Meet Project Venkman: The Austin Startup Behind Bill Murray’s NFT Collection
The latest industry initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles tend to dominate the tech news space – and for good reason. Yet the tech titans are not the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
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On Friday, Bill Murray will release the final part of his non-fungible token (NFT) collection, which combines colorful portraits of himself with stories, anecdotes and other musings from the legendary comedian.
The Saturday Night Live alum is known for his versatility, ranging from a withdrawn groundskeeper i Caddyshack to an eccentric marine researcher i The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. His more dramatic role in Lost in translation won him a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.
Still, the choppy waters of the NFT world seem a strange fit for a man who can only be contacted through voicemail for a 1-800 number. So, how did the star do Groundhog Day Get involved in the NFT world?
The story starts with the chives, a viral humor website that launched back in 2008 and sold, among other things, T-shirts with Murray’s face on them. When Murray found out about the T-shirts, he asked that the license money they owed him be donated to his charity golf tournament.
Murray’s partnership with Austin-based Chive Media Group has evolved into a number of ventures over the years, including a golf apparel line called William Murray Golf.
To bring Murray’s fan base into the NFT world, Chive partnered with Gavin Gillas, who has been speaking about blockchain technology at major conferences for at least five years.
Gillas is a former IP attorney who first entered Austin’s tech world a decade ago when he launched The Magazine Channel, which converted PDFs of print magazines into digital products. He went on to launch Giving Docs, an estate planning platform that allows people to make a donation through their will.
The Chive Media Group team worked with Gillas and Giving Docs as part of their non-profit Chive Charity, which provides wheelchair accessible vans, home modifications and medical supplies to military families, first responders and individuals with rare medical diagnoses.
Using his IP legal background and his interest in blockchain technology, Gillas launched an NFT startup with Chive Media Group and Murray as his first clients. The startup is called The Venkman project, a nod to Peter Venkman, the character Murray plays Ghostbusters movie franchise.
In addition to Gillas, the company’s CEO, Project Venkman’s co-founders include John and Leo Resig, the co-founders of Chive Media Group, as well as Chive executives Mike Grisko and Alen Durbuzovic.
“We were originally going to be an in-house chive project, but we decided to spin it off independently,” Gillas said.
Bill Murray on Blockchain
This past summer, Project Venkman released 100 NFTs of the Bill Murray 1000 Collection, featuring stories, thoughts and observations from the legendary comedian. The stories are interspersed with various renderings of a portrait of Murray wearing a suit, bow tie and 3D movie glasses.
“This is a way for him to write a biography without doing a traditional biography,” Gillas said. “He told us he doesn’t want to do a biography, that he still has stories to tell.”
The chives Media group and Project Venkman claims this is the first ever biography of the blockchain.
Murray is the subject of many legendary stories, such as crashing a kickball game in New York, photobombing a wedding shoot in South Carolina and doing the dishes at a Scottish house party. These are just some of the stories in a 2018 documentary, The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned From a Mythical Man.
“When we asked him about it [the documentary], he said there are better stories out there,” Gillas said. “The NFT collection has some of the better stories, like the one he whispered to Scarlett Johansson at the end Lost in translationhow Hunter S. Thompson saved his life or the time he met JFK.”
The first 100 NFTs in the collection sold for $1,500 apiece, but each of those NFTs is now worth over $20,000, Gillas said. Project Venkman will release another 700 NFTs on Friday, which Gillas said could push the collection from the top 100 NFTs to the top 10. Another 200 NFTs will be reserved for special offers.
Build brand loyalty with NFTs
In addition to working with Murray and Chive Media Group, Project Venkman also runs membership and NFT programs for other celebrities and brands. Without naming names, Gillas said his clients include major retailers, an airline and a major coffee company.
Gillas said his 10-person team is helping these brands think beyond outdated loyalty points to create unique experiences and digital assets that have real value in the NFT market.
“Our technology focus is to bridge the traditional enterprise technology or traditional consumer software with this Web3 component in a way that you don’t have to download a wallet, submit a photo of your face and verify your bank account just to sign up what a program, he said.
Gillas said Project Venkman not only helps brands have a presence in the Web3 space, but it also gives brands’ customers the sense of ownership and loyalty that NFT users feel when an asset’s value rises or falls based on the community’s collective efforts.
“We have this whole new generation of consumers who are learning about … digital assets and owning things in games, but they don’t feel like they own things when they interact with your brands. They feel very much like a customer,” Gillas said. “The transition we’re trying to help brands make is to help their community, their customers, feel much more like owners.”
The opportunities for brands to reward customers for their loyalty can take different forms. While the public perception of NFTs is often limited to art, Project Venkman has worked with customers to offer loyalty points that can be used to get discounts, access special member events, or gain early access to exclusive products.
“It gets people much more hyped about their brand experience when, say, their favorite shoe company has a new release and you have to have NFT to access it,” Gillas said. “There’s this whole wave of activity before another trickle of people trades into the right NFT or sells theirs or buys into the pool to access that particular benefit.”
With Project Venkman, fRands and celebrities can also view the performance of their NFTs on a dashboard that shows the number of transactions, secondary sales and other information.
“Being able to advise on both basic technology as well as intellectual property helps make these (NFT) things that we can believe in for five to 10 years,” Gillas said. “These are permanent assets, not just a quick glance because it’s the trendy thing to do or because the marketing team has a budget for some metaverse.”
