The official answer: The Corporate Transparency Act is intended to provide law enforcement with beneficial ownership information for the purpose of detecting, preventing and punishing terrorism, money laundering and other misconduct through business entities.Uncle Sugar requires us little guys to register and be tracked even though 99.999% of us are not involved in terrorism, money laundering, or other misconduct.

That helps give me some tracks to run on.

I am on track to close 8 units (portfolio of duplexes) this month.

Tracking the owner down.  

Making sense of the deal and understanding their track record is important, of course, but I believe you should develop TRUST before you invest.

Hire a company/person that is solely a QI like @Dave Foster they do it every day and will keep you legal and on track. 

Some of them have phone numbers as well, but pretty much all of them are marked as Do Not Contact.Does this seem like an effective track to stay on?

When you are getting into raising big dollars from sophisticated investors they are going to want to see a track record and a well thought out and detailed business plan.

While there are definitely benefits to running a fund, it's tough to achieve success with funds as a beginner because oftentimes investors are attracted to the track record of the person or team running the fund. 

I haven’t personally worked with Five Stream Ventures, but I’ve found that vetting companies like these is all about the referrals and track record.