The Invest Act And The New Playbook For Fund Managers | Ep. 27

We come back after a break with a real-time reset on capital raising, breaking down the biggest regulatory shifts in years and what they mean for funds, syndications, and real estate operators. We also map out how AI agents are replacing entire workflows and share a practical action plan to stay compliant while moving faster. 

• why the last 90 days reshape the capital raising game 
• podcast stats, what we learned from the audience, and our cadence going forward 
• the Invest Act and why it could be the biggest shift since the JOBS Act 
• how the accredited investor definition may expand through inflation updates, credentials, and an SEC exam 
• what changes to Reg D could mean for events, universities, and sponsored pitching 
• VC fund limit increases and why they matter for emerging managers 
• the finders problem and what regulatory clarity could unlock 
• how to prepare now: pipeline building, document updates, stronger verification, better recordkeeping 
• why AI agents now take actions across investor relations, content, compliance research, and deal analysis 
• how we use Fundflow to automate follow-ups with guardrails and monitor relationships 
• what a fractional Chief AI Officer does and when it beats hiring full time 
• shadow AI risks and how governance protects investor data 
• a simple AI action plan: audit tasks, automate one workflow, lock down data rules 

If you want to talk about bringing in a fractional CAIO to into your fund or your syndication or your operation, DM me. 
Go to my Instagram, DM me the word skills. 
If this episode gave you any value, share it with one person who's raising capital or building a fund. 

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Transcript

Welcome Back And What Changed

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's good, everybody? Welcome back to the Funds on Fire podcast. I'm your host, Devin Robinson, and yes, it's been about three months, and I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. I really did. I stepped away, life happened, biz building happened, I moved, but I'm back. And honestly, the timing couldn't be any better because in the last 90 days, the capital raising game has changed more than it has in years. I need to break it all down for you guys. And today's episode is a solo, no guess, just me catching you up on everything that's happened while we were away and giving you real actionable playbook you can use this week. And we're gonna cover three things. We're gonna cover the biggest regulatory shift for capital raisers since the Jobs Act. And I'm not kidding. Um, we're gonna talk about why AI agents are replacing entire teams and what that means for fund managers, syndicators, or real estate operators, because the last three months has been insane exponential growth. And then we're gonna talk about some of the new things that we're doing at Fund on Funflow. And um, we've got some really cool things that's that's moving along there and why every fund manager needs it. So let's dive into this. But really quickly, I want to jump in because like I've been doing this podcast for about a year, a little off and on, sometimes with consistency. And I want to give like, I want to be real with you guys. Here's where the podcast stands. And as far as what I mean by that, like here are the stats and the references. For instance, we've done 26 episodes. That's what's live, 508 total all-time downloads across all platforms, which isn't like a lot, but I'm thankful for it. We've had people who are really interested in the Bitcoin stuff or in what is an investment fund. And we've got listeners in over 30 countries, which is kind of wild, like Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa, Kenya, Emirates. This thing is global with just 500 downloads. And that's actually really cool. And Charlotte's the number one listening city. So shout out to the QC where I'm home. And what's really interesting though is Council Bluffs, Iowa is number two. Shout out to whoever's listening out there. That's awesome. And so, Charlotte, Concord, Kernersville, Huntersville, Raleigh, those are my like backyard. Those are the top cities. These aren't massive numbers yet. I'm gonna be honest with you guys about that, but here's what I see: I see people are listening, and I'm thankful for you. You guys listen to everything, and that tells me the content resonates with you. Now I need to get in front of more people, and that's exactly what I plan to do. So here's my commitment. Starting today, we're back to weekly, or I want to say weekly, bi-weekly at least, but weekly podcast. I'm gonna be recording and putting it out there. I'm gonna have guests lined up and I'm gonna be doing more solo episodes like this one where I break down what's actually happening in the capital raising world in real time and with AI because AI is growing so fast, and everybody needs to be on it, but doesn't know how. So I'm gonna do a lot of zero-to-one stuff. And so I'm excited to dive into that because it's necessary. Here's the game changer we're gonna dive into because