The deals are already happening. The asset in them has never been named.
On October 9, Gopuff announced that Druski was taking an equity stake in the company as part of a multi-year strategic partnership.4 Ten days later, a fund in Miami launched to do the same trade at portfolio scale, and gave the thing it was trading a name.
Start with Druski. The terms are not disclosed: no percentage, no valuation, no dollar figure. What the release does disclose is what Gopuff is getting. Druski will develop exclusive products and consumer experiences with the company, and bring in his two companies, Coulda Been Records and 4Lifers Entertainment, to widen Gopuff's reach.4 Gopuff's co-founder and co-CEO, Yakir Gola, said why: “Druski has created an entire entertainment universe by understanding culture.”4
Read that line again. The buyer named the asset, out loud, in the press release. Gopuff is paying in equity for a comedian's understanding of culture and the audience that comes with it. Then the paperwork calls it a partnership.
Now Nomada. On October 19, Nomada Fund launched as what it calls the world's first New Media fund. It is backed by ILB Media Group, a network of more than 20 finance and investment outlets across the United States and Latin America.13 Instead of writing checks, the fund takes equity in Pre-seed and Seed startups and pays for it in promotion: newsletters, podcasts, communities, events, SEO and GEO.12 It calls the model Distribution for Equity, or D4E.
Nomada's currency has a name: Media Credits. They are priced at rate card. Its website says the fund holds $20 million of them.2 The press release does not disclose a fund size, so treat that figure as what the fund says about its own inventory, not as committed capital. Still, it is a defined unit, at a stated price, written on the term sheet.
Druski and Nomada are making the same trade. An intangible that drives demand goes in, and ownership comes out. Only Nomada has a word for what it put in. This note is about the word Druski's deal is missing, and every culture-for-equity deal before it.
That sentence is from Nomada's own FAQ. It is the cleanest statement of our thesis anyone has published this year, and it comes from a fund that has nothing to do with culture.
Nomada's argument goes like this. A founder can pay cash for a mention, but “cash buys an insertion, not a position.” Trust takes a continuous signal, in the same place, in front of the same audience, for 12 to 18 months. An early-stage company cannot pay for that. Cash marketing is the first line cut in the first hard month. Paying in equity changes the incentive: the fund only wins if the company is worth more, so the distribution keeps running after a vendor would have stopped billing.2
Nomada did not invent the structure. It says so. Media for Equity, or M4E, began in Europe more than twenty years ago, when broadcasters and publishers traded unsold TV, radio and print inventory for stakes in growth-stage companies. Nomada's changes are the channel, from legacy media to newsletters and podcasts, and the stage, from late to early.12 Its co-founders are Managing Partner Jose Kont, a New Media investor and columnist, and Venture Partner Israel García Ballesteros, who runs Startuplinks, a VC community of more than 270 institutional funds.1
Kont put it plainly: “A startup's most valuable asset is no longer just its product, but its brand and relationships.”1 ILB, the group behind the fund, puts it more plainly still: “we don't sell advertising: our core product is narrative.”3
Quoted language from the Nomada Fund website and launch release. Readings in the right column are a MADE CX interpretation.
A name, a unit, a price basis, an instrument and an inventory: Nomada wrote down five things that culture-for-equity deals have never written down. A Culture Maker brings more to a cap table than a newsletter does. Today their contribution has none of those five things.
The record of Black Culture Makers taking equity for what they bring to a brand goes back at least two decades. The outcomes are public. What was traded is not named in any of them.
| Deal | What the Culture Maker brought | What the paperwork called it | Reported outcome | $CULTURE line |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 Cent × GlacéauVitaminwater · pre-2007 | First celebrity face of the brand; his audience and credibility | Endorsement: a reported $5M fee plus a minority stake, believed to be about 2.5% | Coca-Cola bought Glacéau for $4.1B in cash, May 2007. Est. ~$100M pre-tax to 50 Cent | NONE |
| LeBron James × Beats2008 | Promotion of the headphones, on and off the court | A small stake “for promoting” the product | Apple bought Beats for $3B in 2014; LeBron's take reported at $30M | NONE |
| LeBron James × Blaze Pizza2012 · 2015 | Early investment, then his voice as the brand's face. He walked away from a McDonald's deal worth over $14M a year to do it | Investment, endorsement, franchise rights | Stake reported in 2017 at $35M or more | NONE |
| Jay-Z × D'UsséBacardi JV · 2023 | His name, network and stewardship of the brand | A 50% joint venture interest | Bacardi bought a majority of his 50% in 2023; at Jay-Z's $3B valuation, at least $750M implied | NONE |
| Druski × GopuffOct 2026 | Exclusive products, experiences, Coulda Been Records and 4Lifers Entertainment | “Equity and multi-year strategic partnership” | Undisclosed | NONE |
| Nomada Fund × startupsReference · Oct 2026 | Newsletters, podcasts, events, SEO, GEO | “Media Credits,” priced at rate card, against a SAFE | $20M Media Credits listed by the fund | NAMED |
Swipe to see the full table →
Outcomes as reported; see Sources 4–8. The 50 Cent stake and payout are third-party estimates, not company-reported figures. The D'Ussé figure is a computation reported by Bloomberg Law on Jay-Z's own valuation claim; terms were not disclosed. The last column is a MADE CX assessment of the public record.
