The Plum Candy Foundation
A non-profit whose mission is to make high school kids less dumb.
A Worthy Hero
We make high school kids less dumb by giving them a worthy hero — and making her novel, Plum Candy, culturally ubiquitous and fervently discussed in classrooms.
The Achiever Archetype
Plum Candy is not just a great noir mystery. It’s the meta story of the author, Aaliyah. The fact that a real 17-year-old wrote this is the Pedagogical Holy Grail. Teachers can point to her and say: "She worked hard. She did it. Maybe you can too!"
Cultural Gold
Our roadmap to cultural influence will be financed through generous donations, yes, but principally through a sophisticated new philanthropic asset class: cultural gold.
The Capital Engine
Financial patrons get 'Rookie Card' bundles. They are paying for the status of being “first,” with a convex payoff function.
First edition “value” has traditionally been lost to any rando who happened to be in a 1998 bookstore with £2 to buy an unknown Harry Potter, that’s now worth $500k.
You’re capturing value that was always there, but forfeited. We're using that value to compound upon itself while helping make high school kids less dumb.
Concave (Standard Charity)
You give $500k. They do charity stuff. You helped some kids. The $500k is gone. You have to work to make another $500k to give again. It is a "single-turn game."
Convex (Cultural Gold)
You buy $500k of Sarcophagus rookie cards. We do charity stuff. If the novel misses, you still helped kids. But if the novel is a hit? You get an outsized payoff. You can now fund more literacy.
Impact engine
All the money raised funds the mission.
We mail a teacher’s edition of Plum Candy to 100,000 High
School English Professors.
Offer them a 3-year grant, for their whole school, if they can
prove they read the book.
Carpet-bomb basic copies out to celebs, CEOs, and college students.
Create a manhwa. Make the movie.
Zero to One for Culture.
“It’s been my goal for a while. A lot of people were like, ‘Come on… You can’t do that.’ But if you work on it for a long time, you can actually do it.”
The Vision
The world is complex and beautiful, and we’re all being shortchanged by shallow culture. Let’s fix that.
The Model
If the model itself is successful, then it could become a model that other artists use to create a cultural asset.
Zero to One for Culture
That further enhances the rookie status. It’s not just the rookie card of Plum candy. It’s a rookie card of how cultural gold was first created.