Bridger Pennington started an investment fund in his early twenties before finishing college. He turned his youth into an advantage by working longer hours, skipping management fees, and putting his own money in. After overdelivering to early investors, word-of-mouth referrals made fundraising easier.
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Hey guys, welcome back. I'm excited for the webinar in a couple days, it's gonna be exciting. Yesterday we talked about the structure of a fund but a lot of people and myself included have this belief of like yeah, okay, I understand, that's really cool but there's no way that I could actually do it, right? There's no way that someone like me at 20, you know, early 20s could go out and start a fund, right? And my story, I had learned about funds from my dad, I learned the structure, I learned the strategy from him growing up, we'd whiteboard it out. I was like man, I really want to get in the fund world one day. And finally at work, I had actually found this really cool— I was actually working at a company. They needed financing for some of their clients. I said, hey, I could do it. We set up a simple fund, actually a syndicate first. I just brought money into a simple LLC. We tried these deals out and they made a lot, actually a pretty good return. And so we structured that into a fund, got our fund documents together. We were ready to go and I'm getting everything together. I'm like, my dad's helped me out, right? He's helped me frame things out and I'm like, great, we get our documents. He has me read our LP and PPM like 30 times. Just kidding, it was like 10 times. Read through all these documents. I like almost die reading those documents. It was so crazy. And then we're ready to launch our fund and I go to my dad, I'm like, Dad, do you want to invest in the fund, right? Apparently he has money, he runs a huge fund. Do you want to be our first investor, our, you know, our initial flagship investor? And he says, Bridger, I love you to death but I cannot invest in your funds. I would ruin the opportunity of you raising your own money and he kicked me out and said, you got to go learn how to raise your own money. I can teach you the strategy but you've actually got to do the work. You can't use me as a crutch anymore, and he kicked me out, and I had to go out and figure out how am I gonna actually find investors. I'm in my early 20s, I haven't graduated college yet, I don't have a track record. I have a little bit, I mean, I've done this for about 6 months, don't really have much of a track record yet. How am I gonna go find accredited investors that are gonna put money into my fund? So I listed out all these things, right? I'm too young, I'm too inexperienced, I don't have enough going for me, right? And I walked through these obstacles that I kept seeing. And I remember hearing a quote, somebody told me, they said, the obstacle is the way. There's actually a couple books now called The Obstacle Is the Way, that same quote has been used a lot, of using these obstacles, these false beliefs that we have, that I'm too young, that was my biggest one, I'm too young, to our advantage. So I thought through, and I had a few people in mind that I wanted to pitch, and they were just way out there. I finally had set up a meeting, I got in the door with them, was able to pitch, be in the room to actually give my pitch, up to bat, ready to swing, right? I got in the room, started to pitch and go through what our investment strategy was, And then I finally said, hey, I know you're probably thinking my obstacle, right? I'm too young. I told them this. I think you're probably thinking that I'm too young to run a fund. And they kind of like nodded like, yeah, you're exactly right, Bridger. And you're kind of spazzy and you talk really fast. And that's— I've not lost that. I still talk really fast. I'm kind of spazzy and I kind of twitch a little bit sometimes. But I said, you guys are probably saying this guy's way too young to manage our money. And you're probably right, right? I'm a young guy. But I told them this. The difference you're gonna get from a guy like me versus a 60-year-old veteran that wants to raise money from you is I'm young and I'm scrappy. With our fund documents, we're not gonna take a management fee. I don't make money unless you make money. And guess what? I don't have kids, I don't have a mortgage yet, I don't have all these car payments. I can stay up later than any of those old guys. I can work harder, I can work weekends. I don't have the commitments that they have. They are already used to the luxury of life. I'm young, I'm a hustler. And my— I am dedicated to get you a good return on this fund. And I've actually put my own money into this fund with you. And because I'm young, it gives me an advantage over those people because I will outwork all of them. I'll be more resourceful. I'll find the way. I'll figure it out if there's problems. But I'm starting out ready to go, and those guys are finishing their careers. They like to watch TV at night. They like to go to the beach on the weekends. I'm not that way. I used my obstacle as being young, too young, to my advantage. This is my first fund. I want to give my investors the best return possible. I don't even care if I personally make that much money because I am trying to make a name for myself in this industry. A 50-year-old guy coming to pitch the exact same fund, he's going to want to take some money out, he's going to want to pay himself, he's got to pay for kids, he's got to go on a vacation once a year to Hawaii with his family. I don't have that. I'm young and scrappy. I used my obstacle to my advantage. So I don't care if you're fat, if you're skinny, if you're tall, if you're old, you're young, you're male, you're female, you're transgender, I don't care what, you know, you're Republican, you're Democrat, like it doesn't even matter, right? Your obstacle can be the way to actually give you a strategic advantage like for me being too young over other people. Now I launched my first fund, it went actually fairly well and raising money now has actually changed a little bit. I've actually been able to be more selective with my investors, with who I bring in. Because now I have— I've built this track record, I overdelivered to my investors. And guess what every investor loves to do? They love to brag about their investments. So all these— I had only a handful of initial investors, they go, man, this kid Bridger out of Utah, he's crushing it. You guys got to check this kid out. And I started getting phone calls, emails, introductions. And I just expanded over time and over time. And it's been a lot easier now for me to raise money as time's gone on. Starting young, right? You guys probably watching this video are in a way better situation than I am, 'cause I hadn't even graduated college yet, I was young, didn't have a great track record, never worked on Wall Street, and was able to do it. And I'm telling you, you can do the same thing. Whatever you think is the obstacle, you know, I can't raise money, I'm too old, I'm inexperienced, right? Maybe some of those are true, that's probably good to be humble and figure things out, maybe I am inexperienced, Maybe I'll partner with somebody who is experienced, right? Okay, I didn't go to Harvard, maybe I'll partner with somebody that did go to Harvard. Okay, I'm young, I'm gonna partner with somebody that's old, right? Partnership is a fantastic way to overcome that and then also saying hey, I know I'm not, you know, to here this level, that means I got a lot of ground to make up and I'm gonna overcompensate where other people would be lazy. Hope that helps you guys. I'm excited for you guys to be on the webinar in 2 days. Is it 2 or 3 days? 2 or something, whatever. Thursday morning, whatever day it is. Thursday morning, 11 AM, we're gonna hop on. It's gonna be amazing. We are, you know I talk fast, we're gonna jam a couple hours of content into 1 hour. Please be there, come a little bit early. I'm excited to see you guys on, peace.