this stuff matters. The biggest thing that's happened while I was away was just on December 11th, 2025, the House of Representatives passed the Invest Acts, and that stands for incentivizing new ventures and economic strength through capital formation. It passed 302 to 123 bipartisan votes. And so if this thing goes through the Senate, it changes everything for people like us. And this is like what it changes. Number one, uh the accredited investor definition gets blown wide open. Right now, to be an accredited investor, I always say like the one, two, three. You either have a million dollar net worth, two hundred thousand dollar income for the last two years and for the foreseeable future individually, or three hundred jointly. Those numbers haven't changed since 1982. Think about that. The Invest Act proposed three major shifts. Number one, inflation adjustments every five years. Finally, the threshold will actually reflect reality. What's actually going on? Professional credential pathways. So if you hold certain licenses like a series 7, series 65, you CFA, you can qualify based on knowledge, not just wealth, which this always makes sense to me because, like a guy who just made a million dollars because he became an NFL player does not make somebody a more qualified investor. An SEC exam pathway as well. This is the wildest one to me. The act would require the SEC to create a free exam administered by FINRA that anyone can take. Pass it, you're accredited. No income test, no net worth test. This is amazing. And this matters because the pool of people who can legally invest in your fund could explode. If you're on a 506C, more credit investors means more capital available for your reg D offerings. If you're a 506B or 506C, this is directly relevant to your rates. Change number two, Reg D general solicitation gets more room. I mean, think about it. Think about the changes since 1982 in social media. There was no social media, there weren't even cell phones. The act would revise Reg D to let you present at sponsored events, universities, nonprofits, angel groups, accelerators, without it counting as general solicitation. So right now, that's a gray area that scares a lot of fund managers. This would clarify it. You could pitch at university entrepreneur events and not blow your 506B exemption, which is huge. Change number three, venture capital funds get bigger. The qualifying VC fund size limit would jump from 10 million to 50 million. The investor cap goes from 250 investors to 500 investors. And the definition of qualifying investments expands to include secondaries and fund-to-fund investments. And so if you're building a venture fund, this is massive for you. Change number four, the finders problem is finally getting attention. The SEC's Small Business Advisory Committee held a meeting in February specifically about the finders problem. And here's the deal: right now, if someone introduces you to an investor and gets a fee for it, they technically need to be a registered broker dealer. But most finders in the real estate and fund space aren't registered. The SEC commissioners themselves call the current rule a muddled web of no action letters that is out of step with practical realities, what's actually going on. They're working on a lighter regulatory framework for finders who play a limited role, just making introductions, right? They're just making introductions. There's nothing wrong with that. This can unlock an entire layer of capital raising activity that's been operating in a legal gray zone. I mean, I can't tell you how many people I talked to that are doing this, and I'm like, stop. And then change number five. The SEC is pro-capital formation right now. Under Chairman Atkins, the SEC's entire posture has shifted. They published a new regulatory agenda in September 2025 focused on capital formation, reducing compliance costs, and expanding access to private markets. They they dropped ESG initiatives from the agenda. They proposed raising the small entity threshold for investment advisors from 25 million to a billion in AUM. The message is clear the government wants more people raising capital and launching funds. It's just a good thing to have in America. We need to diversify Wall Street. We need to democratize capital raising and funds. Now, here's what you should do with all this information. Number one, watch out for the Invest Act. It's in the Senate banking committee right now. Follow it. If it passes, you need to be ready to update your PPMs and subscription docs. Number two, start building your investment pipeline now. If the accredited investor pool expands, the fund managers who already have relationships and systems in place, don't wait until the law changes. Number three, get your compliance house in order. The SEC is also tightening verification requirements for accredited investors through new CDIs. They're loosening access while tightening verification, both things at once, and both things make sense. If you use, and then number four, if you use finders, document, if you use finders, document everything. The regulatory clarity is coming, but it's not here yet. Keep records of every introduction, every fee, every relationship. This is why systems are so important, and this is why we built Funflow to keep these systems in order. So you've got to make sure you're on it. Now let's talk about what's been happening in AI because it's been crazy. You guys have probably heard, or maybe you haven't, about open claw, clawbod, clawed, open AI, all of these crazy things that are happening. Gemini, Gemini 3.1, all these things, because this is where I've been spending most of my time with Funflow. Here's the reality of 2026 AI agents are no longer experiments, they're operational. Gartner says 40% of enterprise applications will include task-specific AI agents by the end of the year. That's up from less than 5% in 2025. 