How To Launch A Fund Without Going To Harvard 🔥

This is my underground fund launch formula for launching your fund and getting off the ground. Hey guys, welcome back. So in this episode, we're going to walk through what I call my underground fund launch formula. This is a formula for people like you and me, entrepreneurs. We didn't go to Harvard, we don't have some crazy Ivy League degree, and we want to launch a fund. This is the formula that I found most successful for my funds. All the people I brought on to interview on this mastermind all say a similar formula for how they launched their fund. So I'm gonna walk you through that right now. Quick overview of the 3 circles. If you've been in the mini vault, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So expert— over here, expert investor, this circle are your chief investment officers. These guys can find incredible deals. They're really good at finding deals, working on them, finding the greatest trades and stock picks, right? This next is your fund manager circle. This is compliance, accounting, regulation, capital calls, distributions, managing the actual fund and workings of everything. And then over here, third is your money raiser, right? These are people doing— finding institutional investors, finding high net worth individuals, bringing the money into the fund. So these are 3 pieces of your fund, 3 roles. Now you can run all 3 of them if you want. You can do 2 of the 3, you can do 1 of the 3, or even a Slice of the 3, but those are kind of the 3 roles that you'll see in, in every fund across the board. Now, expounding upon that, the fund launch formula. So if you look back to my story, right, how I launched my first fund, I was working at a company, we found an incredible opportunity to finance some of our clients. They needed bridge funding for about 30 to 45 days, and they needed anywhere from like $5,000 to $30,000. Small microloans and we looked at the returns and the default rate, man, this is a great deal, like this looks incredible and we went through, we mapped it out and then I went and tried to pitch my dad like I said in my story, my dad says no, right, and then I went and found other investors, raised money and then we went out and did the legal work. So that's the exact model I followed and I found that I started to look at other funds, they did a similar thing. on different scale. So number one is going to be finding an incredible, finding an incredible deal, right? Number one, every person I talk to, they always say start with the deal. Unless your name's Ray Dalio, people aren't just going to write you a check and say, hey, Ray, I trust you, do whatever you want with it. You need to show your investors your investment strategy, your deals. And hopefully you've done a few of them with your own money before you bring it to them. And that's what we'll talk about in syndication versus fund. I recommend doing A few syndication deals first to really test out your model. Next, we're going to have the frame period. And if you look, right, expert investor, you find amazing deals, you come to the fund manager, you frame it out, right? How are we going to find debt? How are we going to— how much equity do we need in this piece? You get on an Excel sheet and all Excel models are perfect, right? They're always— everyone's going to be multimillionaires on every Excel model. And, uh, but you got to do it, right? You got to model it out and figure out how you're going to make money. on this deal and why it's such a good deal. Third, and which is so great about the fund model, is this third piece is you can start raising money. And you're like, Bridger, wait, I haven't— what about filing with the SEC? Under Reg D 506 or , and if you look in our other sections, we talk all about this. This is the most common filing that everybody does, is a 506 or . You don't have to file with the SEC before you raise money. You can go out and raise money, have money committed to you, take the money, and start deploying it, and you just have to file with the SEC. That's the nicest thing about this. You can go out and raise money first. Now, I love this, and I always tell people, your legal documents— and that's the 4th step, is like legal, getting all legally set up right— do the raising money part first. I meet too many people like, Bridger, okay, I have this great deal. I have a great frame. And okay, I need some lawyers. I need some help setting up my legal stuff. And I'm like, whoa, what about raising money? Do you have any investors yet? And they go, no, I want to get the legal stuff first before I pitch my investors. And I go, why? You got to go test your market, go test your limited partners, test your investors before you set up your documents. Because if you go try to raise money, and it's crickets, and nobody wants to invest, and you beat the streets, and you're talking to hundreds of people, hundreds of pitch rooms, nobody likes it, you go, well, Okay, we didn't spend a ton of money on our legal documents. Let's go back to the drawing board, back to the deal. And let's start over with a new deal, a new frame, we'll go pitch those same investors. Right, this is— you can stay in this loop until you find a great deal, and then go ahead and find great lawyers and set up. And I'm going to walk in our other episodes we have, I brought on lawyers actually, they're going to walk you through some of this. But to set up that legal part, please raise money first. Go out. It seems counterintuitive, but this is how we have to do it. Non-Wall Street guys, non-Harvard degrees, we have to find incredible deals, frame it, and then go out and raise money. And don't, you know, maybe just get a soft commitment, right? Get a commitment. Hey, you know, we haven't set up everything yet. It's in the works, but in 3 weeks we'll be set up. But if everything lines up like what we're framing, if it seems the same, can we put you down for $3 million? Like, yeah, you know what, I'll give you a soft— call it a soft commitment, a soft commitment of $3 million. You say, great. In a couple weeks, our legal documents will be hopefully done and we'll get back to you. And you go, great. Now you have confidence structuring your legal documents that you have a fantastic fund that's going to make you a lot of money. So this is my Underground Fund Launch Formula. 4 simple categories of launching your fund and getting off the ground. Peace.