Prospective Manager's Portal | Capital Fund Law Group

Preparing to Launch

The Prospective Manager’s Program is a combination of the Roadmap, webinar resources, significant reading materials for fund planning and marketing rules, and template downloads to prepare prospective investment fund managers to effectively raise capital, orient to their new role, assess launch readiness, and develop detailed methods to roll out a new fund. Rather than focusing solely on the legal aspects of the fund, the Prospective Manager’s Program provides structured guidance on the business aspects of forming and operating an investment fund.

Preparing to Raise Capital

Managers can predictably execute a plan when consistently following best practices in designing a systematic launch and long-term capital-raising strategy. We have found that preparatory steps to put the emerging manager in a position to raise capital follow consistent principles and are learnable. However, starting the process can be challenging, and many managers delay their launch based on a lack of experience, particularly in capital raising.

For most first-time managers, the main obstacle between the preparatory phase and a successful launch is the commitment of sufficient capital and developing needed relationships with investors.

“I am significantly more prepared to not only launch my business but also to speak with attorneys and service providers with more authority about my business than before. This is because the Portal forces you to crystallize the core ideas driving the business and put them in writing before meeting with an attorney, allowing for a more productive consultation.”

- Verified Subscriber Review

"Overall, extremely helpful and informative. I would recommend to anyone coming from a technical background with working strategies, but no industry experience and little understanding of the legal and operational aspects of running a fund. I gained a much more comprehensive understanding of the business that I wasn't able to get from over two years of trying to make my way into this industry through piecemeal articles, videos, and conversations.”

- Verified Subscriber Review

Prospective Manager's Roadmap

The backbone of the Prospective Manager's Program is the Roadmap, which guides the client in preparing to raise capital. The program helps a manager evaluate launch readiness and identifies the steps needed before launching the fund.

The program starts with the Prospective Manager’s Roadmap. The Roadmap walks managers through the business aspects of forming a fund and provides an overview of the launch.

Our prospective manager preparation program provides a step-by-step Roadmap for taking the initial steps toward putting managers in a position to raise capital and proceed with the fund launch.

Using approachable language, we have worked with our clients and other service providers to break down business issues when launching a fund into digestible components. The Roadmap highlights key milestones through each critical aspect of establishing a fund, including the investment strategy, capital raising, and launch readiness. While working through the materials, the manager will develop a complete business plan, key metrics, and analyses to discover the likely strengths and weaknesses of the prospective fund.

Investment Templates and Resources

Throughout the program, we provided template documents to assist the client in developing ready-to-go early drafts of key planning tools, marketing materials, and analysis aids. The goal is for the manager to work through the program and arrive at the end with a sufficient knowledge base and introductory planning resources to be ready to launch a fund or develop soft commitments. Resources include, but are not limited to, sample business plans, investor persona development, sample market research presentations, and more.

Developing Investor Profiles—Beyond Minimum Investor Standards

Legal parameters impose restrictions on who can invest in the fund, whether under the qualified client standard or the much lower accredited investor standard. Beyond determining the minimum standards, we focus on helping you develop and identify investor profiles that will guide your early efforts. Much of the emphasis on the early stage of launching a fund is focused on identifying sophisticated anchor investors that often come in during the pilot stage of the fund and that will be instrumental in laying the groundwork for subsequent capital raising efforts as you broaden your field of investors.

Marketing Regulations and Best Practices White Paper & Example Marketing Templates

We expect fund managers to eventually engage marketing professionals to assist with preparing more formal materials. However, the manager should prepare the core language and materials to describe the fund's scope, objective, and strategy. Our marketing best practices white paper provides an overview of the rules we believe all managers should follow and, for some managers, rules they must abide by, depending on their registration requirements. Accompanying the white paper are marketing templates, which will guide you through this process and offer you a starting point when developing your marketing strategy. These basic materials encapsulate the fund’s aims while maintaining compliance with securities and investment advisory laws.

Understanding Fiduciary Duties and Disclosure Obligations.

Investor communications are one of the key areas of potential liability and can be triggered even during the initial pre-launch discussions with prospective investors. Unlike most securities offerings, where liability typically only arises once an investment has been made, investment managers, as fiduciary advisors, have immediate potential liability for misstatements made to prospective investors, whether or not the investors ultimately invest.

Understanding Fund Structures and Terminology

To speak intelligently with potential investors and avoid liability in the early stages of securing soft commitments, managers must develop an understanding of and fluency in discussing fund structures, terminology, and specific securities law provisions and exemptions. The Prospective Manager's Program helps you understand the legal suitability standards for investors.

Background

The Prospective Manager’s Program was developed based on thousands of discussions with early-stage managers for over a decade. Capital Fund Law Group has developed a reputation for its efforts in understanding the issues facing emerging managers and providing business consulting and guidance alongside our legal role. We have taken a deep interest in advising clients on fund planning and developing and executing a sound capital-raising strategy, having conducted narrowly focused research on the early predictive factors for successful fund launch and early-stage growth. By pinpointing key factors that play a significant role in determining the outcome of a manager’s success, we can efficiently guide you on the critical aspects of fund planning through our self-paced online program.

The Prospective Manager's Program