Fund Launch (Lehi, UT), founded by Bridger Pennington, Mason Vranes, and Lincoln Archibald, is a $30 million fund incubator and educational enterprise democratizing private equity, incubating hundreds of funds, and deploying AI to streamline fund creation.
Lehi, Utah — September 4, 2025
In Lehi, Utah, three young entrepreneurs are quietly reshaping private equity and venture fund creation. Fund Launch, co-founded in October 2019 by Bridger Pennington, Mason Vranes, and Lincoln Archibald, is merging scrappy entrepreneurial roots, digital marketing, and AI to make fund creation faster, cheaper, and more accessible than ever before.
From BYU Dorms to Billion-Dollar Client Funds
Bridger Pennington’s story reads like a startup origin myth. Growing up in Utah, serving an LDS mission in Taiwan and attending BYU, he tried six businesses in his first year in college. He described how he met Co-Founder, Mason Vranes, at BYU.
"I was the TA to Scott Peterson's entrepreneurship class of about 400 kids," recounts Pennington. "I announced on the first day of class, 'Hey, I need someone who's really good at building websites, funnels and that kind of thing... if anybody wants to come partner with me come talk me after class.' Mason walked up literally wearing a click funnel t-shirt, and said, 'Dude, I can click on." I said, 'Can you rebuild this website in a couple hours?" Vranes ended up needing only 45 minutes. "Shoot, let's do this."
Pennington and Vranes partnered and built several websites for people selling products, "We were making a couple grand a month, you know, building websites, funnels, and ad things like that. It worked out pretty well."
At 22, Bridger raised $49,500 from friends and family for his first micro-loan fund. That fund returned 64% to investors and laid the groundwork for a second fund that deployed millions across 219 deals over three years.
“We were scrappy, untraditional, and we didn’t work on Wall Street or attend Ivy League schools,” Bridger recalls. “We saw a gap: there was no accessible education or tools for people like us who wanted to launch a fund.”
Scaling Through Education and Incubation
In 2019, the team launched an educational platform, producing free content and low-cost courses to test market interest. They launched a $47 mini-course that generated $61,735 during this initial market test period of October 15, 2019 to February 19, 2020. They also filmed interviews with dozens of successful fund managers and launched a comprehensive academy that year. By 2020, even amid COVID, Fund Launch ran weekly webinars for 37 consecutive weeks, generating $2 million in annual sales.
The success of these programs led to the creation of an incubator, where aspiring fund managers gain hands-on experience. Over 110,000 students have taken courses. Since 2019, Fund Launch reports that clients who have come through its incubator now manage a combined $4.7 billion in assets under management (AUM).
Democratizing High Finance
A defining feature of Fund Launch is its focus on nontraditional fund managers. Many founders come from outside the Ivy League and Wall Street ecosystem but possess niche expertise in areas ranging from timberland and litigation finance to renewable energy and Hollywood script acquisitions.
To feed this talent pipeline, Fund Launch runs an internship program: a single LinkedIn post recently yielded 1,000 applicants, of which 130 were selected. These interns are trained in fund mechanics and placed into incubator funds, creating a virtuous cycle of talent development and fund support.
“This is about democratizing Wall Street,” says Bridger. “We’re giving smart, ambitious people a chance to launch funds who wouldn’t normally have access to the industry.”
A Tech-First Future with AI
Fund Launch isn’t stopping at education and incubation. The company is now launching Fund Launch AI, a platform designed to streamline and automate fund creation. From generating pitch decks to populating legal documents and identifying potential investors, the AI leverages 147 data points to dramatically reduce the time and cost of launching a fund.
Traditional legal setup can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and take months. Fund Launch AI aims to condense that timeline while keeping quality intact, allowing first-time fund managers to focus on what they do best: identifying and executing investment opportunities. Beta access will be available to internal clients in September, with a public launch planned for Q4 2025.
Validation and Growth
Fund Launch’s rapid expansion has not gone unnoticed. In August 2025, the company was officially recognized on the Inc. 5000 list as one of the fastest-growing private companies, posting a 158% growth rate in its first year of eligibility.
Fund Launch has a team of 76 employees and contractors, with expansion on the horizon, including the acquisition of neighboring office space in their modern, yet modest, Lehi HQ (featuring the immediately visible wall of shoes at the entrance—a token of appreciation for each new fund that becomes a client). Yet for the founders, the real metric of success isn’t revenue—it’s impact. “We measure whether our clients are actually raising funds and generating returns,” says Bridger. “If they succeed, we succeed.”
Why Utah Works
While Fund Launch operates nationally—clients are concentrated in hubs like Texas, California, New York, and Florida—Utah provides a fertile base for talent and lifestyle, if not a geographic advantage. The region has allowed the company to grow efficiently while staying connected to investors and partners worldwide. "We pride ourselves that, given the industry we are in, we are off target being based in Utah," said Pennington.
Disrupting Private Equity, One Fund at a Time
From a scrappy dorm-room operation to a $4.7 billion incubator and an AI platform poised to automate fund creation, Fund Launch exemplifies the new, untraditional route into high finance. The founders are intentionally breaking the traditional mold: bypassing Ivy League pedigrees, Wall Street grooming programs, and massive first-time fund minimums, and instead empowering niche and emerging managers.
The incubator has launched funds in diverse areas—timberland operations, hydrogen-from-manure facilities in Wyoming, litigation finance, and Hollywood script acquisitions—where small teams with domain expertise can generate outsized returns. By taking a hands-on approach to mentorship, education, and operational support, Fund Launch has helped these managers scale rapidly while maintaining focus on their core investment ideas.
Their AI platform now promises to accelerate fund creation further, automating the labor-intensive aspects of compliance, investor outreach, and legal document preparation. What might have taken months and hundreds of thousands of dollars can now be done in weeks at a fraction of the cost. For first-time fund managers, this dramatically reduces barriers to entry, making private equity more accessible than ever before.
By recruiting interns from both top-tier universities and overlooked schools, the company is creating a talent pipeline that challenges the traditional gatekeeping of high finance. Their success stories—clients raising millions in their first funds, interns landing roles at previously inaccessible funds—underscore the practical impact of this model.
In essence, Fund Launch is demonstrating that private equity doesn’t have to be confined to Wall Street, Ivy League halls, or billion-dollar inaugural funds. With the combination of education, incubation, and AI-driven execution, the Lehi-based startup is showing that ingenuity, grit, and technology can level the playing field—and potentially redefine how the next generation of funds will be launched.
To participate in the beta of Fund Launch AI, (available within the next few weeks), visit fundlaunch.com.