51% of companies have already deployed AI agents, including Funflow. The global AI automation market hits$169 billion this year. But here's what matters for us, for you. For fund managers and capital raisers and real estate operators. AI agents don't just answer questions anymore. They take action. They send emails, they analyze investor data, they draft compliance documents, they follow up with your investor pipeline while you sleep. And so let me give you a real example of what I'm building and using right now. For instance, fun flow, the investor relations automation, an AI agent that monitors your investor pipeline sends personalized follow-up to that person. So no more like templates where it just changes out the name. Same message goes to everybody. It's based on where each investor is in their journey and alerts you when someone is ready for a conversation, not just a generic email blast, personalized, context aware outreach. Second one, content repurposing engine. Every podcast episode I record gets automatically transcribed, broken into clips, turned into social posts, newsletter content, blog articles. This used to take VAs hours to do, and now this happens in minutes. Compliance research as well. Instead of paying$500 an hour to securities attorneys for every small question, I have AI agents that can pull current SEC guidelines, CDIs, and regulatory updates in seconds. You still need an attorney for the big decisions. Like please still do that. But the day-to-day research automated. You could be using it for deal analysis for real estate operators and fund managers, AI agents that pull comps, run preliminary due diligence, and flag issues before you ever talk to a seller is so important. And these are the things that we are building out and built out in Fundflow. For instance, Fundflow has whole, like what we call flow guard, right? So that it actually monitors and as it sends out the agent sends out emails, it's all in within the realm and the protection in the box of the SEC guidelines. So you aren't violating any SEC rules or regulations. And it also monitors for substantial relationships, it audits all of that stuff. So you're good with the SEC. Now this brings me to something that, like one, I'm really excited about because it's something that we're building out at Funflow. Funflow is the agentic or the AI side for raising capital and managing your investors. And so we said, well, we're really good with AI. Like my partner has his master's in machine learning. And this is what we spent all of our, all of our time doing. So let's just actually add another service where we bring AI into the operational side of funds and syndications and real estate investor uh firms. And so what we did was we built what's called a fractional CAIO, right? Fractional chief AI officer. Now, here's the problem: a full-time chief AI officer costs 350 to 500K a year. Most fund managers, syndicators, and real estate operators don't either can't afford it or don't want to afford that, but they desperately need AI leadership and they're watching their competitors automate investor outreach, deal analysis, reporting, and they post it on Facebook and they say, look at everything we're doing. And it feels like everything's changing every five minutes, and we can't freaking keep up or catch our breath. And a fractional CAIO solves this. You get executive level AI strategy a couple days a week, someone who audits your current workflows and identifies where AI saves you the most time and money, builds your AI stack, the right tools connected the right way with governance so data doesn't leak everywhere, implements things in like 90 days, not 18 months when like it's old tech. I mean, think about it. GPT 4 was a huge thing, and like nobody even, it's not even around anymore. And honestly, I don't use GPT at all. I haven't used Chat GPT in like three years, three months. I use Claude almost exclusively because it's just better. But things change so fast that you got to know these. We even come in and we train your team. So AI becomes a compatibility you own, not just a dependency on a consultant. Your whole team and now has their own assistance and knows how to use them. And the going rate for this can be anywhere between 15 to 30k a month. But what we're building it through fund flow, it's a version of this specifically for fund managers and