Only accredited investors can invest in hedge funds. The requirements for becoming an accredited investor, as described by Rule 501 [1] state that an individual's net worth, excluding real estate must be over $1,000,000 or have an income of over $200,000.
I think one of the biggest struggles to "growth hacking" a hedge fund are the regulator requirements. [2]
1. http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=8edfd12967d...
2. http://www.investmentfundlawblog.com/resources/marketing/mar...
The funds is bench marked to Credit Suisee HF Index, Citibank Prime +5%, S&P 500. It is beating the bench mark since inception and that historical statement is verified by our auditors. Your point regarding "attracting huge amounts of capital" holds true when a fund reaches a certain size, typically greater than $120M, getting to that point is where a lot of the work happens. The point from start to autonomous growth must be managed with extreme care and diligence, it is imperative that a growing fund manages their growth to not try and grow faster than their operations can support. -- Which is what I'm asking HN, I am soliciting opinions and experiences from smart people, maybe growth hack is the wrong term.
I agree that as a fund grows it definitely gets harder to scale, and at this time, we haven't begun to scale at our full potential, so that point remains in the central view of the risk committee.
Thank you for contributing your opinions.
Also, i suspect that a large fraction (easily double digit is my guess) of HN readers are accredited investors. Despite these attributes, knowledge you take for granted might be lacking. In my case, i lack a basic fluency in what a hedge fund is as well as a knowledge of a few simple rules to distinguish legitimate ones from those that (likely) aren't.
Without this knowledge, what i know about hedge funds is what i read on HN and that is usually unfavorable (setting this thread aside). So for instance, i recall reading that Ellen Pao's husband is a manager of hedge funds of sufficient reputation to attract more than $100 million from municipal pension funds, but is now bankrupt and declared a ponzi scheme by the bankruptcy judge.
Again, not to disparage hedge funds, rather just to emphasize that these are exotic instruments that very few have any idea how they work, and so there's nothing to mitigate the highly negative association caused by the alarmingly frequent instances of massive fraud orchestrated with hedge funds.
clearly it's not logical--everyone knows what a "hedge" is and they know what a "fund" is, but put those two words together and they metastasize into an term with a strongly reinforced negative connotation.
So you're not a hedge fund.
>The funds is bench marked to Credit Suisee HF Index, Citibank Prime +5%, S&P 500.
What a crazy combination of benchmarks.
Those funds make sense to me for a real estate focused hedge fund that is primarily used in retirement accounts.
Just my $.02
As for 'growth hacking', that's really not a mindset I would recommend for any investment strategy. First, think of the asset class (real-estate), the investment strategy and the securities/investment products involved: can you scale them up and be as profitable? If you can demonstrate that you can, then growing the AuM shouldn't be too hard. 'Growth hacking' sounds like smoke and mirrors - I wouldn't recommend that terminology with investors.
Yes, an RRSP is not a fund and like you said, a vehicle to hold an investment position. I was not trying to insinuate that an RRSP was a fund and I will edit my previous comment.
Other options: ad targeting people that are customers/users of Vanguard, Betterment, Wealthfront, Robinhood, Simple, etc
Would be curious to hear what that entails / differentiates you from other investment firms in the same space. The alternative data space taking off among hedge funds is pretty interesting, and I'd be interested to hear how a real estate fund approaches it.