunch or something, right?

We went to lunch.

So yeah, we were both in San Francisco at the same time right there. And I sat down, I just said, Lincoln, I just think this is garbage. I'm looking at people that are slaves that are 5 years ahead of me. I'm working with them every day. They hate their life, they don't have a social life, they don't have a family, they don't have kids, they're unhappy people and most of them are spinning out and so I thought, I wonder if there's a different way. I wonder if there's a different path. And that's where we transition over to door number 3 here. And I thought, I wonder if I could start my own. And I actually, if some of you guys have heard my story in other places, I won't go through the whole thing, but I found an incredible mentor and sat down and he taught me about funds. And I said, this is my goal. I wanted to run a— I want to be an asset manager. I want to run a fund. He told me, he says, Bridger, I was a lot like you in my 20s. I was gonna do this and I figured out this secret world of the rich, the secret world of private equity, of hedge funds, of venture capital, and I figured out how they work and how they run. And so we sat down and over a period of months we sat down, he taught me everything he knew about funds, how they work and how they're structured. And between him and— from my other videos, you guys know my dad, I didn't know this growing up, my dad was running a big fund. They, at the time, they were about $8 billion under management.

And I know what you guys are thinking. You're like, well, wait a second, Bridger's dad here is a fund manager. Bridger's gotta—

I mean, I'm in door 1.

He falls in door 1. He's a cheat. It's not true. I've met— I've worked both with him. His dad won't give him a dollar.

To this day, my dad has never invested in any of our funds, any deals, any projects, anything we've done. Yeah, but great mentor and sat me down and taught me about funds. And my dad, he grew up in North Las Vegas, ghetto North Las Vegas, got Cs and Bs through high school and college, barely graduated university, didn't have the grades to do any of this, but yet figured out what a fund was, and over a decade was able to start a fund, and they scaled it, him and his partner scaled it above $10 billion in assets under management in real estate. And I looked at him, I was like, well, he's not that smart, I wonder if I can do it, right? And you've met him, I mean, he's a nice guy, he's not that sophisticated of a guy. And so I set out, I had a great idea. I was working at a company at the time, I was an intern. It wasn't the same internship but it was a different internship and I thought I wonder if we could lend money to their clients and I talked to the owners, they thought it was a good idea so I said I want to set up a fund and we're going to lend money to some of their clientele that come through here. So I got all— I met with my dad and other mentors, we put together, you know, we kind of thought through it, helped me think tank it, the whole thing. I got my fund kind of put together And I thought, okay, I got to raise money now, right? And then that's the big piece of a fund is you need money.

Yeah.

And so I remember I said, well, I'm going to ask my dad. My dad's rich apparently, I didn't know this. We grew up— we seriously grew up in an average house. My dad drove a car with 200,000 miles on it, an old Ford Expedition. It was not showy. I learned from his partner, his business partner, that he was wealthy. I didn't even know this and I was like, what? Why haven't we gone on trips and vacation? Like, why are we like, you know, why am I saving my money every month and, you know, hope saving up for an iPod as a kid or whatever, right? And Anyways, long story short, I went and talked to my dad and I asked him for money. And I was 22 years old at the time. I said, Dad, how would you like to be my first investor into our fund? And I gave him the whole pitch and he said, no. He said, if I invest in your fund, it will ruin the experience of you raising money on your own. And it was a big tough love moment between me and my dad. And I went out and I hit the streets. I took him up on the offer. I talked to every single person I knew. I talked to former bosses, college professors, neighbors, friends from high school, their Friends from high school's parents, like anybody. And after about 4 or 5 weeks, I raised a whopping $49,000 for my first micro syndicate fund. Very small amount, obviously, but it was enough to get started. And we got our first group of investors together. We started doing these micro loans. They were like $1,000 to $5,000 apiece to these different clients from that business. And our first investors got a 64% return on their money. Wow.

And I think that's crucial. It's a crucial part of the story, right? Is because nothing happens in this business unless you get your investors a return, right? It's not about you making money, it's about your investors making money. Because once your investors make money, then you can scale.

Exactly. Yeah, I made a couple grand doing that. I didn't make much, but it was a tracker builder.