real estate operators. Same strategic deep thinking, but tuned to our industry, investor relations, compliance, deal flow, capital raising. So we make sure that it's affordable for everybody, but it's something that everybody can have because you want to go and you want to do more deals. You don't want to be trying to keep up with everything that's happening in AI. Now, one more thing on AI, though. This is a real risk right now. It's called shadow AI. I don't know if you guys have heard of this. This is where people on your team or even you are using AI tools without any kind of governance, pasting investor data into Chat GPT using free AI tools that train on your inputs, running investor communications through tools with no data privacy agreements at all. And that's where like a fractional CAIO turns shadow AI into sanctioned AI. Same energy, same tools, but the guardrails that protect your fund and your investors, especially from the SEC. Now, here's your AI action plan, just in general. Audit your repetitive tasks. Anything you do more than three times a week that follows a pattern, that's an automation candidate. Investor follow-up, content repurposing, data entry, report generation, all of that. Pick one work one workflow and automate it this month. Don't try to boil the ocean. Pick the highest pain, highest frequency task and solve it. Lock down your data governance, know which tools your team is using, know where your data goes. If you're pasting investor names and commitment amounts into free AI tools, you probably need to stop that. And what I like to do is use Claude. Claude is probably one of the best enterprise level ones for this, and they do a really good job at protecting your data. So there's so many things that you can use out there. I just I enjoy Claude. And if you want to talk about bringing in a fractional CAIO to into your fund or your syndication or your operation, DM me. And seriously, because I'm building this practice and I want to work with fund managers who are ready to absolutely move. Now, if you also want a freebie, go to my Instagram, DM me the word skills. So if you go to my Instagram, devon.robinson1, DM me the word skills, and I will send you really, really, really, really helpful skills and prompts for you to use in Claude and Claude Cowork or Claude Code to be able to automate a lot of these tasks for you, which is super important. Now, with all that aside, I'm telling you, there's so much that we can talk about with AI. I'll probably actually do a lot more on my YouTube channel for AI and I'll bring it in here into the podcast as well, especially as it's applicable to fun, fun founders and fun flow and fun managers and investors and all those things. But here's what's coming for fund on fires in the future. Weekly podcasts are gonna be back. I'm gonna really try my hardest. We're also gonna have a really good pipeline of guests. If you have anybody that you suggest or want to have on the here on the show, let me know. I will make sure that they are on, invite them. Fun flow deep dives. I'm going to start showing you guys the actual AI tools and workflows that I'm building, screen shares, walkthroughs, real behind the scenes. You'll see those on my YouTube channel. We're gonna talk about capital raising compliance a good bit. I mean, we're gonna talk about a lot of it because I think it's very important. I think it's important to be able to know what's going on and understand that. And so for you guys to have that information, I want you guys to make sure that you are following things like the Invest Act through the Senate, because this could be the biggest capital raising legislation since the Jobs Act of 2012. Start building your investor pipeline now before the accreditation investor pool potentially expands. Pick one workflow and automate this month. And one of the things about the investor pipeline that's important in FundFlow, what we're doing is we are adding the data for all the people who are actively investing on real estate deals in the US. And then we're building out the system to automatically, agentically reach out to them. It responds to them, it does all that stuff for you. So it's really, really cool. You might want to check that out at funflowos.com if you haven't yet. But make sure you guys are picking a workflow, automate it this month. Investor follow-ups, content repurposing, deal analysis, pick one and go. Lock down your data governance, know where your data goes, and then DM me if you want to talk about fractional CIO services, but then also DM me if you want free skills for Claude to be able to level you up. Now, if this gave this episode gave you any value, share it with one person who's raising capital or building a fund. That's all I ask. One share. Help me get this information to the people who need it. And if you're new here, go back and listen to episode 25, where I talk about the five unscalable things that raise$2 million. That's a good one. I think you guys will love. I'm Devin Robinson. This is Funds on Fire. And as I always like to say, to great success and greater impact. I'll see you on the next one. Peace.