Starting a hedge fund

I personally don't think it would be that hard "to do" per se as it would be hard to succeed. If you're talking like, spin up the next $X bn+ fund, then yea it's a heroically difficult task, but do you know how many odds and ends funds are out there? They're everywhere, they're like ants running around, vibrant one minute, dead the next, never ending stream 

For example: start with your own money, family and friends (let's say you can scrounge up $5mm). Let's say you just want to go super high factor exposure to Analytics businesses because you think that sector will take off. Maybe that factor exposure pays off, maybe not. But say it does you could probably get $50mm from there and then maybe $100mm and then hire someone along the way. There's just way too much capital for me to believe if you have a semi-reasonable strategy that has shown it performs over a couple years, there isn't *someone* who won't give you money. Cue MS which is fair, this is overly optimistic, but I think I'm right in a general path. I think what the MS-throwers will discount is that I'm not saying everyone can go out and do this, but I'm saying, say you do pick your lane correctly, then the actual path itself is pretty straight forward.