Keith Grossman Of TIMEPieces & Pres @ TIME, Plus: Z-Hovac’s Animal Spirit NFTs, And More…

What are major companies and big industry players doing to enter the Web3 space? Joining us today is Keith Grossman, President at Time and Creator of the media brand’s NFT business, TIMEPieces. He shares how he shifted Time’s timeline in the most Web3 way imaginable and is now leading the way for legacy media companies entering the space. Keith also discusses a new project integrating NFTs into communities and sheds light on how NFTs will impact every industry imaginable. Plus, don’t miss our Hot Topics section with quantum pop artist Z-HOVAK as we discuss how she’s bringing hope and inspiration to animals and humans by combining physical art with NFTs and giving back to the animals via charity. Listen in to find out more.

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Keith Grossman Of TIMEPieces & Pres @ TIME, Plus: Z-Hovac’s Animal Spirit NFTs, And More…

This episode features Keith Grossman, President of TIME, and creator of the media brand NFT business, TIMEPieces. Keith is a global leader in the rapidly evolving world of Web3 and leads TIME’s growth within the Web3 ecosystem. Under Keith’s leadership, TIME’s NFT Web3 community, TIMEPieces, has grown to include well over 50,000 artists, collectors and enthusiasts. In 2021, TIME’s Web3 strategy produced eight figures of revenue as the brand expanded from NFTs to community building to partnering with several NFT creators to develop their unique IP into animated series for TV with TIME Studios. TIMEPieces has released four collections, Genesis, Inspiration, Long Neckie Women of the Year, Slices of TIME, and The Beatclub Collection. Keith, it’s great to have you here on the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

**It’s a pleasure. TIME, the history here is amazing. There are not a lot of brands that have such a rich history and are still relevant as TIME is now. As you think about such a robust community and a deep following, and something as groundbreaking and forward-thinking as Web3, how did you balance these different elements when you were laying out your game plan for TIMEPieces? What was the sell like internally? Was this an easy sell or did it take a bit? **

To answer that question, you have to step a little back. I joined TIME a few years ago. It’s under new ownership, Marc and Lynne Benioff. It’s a private asset. Marc is the CEO of Salesforce, and Lynne is his wife. The remit was how do we take this 100-year-old brand and ensure that its objectivity or that red border lasts for the next 100 years. The one thing that we knew was that the way that it evolved for the first 100 years would not be the way that it involved for the second 100 years. I would be lying if I said that as we thought this through, we ever thought we would be in the Web3 crypto business.

There’s this great philosopher, Mike Tyson, who came out with the quote once that said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” 2020 was the punching in the mouth. What we realized was quite a lot. The way that we were evolving would take us on one trajectory. I don’t know if you’ll all agree but I assume I’m talking to a fairly biased group of individuals. I think that Web3’s adoption accelerated probably by ten years because of 2020. I don’t know if you all remember where you were at the time. I was upstate in New York. I’m walking around and lonely. I realized for the first time that my social media or my digital identity is just as valuable as my physical identity.”

I had this incredible reach. You guys have this incredible reach with this show. I have three friends in real life. I’m like, “It doesn’t make sense.” By the way, I can’t even talk to them because of 2020. I came across NFTs and it blew my mind that you had something that if your digital identity was as valuable as your physical identity, you can now validate digital ownership. That ruminated in my head for a while. It didn’t connect with me that there was anything there and then. I’ve been into crypto since 2013 and 2014. I started my career at WIRED and ARS Technica.

What you’ll see over the course of this conversation is I’m a dorky guy who likes technology, art, crypto and do business models and evolution. In September of 2020 or maybe a little earlier, I started to look into crypto because I didn’t believe the news and everyone saying that there will be no inflation. I went down this rabbit hole. I was on Anthony Pompliano’s podcast in September of that year. In the last two minutes, I asked him, “If you were in my position and you could implement crypto strategies for TIME, what would you do?” He started to give all this good advice. You could see at that point it was ruminating in my head.

In February of 2021, our owner, Marc Benioff, sent me an email that said, “Did you see this?” It was the Nyan Cat sale. Do you remember when the Nyan Cat sells for $500,000? All of a sudden, if there’s ever that lightning moment, it went off. I’m like, “We could do this.” Everyone was like, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “Do you all understand why a cat with the body of a pop-tart, farting a rainbow, just went for $500,000?” Everyone is looking at me like I’m crazy. What I realized at that moment was for 100 years, what has TIME been doing with the cover?” The TIME cover has been an analog meme for 100 years.

