Start-Up Fund Manager

It looks like you were asking for internship advice

how do you plan on applying to business school without a college degree?

also, you can make more money than you know what to do with if your fund is successful, and in that case I'd skip out on b school.

also SSits looks like these threads are back

Focus on your fiduciary responsibilities. From your site:

"We grew out of Silicon Valley with one aim, to bring back morals and ethics to the finance industry. Our company built its foundation out of a frustration from watching asset managers acting selfishly and hurting their investors tremendously."

Pot meet kettle. Neither of you have track records or real work experience outside of internships.

Finish your college degree first, then apply to MBA programs. Focus on improving returns rather than "AUM".

I am a start-up money manager at my own firm BlackVault Investments... I was thinking of boosting our AUM up

TONIGHT ON AMERICAN GREED

A young college freshman drops out of UC Davis to start his own hedge fund, raising eight figures in a few short months... The fund promises consistent returns, but do investors get what they bargained for??

In all seriousness kid, figure out what your edge is, first. Then trade on your own account. Then, take the strategy to a Chicago prop shop arcade- they'll provide capital and give you 50% of your returns. It's a much more cost effective way of testing a strategy IMO.

Strategy first, and that attracts capital, not the other way around.

I can't be too mean here because I might one day be working for you. You may very well be the 1 in 1000 freshman who has some sort of edge... but make sure you've figured it out first. The focus needs to be returns, and the AUM will follow.

Congrats on starting up!

As others said, focus on your fund returns and honing your investment process. Clearly you have a lot to learn given your youth and lack of industry experience, but you must have talent to have raised that kind of capital while in college.

Stay conservative and focus on maintaining a consistent investment process. I wouldn't focus too much on capital raising at this point, if you build a couple years of track then capital will be much easier to raise. Frankly I'm shocked you were able to raise $10m in your situation and I would consider that a very good outcome for a launch by an undergrad! I don't think you will have much success fundraising on a large scale given your experience and age UNTIL you have a proven track record, so it wouldn't be time well spent.

Rather than focus on raising AUM and Bschool which is all "me me me" how about you spend some time thinking about how to make returns for the people who invested with you?

Your website is hilarious.

"Mr. Francis is a Computer Science major at Berkeley City College, planning to transfer to UC Berkeley’s College of Letter and Sciences in the fall of 2016."

I can't figure out if this is an elaborate joke where I just haven't gotten hit with the punch line yet...

You've got a typo in your bio on your webpage

wait, why would anyone give a high-school-graduate money to invest...i mean wtf???? anyone else confused by this?

can i be the chief operating officer of your firm?

I visited your fund's website. Your animated intro has photos with bugs for "Getty Images," which means you're using them unlicensed, violating copyright. This makes me skeptical of your claim to be bringing morals and ethics back to the finance industry.

The whole "naive college students start a hedge fund" shtick has been done to death already. By copying it, you risk making yourselves a laughingstock, here at WSO and elsewhere. I checked with SEC IARD and you're not registered as investment advisers. I don't believe you've raised $10MM. If you actually have, use the first tranche of management fees to get some adult supervision, to keep from being shut down by regulators or investor lawsuits, which can happen when you cut corners in this industry, even if you really are precocious investment wizards.