The Guardian Program
A four-tier membership channels recurring revenue into 92,000 hectares of legally protected mountain landscape in Nepal, with a framework built to replicate across Kenya and Patagonia. Fine art and rare high altitude coffee compound the model.
The business model does not generate revenue and then donate. The business model is the preservation.
The Gap We Set Out To Close
Mountains supply fresh water for nearly half of humanity and underpin an $887 billion outdoor recreation economy. Yet they receive a fraction of the philanthropic and commercial attention directed at oceans and forests. The opportunity is not awareness; it is architecture.
Traditional NGO models depend on donor cycles. Overhead is high. Impact is diffuse. The problem is not awareness; it is architecture. We built a different model.
The Model
Each commercial stream is engineered to channel value back to the landscape that produced it. Art is the invitation. Coffee is the daily ritual. Guardian membership is the connective tissue.
The invitation.
Limited editions, multi-artist platform, scalable with no inventory. An archive of more than a million professional images across seven continents anchors the catalog. 62% gross margin.
Print sales fund operations and partnerships across origin regions.
The daily ritual.
Launches with exclusive US distribution of Nuwa Estate Coffee from Nepal. Subscription model converts one-time buyers into recurring monthly revenue. Built to scale into other rare, high-altitude origins.
The same farmers who grow the coffee are the communities who protect the corridor.
The connective tissue.
Four tiers from $10/month to $5,000 lifetime. Members receive 10% to 25% benefits on art and coffee. A single art purchase often recovers an entire year of membership.
100% of Guardian fees fund preservation partnerships. Structural, not promotional.
Every transaction strengthens the landscape that made the product possible.
Rare, high altitude coffee
Fine art print paired with rare high altitude coffee
Membership, art, and coffee in a single object
Membership Architecture
Membership is designed to deliver real economic value while directing capital where it matters most. Participation is a privilege, not an obligation.
$10 / month
Beginning the journey. Entry-level participation in the Guardian community.
$40 / month
One signed print annually. Priority access to limited editions and field dispatches from origin regions.
$100 / month
Three signed prints annually. Expedition eligibility. Lifetime priority access across the platform.
$5,000 / lifetime
Founding member status. Reserved for the first cohort shaping the Guardian movement.
A single Hero member's annual fee is recovered in a single art purchase. The membership pays for itself, and 100% of the fee flows to preservation partnerships. The model rewards participation and converts it into protected landscape.
Proof Of Concept
Before scaling, we proved the model with one partner, one origin, and one supply chain. Five years of exclusive US distribution rights. Direct trade. No intermediaries.
Nuwa Estate Coffee was founded by Tashi Wangchuk Tenzing, grandson of Tenzing Norgay, alongside Bandi Nima Sherpa Tenzing. The estate sits in the high country above the corridor. The same families who farm the beans live in and protect the watershed.
This is what proof of concept looks like: a verified specialty coffee premium at retail, channeled directly to farmer-side preservation incentives. No charity overlay. No grant cycle. A commercial agreement with margin sufficient to fund the protection work the agreement depends on.
If the model works at one estate, it works at scale. Nuwa is the proof.
The Story On The Back Of The Bag
Somewhere between Kathmandu and the clouds, there is a farm. You reach it by a road that narrows as it climbs. The terraces appear first, then the shade trees, avocado and banana and Himalayan spice, and finally the coffee itself, grown in the long shadow of Everest.
In 1953, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary were the first to stand on that summit. A lifetime later, his grandson Tashi Wangchuk Tenzing climbed it in his grandfather's footsteps, and came home to a coffee farm his wife, Bandi Nima Sherpa, was building on the hillside below.
She called the place Nuwa Estate. More than 70,000 Arabica plants grow here now, cultivated without chemicals at 1,200 to 1,500 metres. Each cherry tended by hand. Small-batch roasted. A flavor that could only come from here. What the farm earns, it returns. Schools, clinics, and the forests that shelter them.
Planet 5 brought it home. We are a mountain preservation company, built on fine art, rare high altitude coffee, Guardian memberships and expeditions to the places that matter most. The mountain runs through all of it.
The Model We're Scaling
Nuwa Estate operates on three founding values: economic, environmental, education. The farm earns. The earnings return. Schools, clinics, and afforested hillsides follow the coffee, not the other way around. Through the Nepal Green Tara Foundation, the family has built schools, supplied teaching materials, and supported teachers across Nepal's mid-hills. The barren slopes Nuwa has planted now recharge groundwater that local farmers depend on through the dry season.
This is the proof that the architecture works at the scale of one farm. The Himalayan Coffee & Wildlife Corridor is the same model, replicated across 92,000 hectares.
From one farm in Nuwakot, to a corridor connecting three national parks. The model does not change. The scale does.
The Flagship Project
The Himalayan Coffee & Wildlife Corridor connects Sagarmatha, Gaurishankar, and Makalu-Barun across Nepal's mid-hills.
Where Biodiversity Meets The World's Best Coffee
The plan: a $25 million investment over ten years, sourced from Guardian fees, coffee margin, art revenue, and a complementary capital stack designed to scale beyond what any one revenue line could fund alone.
Community consultations, legal groundwork, farmer training, preservation area boundary work, first health clinic and school infrastructure.
Full Community Conservation Area legal designation. Coffee region expansion. Second clinic, additional school upgrades.
Carbon credit verification and first sales. Agroforestry system implementation. Eco-tourism infrastructure. International recognition.
