Digital Social Hour
How to Start a $50M Investment Fund (From Scratch!) | DSH #1198
Sat, 22 Feb 2025
🚀 Building Funds, Raising Millions & Navigating the Financial World 💰 In this episode, we sit down with Bridger Pennington, the fund master behind multiple investment funds, including a blockchain investment fund and a GP stakes fund managing $50M+ in assets. He shares his journey from pitching his first fund at 22 years old to running multiple funds today, plus hard lessons learned from raising capital, fund frauds, and how to protect your investments. We also dive into how Wall Street really works, the power of private equity, the AI arms race, and hidden financial manipulation at the highest levels. If you’re into business, investing, and financial power moves, this is a must-watch episode! 📲 Follow Bridger & Fund Launch: ➡️ Website: FundLaunch.com ➡️ Instagram: @BridgerPennington 🔥 APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application 📩 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] Key Timestamps 00:00 - The Shocking Truth About Raising Capital 00:22 - Bridger Pennington’s First Fund & His Father’s Tough Lesson 01:00 - Managing $50M in Assets & Growing Multiple Investment Funds 02:45 - How to Pitch a Fund & Secure Investors 04:30 - Avoiding Fraud & The Biggest Fund Scams to Watch For 08:10 - Bernie Madoff, BlackRock & The Power of Private Funds 10:50 - The AI Investment Boom – Who Will Win the Arms Race? 13:30 - The Global Power Shift: How BRICS & the U.S. Dollar Battle It Out 17:15 - How China & BlackRock Influence Global Markets 22:30 - Gold Manipulation & The Truth About Precious Metals Investing 28:00 - Why Family is the Ultimate Flex in Business & Life 35:00 - Masterminds, Networking & Paying $150K to Meet Russell Brunson 40:00 - How to Start Your Own Fund & Avoid Costly Mistakes
Chapter 1: How did Bridger Pennington start his first investment fund?
And I went to raise capital. Like I'm going to go pitch my dad. Who better? Apparently my dad's rich. He doesn't spend it on cars or vacations or nothing. You know, like he'll probably have tons of money. So I went and pitched my dad and he emphatically said no. Wow. Yeah. He said, if I invest in your fund, it would ruin the experience of you raising money on your own.
To this date, he's, I've now launched three funds. We're kind of doing a fourth right now. Last week was the first time he's ever invested in a single fund. I currently run two funds right now. I run a blockchain investment fund. We run a GP stakes fund. We manage roughly $50 million of AUM right now.
Damn.
That's crazy.
All right, guys. We got the fund master here today, Bridger Pennington. Thanks for coming on, man. What's up? Good to see you.
Long time waited.
Yeah, I've been seeing you at events for years, man.
Yes, we have.
I think we were trying to plan this out limitless like two years ago, right?
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Chapter 2: What lessons did Bridger learn from his father's investment advice?
Well, the whole crypto market is $3 trillion. Gold is $14 trillion. If JP Morgan, one company, can manipulate the gold market at $14 trillion, how much easier would it be to manipulate the $3 trillion crypto market?
Way easier. Plus, you could trade it all day, every day. It's not closed on the weekends, like gold and silver. Yeah, I'm mixed on gold. I got some, but I hear these wild things about gold, so we'll see.
Well, last week, there's a lot of people calling their gold duke. Really? In the United Kingdom. So this whole report that I was reading, people are calling because they have gold reserves. It's supposed to be physical gold. But they own like an ETF or a GLD or whatever. And they're actually calling their gold back because of Trump's tariffs. Because Trump's looking to tariff.
They don't want to get tariffs on that gold. So they're going to try to get it and put it in a safer vault. They have delayed. So usually it's a three to four day delay to get your gold out. They've now jumped it to six to eight weeks. Whoa. Which everyone's theorizing they don't have the gold. They've been pontificating the price of gold.
They've been selling, you know, GLD shares of gold or whatever, and they don't actually own the gold. So right now there's a run on the bank right now on gold, which could do some pretty interesting things to the price of gold going forward.
Yeah, because now other countries will see that and call theirs, and then it could be a worldwide thing.
It's a run on the bank on gold, and we actually are going to see how much gold is out there. It's going to be interesting. That is very interesting. Do you have any?
I have some gold, yeah. I have physical. I don't have the ETF.
Yeah, some physical, some ETF. It's funny, the whole entire gold, I saw a stat. It could fit, the entire gold in the whole world could fit into an Olympic-sized pool.
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