Grateful Labs

Four years ago, Julian and I were in Tel Aviv with our first physical gratitude wall & wellness festival, attracting random passersby to write and read gratitude notes. More than 10,000 of them. That was the first sign we were onto something — that gratitude offered as an open invitation, wasn't niche. People just needed a surface to put it on.

With 7,777 Grateful Giraffes NFTs ready for a public launch, an 18’ Ford skoolie we bought from Ben Sigman, and a trip from New York to LA and back through 18 cities, we put "What are you grateful for?" & Giraffe NFTs on the windows in vinyl and drove. Collected thousands of gratitude shares. Hosted the first two Evenings of Gratitude in LA and Austin. Doubled the size of the community.

Then the price of Ether collapsed and took the NFT market with it.

We took that as information. Instead of launching a collection to an anonymous internet community, we rebuilt the idea from scratch: invite-only, in-person, real people who practice gratitude, have their head in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Three months later, Adar and I moved to Venice, put 12 people around a table with gratitude noodles and roasted potatoes and a potlucked collection of snacks and desserts, and ended the night with Chris Schembra's question: "If you could give credit or appreciation to one person in your life who you haven't given credit or appreciation to — who would that be?"

That's how Grateful Giraffes actually started. A wall, a bus, a collapse, a pivot, a pop-up dinner table.

Nearly a thousand lifetime members later, we've run 500+ events across six cities, 15,000+ people have walked through our doors, and revenue has crossed $800k — memberships, tickets, sponsorships — plus a $250,000 pre-seed from 18 Giraffes who believed deeply in the power of gratitude to create community.

From the beginning, we’ve asked hard questions: the people who helped build this — who co-hosted the dinners & brunches & co-created the parties, who held space — how do they have a stake in where it goes? In the first 60 days of the Oasis, 200+ Giraffes onboarded & claimed equity in Grateful Labs.

For the next few weeks, our Community Seed Round is open to all Grateful Giraffes at a special price. June 1st, we're opening a Wefunder and the price will begin to rise as more investors join.

While we still don't have all the answers, we have an incredible community of Giraffes who keep showing up to find them together. And for that, we are deeply grateful.

Love, Max & Julian 🦒