Add up only the reported creator outcomes in that table, 50 Cent's estimated $100 million, LeBron's $30 million and $35 million, and the $750 million implied for Jay-Z, and you get roughly $915 million.10 That is close to a billion dollars realized by four deals in which a Culture Maker's contribution was the reason the equity was offered at all.
Look at the third column. Endorsement. Promotion. Joint venture. Partnership. Every name describes the relationship. None describes the asset. Nomada can write “Media Credits” on a term sheet. Neither Gopuff nor Druski has a word to write in that space.
That gap is not a matter of style. The words chosen for the contribution decide how it gets accounted for, how it gets taxed, and whether it is still on anyone's books after the deal closes. Which brings us to the books.
Follow a culture-for-equity contribution through the standard accounting and tax frameworks. It gets recorded at every step, each time under another name, and never as an asset that belongs to the person who made it.
Take the company first. When a U.S. company issues shares to a non-employee in exchange for goods or services, the standard that governs it is ASC 718, extended to non-employees in 2018. The award is measured at fair value, and the cost is generally recognized as the services are received.9
In practice, that makes the Culture Maker's contribution share-based compensation, booked as an expense, often sitting inside marketing. IFRS 2 reaches a similar result. The brand equity their work builds does not come back as an asset either: IAS 38 explicitly bars a company from recognizing internally generated brands as intangible assets.9 The culture comes in, gets expensed, and disappears into the income statement.
Next, the Culture Maker. U.S. tax law treats property received for services as ordinary income at fair market value when it vests, under Section 83 of the Internal Revenue Code. Section 351, the rule that lets founders contribute property to a corporation without immediate tax, states that stock issued for services is not considered issued in exchange for property.9 The default category for culture is labor, so the equity it earns is taxed as pay.
Last, the exit. When Coca-Cola bought Glacéau and Apple bought Beats, acquisition accounting required the buyers to recognize the brands they bought at fair value, as trademarks and goodwill.9 That is the first time the value the Culture Maker helped build shows up as an asset on any balance sheet. It shows up on the acquirer's, under the acquirer's name.
Illustrative statement of a startup that has issued equity for culture. Not drawn from any company's filings.
| Who records it | What gets recorded | Under what rule | What it is called |
|---|---|---|---|
| The company issuing equity | Fair value of the award, generally recognized as the contribution is received | ASC 718 (incl. ASU 2018-07) · IFRS 2 | EXPENSE · share-based compensation |
| The company's brand | Nothing, if the brand is internally generated | IAS 38 ¶63 · internally developed intangibles expensed under U.S. GAAP | NOT RECOGNIZED |
| The Culture Maker | Fair market value of the stock when it vests | IRC §83 · §351(d)(1) | ORDINARY INCOME · services, not property |
| The acquirer at exit | Fair value of acquired trademarks, with the residual as goodwill | ASC 805 · IFRS 3 | ACQUIRED BRAND · goodwill |
| The asset itself | — | No standard names it | NO LINE ON RECORD |
Swipe to see the full table →
A general description of how standard frameworks apply to equity issued for services and to acquired brands. Actual treatment depends on deal terms, vesting, elections and jurisdiction. This is not accounting or tax advice.
Expense to the company. Wages to the creator. Goodwill to the buyer. $CULTURE is recorded three times, under three names, and never once as itself.
Founder's Note No. 14This is what we mean when we say the culture economy runs off-balance-sheet. The value is not hidden; the outcomes in Section 02 are public. What is missing is a category. Without one, the Culture Maker's contribution is labor going in and the buyer's goodwill coming out, and the asset between those two points never belongs to the person who made it.