And it—

and what happened was all those investors, they started to brag to their friends that they got a great investment with Bridger. Hey, you guys should check this guy out. And so we went and launched Fund 2, and since then we've raised millions of dollars out of Fund 2 and deployed millions of dollars out of Fund 2. It's been awesome, and now we're launching Fund 3. We're actually transitioning into real estate. We've soft raised about $18 million right now. It's been pretty awesome and cool, and right now I'm still on this. I'm like at year 5 or 6 of this journey, right? And I have friends that are still, you have friends too probably that are still in this route.

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

And they now are calling me up. Hey, how are you doing? How did you jump a decade? How are you running multimillion-dollar funds?

Well, 'cause here's something to consider, guys. Like, you talk to somebody who's done one fund, they made, you know, it was $49 grand, who cares? But they've done a deal, right? I would argue that this guy knows way more than this guy about deal-making, okay? Regardless of their prior experience, like, this guy is more credible in my book. They've actually done it, right? And investors, Believe the same way.

Yeah, I think the fast way to learn is by doing.

Yeah.

And that's why we went on this route. And then we got here, we're now on fund 3 right now, we're launching it as we speak. It's pretty fun. We got a lot of fun stuff going, and I'm in the game, right? I'm not waiting and answering someone else's emails and taking orders.

Yeah.

Like, we're in the game. We're launching our own stuff.

Making decisions, talking to investors, doing everything, right?

Exactly. Right now, Lincoln's getting into a few real estate deals and getting in the game. When you start moving, it's incredible what happens, especially with, in such a, like we live in America.

Yeah.

It's the greatest country on earth for entrepreneurship, even regardless of COVID and all this other stuff, it's the greatest country on earth for entrepreneurship, and this is proven right here. And so we went and launched this, and it's taken off like crazy, and then so since then, since doing this, we launched, I had a lot of people asking me, myself, my dad, my brother's a securities attorney, and I, by the way, before you go crazy in the comments, I understand the uniqueness of my position of having a dad who runs a deca-billion-dollar fund.

I get that.

And you're like, I could never do it, right? So what I decided— we decided to do was we put together an online program and content to give you guys the same access.

Mm-hmm.

My dad, really all he gave me was knowledge and advice, right? No dollars, right? Just knowledge and advice. And so what we did for you guys was we brought together— we bring together people like my dad or other fun mentors and managers. If you've ever read Rich Dad Poor Dad, I kind of had the rich dad. And we're bringing you access to that, and that's why we started Investment Fund Secrets. We started this community and group. We have over 1,000 members inside of our paid mastermind group that are all launching and scaling funds. We have a few funds out of there that have launched. We have one fund over $500 million that launched just— $500 million.

A year ago?

One year.

$0, right?

We have 2 other funds over $15 million, one fund over $10 million, a number of funds over $1 million that are launched, regular people like me and you, And it said, screw the Wall Street traditional route, and said, I'm going to go make a name for myself. I'm going to figure this out. And so we put together courses and content, all sorts of stuff to help people launch and scale funds and follow door number 3, which I think is a pretty fun way to live life, very lucrative way to live life, and you don't have to go through the grime of this. And most of these people end up never even getting to this point anyways, because they spin out. They burn out. They do something else. They burn out. No one can do that that long. People overestimate what they can do in 1 year and underestimate what they can do in a decade.

So do something about it, guys. If you made it this far, then click on the link below and join us in the group.

Yeah, you can schedule a call. I think we have a 1-hour free training on there. We got a lot of stuff below. Click on the link below and join up with us. We are the Wall Street— that's why we got these shirts on. We're the Wall Street Rebels. That's what we do. We are saying screw you, Wall Street guys. We can do it more efficiently, faster, and at a younger age or more quicker than you guys can. And it's been pretty incredible to be a part of it and do it and to hear you guys' story as well. So hit the link below if you guys want to learn more, if you want to talk to us or meet up or whatever. We've got this small— it's kind of this cool corner of the internet of these Wall Street degenerates that are building funds and taking this by the street and going after it.

Well, and with that said, we actually do have a lot of people in our program that did work, you know, all 3 years as an analyst, that went and got their Harvard MBA, That went to Yale, went somewhere, and the funny thing is, is they say that they learned something new in our program.

Right. They still want to come, they're like, I actually learned, one lady said she learned more on our 1-hour, just the 1-hour training below, than what an entire semester at her MBA, her last semester, from our 1-hour training. So we try to get to the point, we try to cut through the garbage of all the stuff out there, and just give you the exact things you need to know. So there you have it. That's us for today. Click the link below, we'll see you guys inside. Bye.