Raising capital for a startup fund is about who you know ... and in many cases, who your parents are.

Meet the Global Center for Investment Fund Studies

Successful hedge funds share several key attributes: strong, consistent performance, a management team with impressive professional and academic backgrounds, and a compelling fund strategy.  However, the most predictive factor for a startup fund's success is whether or not it has a sufficient critical mass of initial capital at launch.  This initial capital usually comes from friends, family, professional relationships that meet the fund’s investment qualifications, or from a major seeder.

The process for starting a hedge fund involves much more than a hedge fund attorney drafting the disclosure documents and preparing regulatory filings.  Drafting the documents is only one component of a comprehensive fund formation process.  A common mistake we see is hedge funds that are prepared using a form-driven approach, which results in investment fund terms and structure that are based on a generic structure, or often the wrong structure entirely.  A template-based approach results in fund terms and structure that are not in line with the specific fund's needs, market position and regulatory structure.

In September 2103, the SEC adopted rules allowing private issuers of securities, including hedge funds, to engage in advertising and general solicitation under Regulation D. Until the recent CFTC announcement, hedge funds that include commodities or futures within their portfolios could not engage in general solicitation, since such instruments are regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Hedge fund strategies encompass a broad range of risk tolerance and investment philosophies within a wide array of investments, including debt and equity securities, commodities, currencies, derivatives, real estate and other investment vehicles. The horizon of hedge fund investment strategies has seen unprecedented expansion in recent years. Below is a description of some of the more common hedge fund strategies. Note that hedge fund investment terms are driven in large part by the fund’s strategy and its level of liquidity. See our article: Brief Survey of Common Hedge Fund Terms.

A team of experienced and committed hedge fund lawyers play a vital role in guiding hedge fund managers through their various responsibilities and helping managers avoid devastating mistakes.

A prime broker is a central broker through whom the fund executes most or all of its trades and who typically acts as custodian to the fund’s assets. When the hedge fund executes trades through other brokers, the prime broker works with the executing brokers to settle and transfer all assets through the prime broker.

Your hedge fund attorney will prepare five core documents, which are necessary to launch the fund: (i) a private placement memorandum, (ii) a limited partnership agreement, (iii) a subscription agreement, (iv) an investment management agreement, and (v) a management company operating agreement.

Hedge fund manager fees typically consist of (i) an annual management fee and (ii) a performance allocation, also referred to as incentive allocation, or carried interest. The latter is not technically a “fee,” but rather a capital allocation, as will be discussed below. This blog post describes the role of both compensation components.