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Common Ground

How Common Ground built Drive for the Dream

The story was never scarce. What the venture needed was a name vouching for it, so it signed the cast and producers first and changed the money when the platform path capped it.

Drive for the Dream began in February 2023, the same month Full Swing brought the Drive to Survive format to golf. The format had worked on famous players. The venture's bet was the same format on players nobody knew yet, with real stakes in place of recognition. The scarce thing was not the story. It was a name vouching for it.

The decision Common Ground made was about order. Instead of pitching a platform first and waiting on its calendar, the venture signed the cast and the producers first and filmed the chase. When the platform path capped what the show could earn on its own timeline, it changed the money and not the show, and moved to a sponsorship-only model on April 10, 2026.

What Common Ground did

  • Jesse Fowler set the concept, formed the entity, wrote the structure, ran the partner relationships and owned the business model.
  • Common Ground built the brand and the pitch deck after the concept existed. The deck runs from the emotional claim to the format, the precedent, the market, the season arc and finally the cast, and it keeps the creator's name off the cover on purpose.
  • Instead of pitching a platform first and waiting on its calendar, the venture signed the cast and the producers first. Sugar23, Michael Sugar's company, and Front Office Sports came on as executive producers and Winterstone Pictures took production, each covering one gap: story and format credibility, sports-media distribution, and production. The crew bought the vans, put the golfers in them and filmed the actual chase: some won, and one got through a Monday qualifier.
  • The venture formed a sports-management arm to find, assess and sign the golfers through a five-step process that ends in a representation agreement.
  • The golfer agreements were structured so the venture owns what it sells: exclusive in-show rights, the show's brand rights, and an agreement that follows any golfer who earns a tour card.
  • When the platform path capped what the show could earn on its own timeline, the venture changed the money, not the show. On April 10, 2026 it moved to a sponsorship-only model: a daily outreach cadence aimed at named brand-partnership and sports-marketing leads, a staged pipeline with a meeting test, and a do-not-contact rule that keeps its outreach off any brand the executive producers are already pursuing, parent and subsidiary brands included.
  • The sponsorship waterfall runs from the one tier deliverable before air, a golfer-level tie-in sold as a rights option and production-stage access to brands already paying a golfer, to the title, co-credit and episode tiers that need an audience.
  • On the brand side, Jimmy Khounlavong, involved from the beginning, built the show identity, a player color system and a content plan written for entertainment investors and executive producers.

What came of it

  • Eight developmental golfers signed under agreements that keep the in-show rights with the venture.
  • Sugar23, Front Office Sports and Winterstone Pictures verbally attached as producing partners, and holding through the pivot.
  • About $200,000 raised early in cash, merchandise and materials to put the cast on the road and film the chase.
  • A few hundred thousand dollars in sponsorships since late 2024.
  • Nothing is placed yet with a platform. The ideal outcome named in the record is a Netflix miniseries.

Credits

  • Common GroundCreated by Common Ground. The brand, the pitch deck, the partner structure and the sponsorship model.
  • Jesse FowlerCreator: set the concept, formed the entity, wrote the structure, ran the partner relationships and owned the business model
  • Jimmy KhounlavongCreative director: show identity, player color system and content plan; involved from the beginning

Drive for the Dream's problem is a venture that has to prove itself before anyone with a calendar will say yes. Common Ground works the same problem in other industries: a fund that sequenced its ask and staged its pipeline, a luxury brand whose plan was rebuilt from the door up, and a deep tech company that needed its science told in a form buyers trust.

Aycre Capital: sources and uses before the deckManaging Director of a Las Vegas custom-home fund: sequenced the ask, built a staged pipeline and reached $25M in commitments toward a $50M target.Jason Scott: he was not asking for enough moneyGo-to-market and raise advisory for a luxury menswear brand: the plan rebuilt from the door up showed a $7 million raise would run dry in year three.FluidmapperFluidmapper is a Common Ground venture in Montreal building the measured-flow data layer for industrial AI.

On the record

About Common Ground

Common Ground is a principal-led venture group built around one premise: we build. It builds, funds, operates, automates with AI and protects companies from the inside, and it carries the work from strategy through execution instead of stopping at the recommendation.

The group works across related industries on purpose. Construction, capital, brand, technology and law sit in one room, so a developer's problem can borrow from a product launch, and a deep tech company's sales plan can borrow from how a builder wins a bid. Every engagement is a chance to carry what worked somewhere else into the next company.

Common Ground grew out of two practices: Jesse Fowler's fractional work, running since 2016 and as Three Trails since 2019, and Lip Loi Creative, since December 2019. The principals brought them together as Common Ground in April 2023, when Alex Prince and Prince Capital came in as well. Zen Aegis came in the same way in December 2025.

Jesse Fowler, Execution and Development · Alex Prince, Capital and Investment · Jimmy Khounlavong, Brand · Robby Prochnow, Technology and AI Architecture · Nick Scavio, General Counsel