Jeremy Deal of JDP Capital Management spent about a decade figuring out how to start a hedge fund. His fund launched in 2011 with $1 million in assets under management from Deal himself and two families. A decade later, Deal describes his fund as a "vehicle for like-minded investors to own stakes in a handful of deeply-researched businesses with a unique value proposition and a multi-year growth runway." JDP Capital returned 139% gross and 110% net in 2020.
Deal started on his path of becoming a hedge fund manager when he was about 18 or 19 when he went to a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. He wanted to manage a hedge fund, but he decided to get business experience first.
Background
"When I graduated from college, it was the bottom of the dotcom bust," Deal told ValueWalk in an interview. "The world started to collapse. I didn't really know what to do. I couldn't just jump on a plane and go to New York. I thought, let me get some great business experience to learn about business firsthand."