Chapter 17: The Catalyst
The satisfaction from his engineering breakthrough was still a warm glow in Liam's chest when he met Val at their bench the next afternoon. He found her not with her art history texts, but with a laptop, her brow furrowed in concentration. A flyer for the "University Annual Innovation Grant" was pinned to the corkboard nearby, boasting a $5,000 prize for the most promising student-led project.
"You're staring at that like it's a hostile takeover bid," Liam said, sliding onto the bench beside her.
She didn't look up. "It might as well be. Five thousand dollars. It's not just the money. It's the validation. The line on a resume that says 'I can execute an idea.'" She finally turned to him, her expression a mixture of excitement and dread. "I have an idea. A good one, I think. But the application... it wants a business plan. Financial projections. A 'compelling narrative for scalability.'" She made a face. "It's like they want me to build the gallery before I've even hung the first painting."
Liam looked from her frustrated face to the flyer, and the gears in his mind, freshly oiled by his recent realizations, began to turn. This wasn't an art project; it was a startup pitch. And a pitch required a strategy.
"Okay," he said, his voice shifting into the calm, analytical tone he used when dissecting a chart. "Let's break this down. This is a trade. The entry cost is the time and effort to create the application. The potential profit is the $5,000 and the credibility. What's your thesis?"
Val blinked, then a slow smile spread across her face as she recognized their shared language. "My thesis," she said, sitting up straighter, "is that there is a desire on campus for curated, accessible, non-academic art experiences. That students are hungry for meaning and connection outside of their majors."
"Good. That's your edge," Liam nodded. "Now, what's the trade? The specific project."
"I want to create a pop-up gallery series called 'Unseen.' I'd use abandoned or underutilized spaces on campus—an old storage room, a disused lounge—and transform them for one weekend only. Each pop-up would feature a different theme and the work of student artists who don't normally have a platform."
Liam's eyes lit up. It was a brilliant, agile concept. "Perfect. Now, the risk. What's the biggest variable? The thing that could blow up your stop-loss?"
"The administration," she said without hesitation. "Getting permissions, navigating campus bureaucracy. That, and no one showing up."
"Right. So your risk management," Liam said, leaning forward, "is to mitigate that. Don't start by asking for the hardest space. Find the lowest-hanging fruit. The most sympathetic department head. Prove the concept on a small, manageable scale. That's your paper trading. You get one successful, low-risk pop-up under your belt, and it becomes part of your track record. It de-risks the next, bigger ask."
He watched as she absorbed this, her mind reframing the obstacles not as impassable walls, but as quantifiable risks to be managed.
"And the financials?" she asked, a new gleam of determination in her eye.
"That's your position sizing," he explained. "You don't need to project the revenue of a permanent gallery. You just need a bare-bones budget for this one trade. How much for materials to transform the space? For printing and publicity? The $5,000 grant is your profit target. Your application needs to show you know exactly how much capital you need to execute and what the 'return'—the cultural impact—will be."
For the next hour, they huddled over her laptop, the bench transformed into a war room. Liam helped her structure her application not as a plea for funding, but as a confident proposal from a fund manager—herself—allocating capital to a high-conviction idea. They defined her "market niche" (student artists and audiences), her "competitive edge" (the pop-up model's novelty and accessibility), and her "key performance indicators" (attendance, artist participation, social media engagement).
By the time they finished, Val's initial frustration had been entirely replaced by a focused, strategic energy. She wasn't just an artist asking for a grant; she was a curator-CEO pitching a viable venture.
"You know," she said, closing her laptop and looking at him with a newfound respect, "I thought your world of charts and systems was its own separate universe. But it's not. It's a toolkit. And you just helped me build my first real project with it."
Liam felt a surge of pride that dwarfed any trading profit. His climb wasn't a solitary, selfish endeavor. The discipline he was mastering had value beyond his own redemption. It could be a catalyst. He could help her build her own ascent, right alongside his. The boulder felt lighter than ever.