Technology integration. Value-added processing. Research partnerships. Policy advocacy for replicable frameworks.
Full financial sustainability. Permanent endowment. Model ready for replication. International certification as a preservation success.
Protection Outcomes
Every outcome is monitored through satellite imagery, community-led patrols with smartphone reporting, third-party verification, and a public dashboard. We measure what we promise.
Beyond Coffee
When the people who live in a landscape have an economic reason to protect it, the landscape protects itself. Preservation succeeds where livelihood succeeds.
The Replication Thesis
The Guardian framework is built to be replicable. Same five-phase playbook. Same commerce-led architecture. Same insistence on partnership over patronage.
East Africa
Coffee, wildlife, and partnership with Maasai communities indigenous to the landscape. UNESCO recognizes millennia of coexistence between Maasai stewardship and Amboseli wildlife. Outreach is active across more than thirty luxury hospitality properties, including Singita Elela in Botswana and a multi-resort engagement with Banyan Tree.
Origin Expeditions launch in Kenya in January 2027 to begin first-stage corridor development with our partners on the ground.
May you be as big as the white mountain. (Maasai proverb, Kilimanjaro.)
South America
A preservation corridor partnership documented across Dirk Collins' archive over thirty years. The same architecture: a commercial revenue stream tied to a defined landscape, with community partners as principals rather than recipients.
Origin Expeditions launch in Patagonia in April 2027 to begin region scoping and partner alignment with communities on the ground.
The relationships exist. The infrastructure does not yet. We are building it.
Europe
Origin Expeditions launch in the Swiss Alps in 2027 as our first European program. We travel here to study the most successful model of long-term alpine stewardship in the world: a working framework of land use, public policy, and community economics that has held for generations.
A learning ground for every other corridor we build.
Capital Architecture
Different capital pools have different return profiles, different timelines, and different objectives. The Guardian Program connects all three through a unified preservation thesis.
The Commercial Engine
Luxury brand. Three commercial streams. Y5 revenue projected at $60.1M, EBITDA margin 45.5%. Profitability arrives in Year 2.
Currently raising a $3.5M SAFE at $10M post-money cap, 20% discount. Series A modeled at $7M / $30M post-money in Year 2.
Active raise · $500K firm-committed
The Scaling Mechanism
A preservation-focused venture fund. Planet 5 is the proof of concept. Terra Legacy is the vehicle that scales the model into other commercially viable, preservation-aligned businesses.
$5M initial close target, scaling to $25M. 10-year fund life with two 1-year extensions.
In formation · LP conversations underway
Catalytic Capital
A complementary nonprofit affiliate, currently under evaluation pending review by General Counsel. Designed to receive grant capital, catalytic philanthropy, and carbon credit revenue.
Not a restructuring of Planet 5. An additive capital vehicle for outcomes that do not fit a commercial P&L.
Under evaluation · Counsel review pending
A family office can engage at any of three levels: SAFE investor in the commercial entity, LP in the scaling fund, or catalytic donor through the affiliate. Different capital, different return profiles, the same mission underneath.
The Numbers Behind The Mission
Every figure on this page is traceable to the financial model and the underlying database of record.
| Metric | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Revenue | $586K | $5.06M | $14.1M | $31.7M | $60.1M |
| EBITDA | ($471K) | $1.60M | $5.38M | $13.5M | $27.4M |
| EBITDA Margin | n/a | 31.5% | 38.1% | 42.5% | 45.5% |
| Partner Activations EOY | 46K | 140K | 320K | 600K | 940K |
| Partners Live EOY | 3 | 6 | 10 | 16 | 25 |
Investor returns, base case, $500K seed SAFE: 13.80x MOIC, 68.94% IRR. Conservative case: 9.20x and 55.86% IRR. Upside case: 18.40x and 79.10% IRR. Series A modeled at $7M / $30M post-money, dilutes seed by 23.33%, leaving 3.8336% final ownership.
Membership contribution to preservation: Y5 membership revenue is $7.1M. 100% of Guardian fees are allocated to preservation partnerships. Coffee margin and art revenue compound the contribution above the membership baseline.
The Window
Forest loss is accelerating across the corridor. Each year of delay compounds the cost of intervention and reduces the recoverable habitat.
Specialty coffee demand and luxury collector interest are both compounding. First-mover positioning across art, coffee, and membership creates lasting competitive distance.
Forest loss in Nepal. Wildlife corridor fragmentation around Amboseli. Glacial retreat across Patagonia. Three regions, one story: mountain communities losing the landscapes they have stewarded for generations. The window to partner with them is now.
Family offices are actively seeking proven impact models that do not require donor cycles. Guardianship is built for that capital, with the discipline to deploy it well.
Engage With Us
Mountains supply fresh water to nearly half of humanity. They have received a fraction of the attention directed at oceans and forests. We are closing that gap as a luxury brand, because that is what works.
$3.5M SAFE round. $10M post-money cap. 20% discount. The commercial entity. The base case for the entire model.
View SAFE Documents →The scaling fund. LP conversations are underway. For investors seeking a portfolio approach across preservation-aligned ventures.
Open LP Inquiry →The proposed 501(c)(3) affiliate, under evaluation. For grants, catalytic philanthropy, and carbon credit pathways that complement the commercial stack.
Open Conversation →Allegra Lynch, COO & Co-Founder · allegra@planet5media.com
Dirk Collins, CEO & Co-Founder · dirk@planet5media.com
The Art of Being There.