The Grateful Giraffes Genesis Story
From CEO & Co-Founder, Max Marine
One might say that the Acacia seed of Grateful Giraffes was planted in 2011, when I first discovered gratitude journaling. I wrote three things a day until I hit 1,000.
That seed began to germinate as I took gratitude journaling to the streets of Philadelphia filling up a 60 page notebook titled “Gratitude From Strangers”.
A little hatchling broke through the soil in 2017 when I took a blank Gratitude Journal to Midburn, Israel’s regional burning man.
The hatchling started to grow small branches in 2019 at Burning Man.
The trunk thickened during COVID-19 when I committed once again to a daily practice in order to support my mental health during isolation / lockdown.
After a year and a half of restrictions, finally, a few leaves started to appear in October 2021 when I returned to the Desert to once again fill a Gratitude Notebook from cover-to-cover.
This time I was more intentional about observing each person’s emotional state before, during, and after. I asked them how the short experience made them feel. And then gave them a hug goodbye.
In general, I watched these people go from an unfocused and unconscious state into a state of concentration and conscious expression. “I feel good”, “Thank you”, and “I feel calmer”, were the most common responses. It was a healthy reminder that most people love to express gratitude when given the opportunity, but with the amount of responsibility, stress, and distraction the modern human faces, it's not always easy to take the time to actually practice gratitude!
Having spent some time investing in companies addressing the $16t mental health crisis, and having experienced the mental health benefits of gratitude in my life, I asked myself - how can I bring gratitude practices back into the “real world”, instead of just leaving this beautiful experience in the Desert? How can I help people integrate gratitude into their lives? What are all the benefits of gratitude and how could I bring these benefits of gratitude to the mainstream? As these questions burned stronger and stronger I realized I needed to put my 7-year career in Venture Capital on hold and jump into the deep sea of entrepreneurship. Gratitude was calling!
NFTs
I first learned about crypto in 2016 while working at iAngels, became exuberant in 2017 as I joined lool ventures, disillusioned in 2018, and then had my mind completely blown in late 2020 when I discovered decentralized finance (DeFi). While I was aware of the NFT boom, I was frankly quite skeptical (and still am of most projects), and felt like I had no competitive advantage in betting on culture. It seemed like a game for insiders.
While I was in the process of developing my crypto investment thesis and researching the top crypto funds, I came across a new NFT collection called Raging Rhinos that was minting a 10k collection through a smart contract embedded on its website. I connected my Metamask, bought 20 Rhinos (the collection unfortunately was a scam and has since gone to 0) for .2 ETH, and went to Opensea where I started to understand what had been happening in the NFT market. I then started to search for a Lion collection (my spirit animal) and discovered Lazy Lions. I immediately bought a Lion with a Hawaiian shirt and made it my profile picture on Twitter. I then discovered the Pudgy Penguins, Cool Cats, Bored Apes, Rebel Rabbits, and the Lobby Lobsters.
There seemed to be something special and intangible about these animal collections. Not just the alliteration, but the energy and virality they seemed to unlock. The millions of impressions that were created by community members changing their profile pictures. The mainstream media and celebrity class bringing these collections to life by covering / participating in this trend, and the real world impact some of these communities were having, either by creating IRL events and merch, and/or donating some/all of their proceeds to charitable causes.
I started to realize that NFTs could be more than a bunch of fake accounts in Discord hyping up projects with anonymous teams and unclear roadmaps. NFTs could not only capitalize entrepreneurs on a mission to make a positive impact, but also quickly bring together like-minded individuals from around the world that cared about a common goal. The Grateful Gorillas. Too close to the Apes. The Grateful Gerbils. Too niche. The Grateful Goats. Close. The Grateful Giraffes. Ahhhhh. After a quick Opensea check, I went and bought www.gratefulgiraffes.com, and the first flower on the Acacia Tree bloomed :)
It’s now been 4 months since going all-in on Grateful Giraffes and we’ve made a lot of progress! We built an amazing team and advisory board, selected our NFT artist from a global competition that brought 140 submissions, produced Tel Aviv’s first-ever Gratitude Wall with over 3,000 visitors and 45,000 instagram video impressions, hosted more than 25 live, virtual, guided gratitude meditations and gratitude sharing rooms (The Boost) for 200 community members, raised 70+ ETH in our private NFT sale, and built the foundation of a global gratitude community. In the coming weeks we’ll be sharing some exciting updates about our vision, mission, roadmap, NFT collection, and how we’re planning to bring gratitude to cities all over the U.S. leading up to our public mint on June 21st, World Giraffe Day!
In the meantime - subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and join us in Discord for our weekly Gratitude Boost!