Lay the three versions of the trade side by side and the pattern is plain. The mechanism is identical. The difference is whether the asset going in has been named.
| Test | Media-for-Equity · M4E | Distribution-for-Equity · D4E | Culture-for-Equity · C4E |
|---|---|---|---|
| What goes in | TV, radio and print inventory | Newsletters, podcasts, communities, events, SEO, GEO | Name, likeness, audience, taste, community trust, creative output |
| Named unit | Ad inventory | Media Credits | NONE |
| Price basis | Rate card | Rate card | NONE · negotiated deal by deal, privately |
| Who holds the evidence | The broadcaster | The media network | Scattered: managers, agencies, platforms, press |
| Stated inventory | Unsold airtime | $20M in Media Credits | NONE |
| Who captures the asset | The investor, as equity | The fund, as equity | The creator, as income; later the buyer, as goodwill |
Swipe to see the full table →
M4E and D4E characteristics as described by Nomada Fund. The C4E column is a MADE CX assessment of standard market practice.
Nomada's case for D4E is that distribution is the new moat: when AI agents and no-code tools let a small team rebuild a product in days, what a competitor cannot copy is the trust of the people who follow a company.1 We agree. And we would add the next step in the argument. Distribution is the pipe. Culture is what moves through it. A newsletter with 3,000 qualified investors is valuable because of what its readers trust. A Culture Maker with millions of followers is valuable for the same reason, at a scale and depth no media network can buy.
Look at it from the issuer's side. If a seed company can trade 2% for $200,000 of Media Credits at rate card, it can put a number on that line and defend it to its board. If the same company trades 2% to a comedian whose sketches move more product than the newsletter ever will, it has no number, no unit and no rate card. All it has is a press release that says partnership.
Media-for-equity priced its contribution at rate card. Distribution-for-equity priced it in Media Credits. Culture-for-equity is the only version of the trade where the contributor shows up without a price.
That is not because culture is worth less. Section 02 shows it is often worth more. It is because no one has built the record a price would need: a named unit, a standard way to rate it, and evidence that travels with the asset from deal to deal.
Nomada showed what a named contribution looks like: a name, a unit, a price basis, an instrument and a record. The Cultural Property Rights Standard exists to give culture the same five.
We call the asset $CULTURE: the cultural property a Culture Maker brings to a deal, defined, rated and recorded so that it can be contributed like property instead of performed like a service. Here is what that takes, step by step.
None of this asks an auditor to break a rule. It asks the market to do for culture what it already did for media inventory and distribution: write down what is being exchanged before the exchange happens. Once the asset has a record, every party can see it, including the one who made it.
Nomada Fund is two things for this work: a structure we can cite, and a potential distribution partner.
As a structure, D4E answers the hardest question every culture-for-equity pitch gets: can you really pay for equity with something that isn't cash? A fund backed by a 20-outlet media group now does exactly that, publicly, with a named unit, a rate card and a SAFE. When MADE CX proposes that a Culture Maker's contribution be scheduled, rated and papered as $CULTURE, there is now a live institutional precedent one step away from it.
As a partner, the fit is direct. ILB Media Group reports a network of more than 20 outlets across eight markets, more than a million connected leaders, and an audience it says is 88% decision-makers.3 Nomada focuses on fintech, among other verticals, and says it treats algorithms and AI answer engines as an audience in their own right.2 MADE CX is a fintech company building the record that would let culture be underwritten. A rated $CULTURE record is exactly the kind of citable, verifiable source Nomada says the non-human audience rewards.
Nomada proved you can pay for equity with an asset that isn't cash, as long as you name it. Let's name the next one.
MADE CX invites Nomada Fund and ILB Media Group to explore two things with us: distributing the Founder's Note series and the CPRS standard across the ILB network, and a pilot in which a portfolio company's culture-for-equity contribution is registered and rated as $CULTURE alongside its Media Credits. We invite Culture Makers, and the brands issuing them equity, to put the next deal on the record.
For thirteen notes we have argued that Black culture is an unrecognized asset class that drives the economy. Usually we have had to prove the value by tracing it through other people's balance sheets. This month two deals made the case in a different way. One came from a comedian's cap table, the other from a fund's term sheet, ten days apart.
Gopuff's co-CEO said Druski built a universe “by understanding culture.” Nomada's founders said distribution “starts behaving like an asset.” Both are right. Only one of them has a line to write it on.
Culture-for-equity is not a new idea, and it does not need to be invented. 50 Cent, LeBron and Jay-Z proved it, for close to a billion dollars between them. It needs to be named. Register the contribution. Rate it. Price it in a unit. Paper the equity against the record. Carry the outcome forward. Do that, and the next Culture Maker walks into the room with an asset rather than an offer of services.
Yours in the interest of the race,
Culture Makers, managers, and the brands and funds issuing them equity: register the contribution before the stake is issued, so it goes on the record as an asset, not as a service. Each Founder's Note lands in your inbox first.
Reported facts are cited to their source. Third-party estimates are marked as estimates. Computed figures are labeled as computations. Where a statement is a MADE CX assessment rather than a reported fact, it is labeled as such.