Launching My Own Fund

Going to give some real advice, because I respect the hustle and I also came from an alternative background. Quick housekeeping point, I highly recommend posting under a pseudonym, up to you obviously but it’s a small world. 
 

First, the bad. Less than a year of analyst-level DCM experience isn’t going to garner any favor from institutional placement agents… I doubt you’d even get a local boutique shop to take on the engagement, and if they did I would recommend you find someone else to work with. You also posted in the last week about learning modeling for distressed real estate, so I’m pretty skeptical you’re in a place (today) to manage your own money, let alone someone else’s. The easiest way to what you want to do is going to be working at an established distressed real estate fund, but I’m guessing that’s not your vibe for one reason or another.
 

That said, it’s never too late to start on an entrepreneurial path. Real estate is home to many, many success stories from people in all walks of life - not nearly as Ivy League focused as Wall Street (although slowly growing that way in commercial as the field matures). 
 

For the time being, completely forget about starting a fund and focus on learning how to do a deal. I highly recommend starting with small-time residential stuff, because it’s very open to hustlers with limited or less relevant experience. Read as much as you can, listen to the BiggerPockets podcast, and start joining networking groups. Ask lots of questions, and find someone with some experience to mentor you. Ask to help, and be open to grunt work - manual labor, dialing for dollars, whatever.
 

Learn the basics of real estate - what makes a deal attractive, why some properties are more valuable than others, how to think about an area and a specific asset in its market context, and, especially, how financing and structuring works and the various legal components. Pick up a few textbooks, and make sure you have a deep understanding of credit metrics and capital structures.

Once you understand the basics and have made a nickel or two from your labor, start working on putting a deal together and pitch people on it (banks, local investors from your meetups, etc. Don’t get ahead of yourself). Put a few dollars in, but finance mostly with investor equity and pay yourself with upside promote (no one wants to pay fixed fees on your first deal or two). Do that a few times, and make money on them (if you can’t make money, what are you doing trying to raise capital). 
 

Once people have made money with you, they will be glad to give you more. If you understand the core points of stabilized real estate and the legal intricacies of financing, you can pivot into note and tax lien investing - now you’re getting into the sexy stuff. Riskier deals, shittier properties, dangerous tenants, potentially high returns - the good stuff. Keep investing with friends and family and local HNW investors, and build a reputation for being good at these distressed notes. 
 

Now you have a reputation, a network, a track record, and a starting LP base - boom, time to fundraise. This assumes starting from scratch, so feel free to skip any interim steps you’ve already done, but the key point remains - you need experience running deals to fundraise