It hit me and I did an announcement in mid-March. I said, “This week, TIME is going to enter into Web3. Within 30 days, we will also accept digital currencies for subscriptions,” which we did within 28 days. We took 32 different cryptocurrencies we sell on Bitcoin. We take 33 because we accept 8 Coin, which we announced two days after 8 Coin came out. I said, “Within 6 to 7 months, we would figure out how to use the token, the community, and the blockchain to change the relationship we have with the community.” I had no clue how that was going to happen. I just knew it was possible.

That was a six-month masterclass of sitting in Clubhouse, listening and learning to the likes of JN Silva, ThankYouX, Dave Krugman and others. You ask how did we sell this through. It’s fascinating if you step back and it’s February 2022, I’m like, “We can do this.” All of a sudden, Marc introduced me to Guy Oseary. Guy said to me, “I’m going to introduce you to a bunch of people. That way, you could understand all the players in the space.” He could not have been nicer. He’s an amazing person.

I went on what I would say is a technological speed dating evening, where I met a bunch of players. At the end of it, because everyone else wouldn’t take my call or anything else, the only two people who took us seriously in the entire ecosystem were Jimmy McNelis, who I love and you all know, and John Crain of SuperRare. John Crain was an awesome individual. He teaches me how to mint my first NFT. I ran out of ETH. He replenished it for me. What he didn’t tell me was when I minted the NFT, it was visible on the blockchain. I didn’t know that. That gives you an idea of how ignorant I was at that time.

I minted them all on a Saturday, the Is God Dead? Is FIAT Dead? Is Truth Dead?, then I went into the kitchen in my apartment to get a coconut LaCroix. I opened it up and my phone rings. Somebody offered me $15,000 for Is FIAT Dead?, so I called John Crain up. I said, “You MF-er, you didn’t tell me this was public. What do I F-in do?” You could ask him. I dropped the F word more than anything else because I want it to be a big surprise. He’s like, “It’s supposed to be public? What are you getting in?” I said, “What do I do?”

Web3’s adoption accelerated by ten years because of 2020. Click To Tweet

He said, “Reject the deal and start your auction and have it end around Wednesday evening.” I did that. Nobody bid on any of the TIMEPieces, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. I was so angry at John. It was funny. He got texts from me every five minutes. On Wednesday evening, we did a Clubhouse room. By the end of the night, it exceeded all of our expectations. We did $440,000. You asked this question, and this is my long-winded answer. I rarely told this story. What people don’t know is the funding of TIMEPieces was quite easy to get done because when we were doing the one-of-one NFTs, I needed assistance from our legal department and from our creative director to provide me with those assets. There was nothing there.

Right after we did those first few drops, then we continued to sell numerous drops. We sold about eleven drops on SuperRare during that time. One day I woke up and I got this text message from John Knopf. If you’ve ever been in space with John Knopf, he’s like a brother to me. The text message said, “Did you see that you can convert the RARE token to Ethereum on Uniswap?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Are you paying attention to your email?” I was so busy. I missed an email. He’s like, “Check your email. SuperRare converted to a DAO and they issued RARE tokens.”

I looked and I missed it. I filed it away. I went in and I reclaimed the tokens. Our finance team said at the time that they felt comfortable taking Bitcoin. They felt comfortable taking Ethereum on our books. Altcoins are not innate. They’re not okay to stay and keep in the books. They said, “You have to convert to Ethereum.” I looked and we had so many RARE tokens from all of the drops that we had done that the RARE tokens paid for the launch of TIMEPieces. We never had to ask for funding.

In most Web3 stories of birth or a brand’s evolution into the space, I don’t know how you could top that. John Crain took a shot on me. He taught me how to mint. I found success on his platform. I used his platform. His platform became a DAO and issued tokens. I convert the tokens into Ethereum because I had to, and ultimately paid for the launch of our future brand’s evolution into Web3.

That is the Web3 story. That’s amazing.

I had not told that story publicly.

**What an honor. You don’t have a shortage of believers now in the space, but it’s nice to understand how these things start. It gives so much perspective on what’s happening in the industry. We started in March 2021. Jeff got a rare NBA Top Shot. That was a pivotal moment for us. I’m going to share two anecdotes, guys. Don’t kill me for this. Stanley Bishop is a dear friend of ours. I met him at Bright Moments when we were starting the show. I found out that he was at the meetup with the founder of CryptoKitties, Zach Sekar, who is now our head of NFT LA, organized back in 2017 or 2018. **

That was the same day Jeff met Zach and Stanley, and now we’re all deep in Web3. There’s this interesting flow to this industry. I’ll add one more detail here. Our dear friend, Nicole Buffett, introduced us. I was at her house. She has these amazing wild horses. We met her at a party. Another friend of ours introduced us too. We’re so connected that we did a collaboration together. It was the collaboration that was our first NFT drop that we’re the first 100 NFT tickets to NFT LA.

Can I take it one step further? I know this wasn’t in our discussion points, but it’s amazing on the topic of Nicole Buffett. You know that Nicole Buffett is a TIMEPieces artist, right?

**Yes, of course. **

Do you know the story of her TIMEPiece?

TIMEPieces: The way that Time evolved for the first hundred years would not be the way that it evolved for the second hundred years.

**I don’t know all the deets. **

**I heard a little bit about it. There’s a woman involved. It’s this Mother Tree thing. **

It’s called the Mother Tree. There’s this tree at her mother’s house. I don’t recall exactly the house. Justin Aversano can tell the story better and so can Nicole. I’m going to butcher it a little bit, but you’ll get the point of it. The NFT is called the Mother Tree. It’s this beautiful tree that’s on either one of Nicole’s houses or her mother’s house. They left the camera open with the open exposure for the evening to capture the tree how they want to then depict it.

They left and they forgot the camera at the home. They started driving away. They got a few miles away and they realized that they forgot the camera at home. They went back to pick it up and Nicole’s mom was choking and couldn’t breathe. She was almost unconscious or something bad. They saved her life. If they had not forgotten the camera or left the camera at the house after taking the picture for the production of that NFT, they don’t know what could have happened. They look at that NFT and it’s special and meaningful. That’s why it’s called the Mother Tree.

**She hasn’t announced it yet, but she has quite a special drop in the coming months that I’m sure we’ll both be supporting fully. Shout out to Nicole. We would love to elaborate on the discussion around where this is all going. It started rather with a high-level vision and things fell into play in a special way. Is that the same approach you’re taking to the near and long-term vision or are things a little bit more framed out from here on with TIMEPieces? **

You study this space every day like I study this space every day. If somebody could tell you where this space is going to be in six months from now, I can tell you that I don’t want to be anywhere near that person. The space in my opinion is the most exciting moment. At the top, there’s too much friction for mass adoption. We’re still seeing that technology dominates, and the experience is not taking the lead. There’s not enough regulation and clarity for major companies to enter in. There’s not enough education in the marketplace.

At the bottom, there’s enough of a foundation for real innovation to be built and real change to take place. Probably for the next 24 to 36 months before the top collapses on itself and the mass entry enters into the ecosystem, this is probably the most exciting time. This is a space that’s designed for insomniac workaholics. I’m going 24 hours a day, as I’m sure all of you are and as are my team, thinking about how this place evolving. If you look at our first few drops versus our last, I would have never thought that we would have had a burn mechanism with an instant reveal. I wouldn’t have thought that we would have done music NFTs with Timbaland. I wouldn’t have thought about half of the stuff that I’m thinking about now.

That’s what makes it exciting and so much fun. You all have to be having so much fun when you have all these conversations because you see insights from every different thought leader in the space. I have so much fun watching what other people are doing every time and thinking to myself, “How can I do something like that?” When Dave Krugman did the Shatter Contract with Transient Labs, weren’t you all like, “That’s pretty cool?” I don’t know if you knew this but I was the top bidder on that and I lost because I went for a walk and I don’t have MetaMask on my mobile phone. I was pissed that I lost that. That’s an amazing contract when you think about that. That was not possible a few months ago.

The thought process that I share with Maya Draisin and the team at TIME is we have to have enough structure that we know where we’re going, but we have to be fluid enough that we feel comfortable with it. You take the Micah Johnson drop. We didn’t know that that was going to be the drop until a few weeks before. The Matt Ball article got moved up. I didn’t find out that it got moved up to a drop on a Monday until the Thursday before. We’re like, “We need to get this in the market fast. The only way we could get in the market fast is not mint from our site, but do open edition on OpenSea.” That fluidity and flexibility are something that’s new and natural to larger organizations. We have to always remind ourselves that that’s what’s required in this space.

That’s impressive. That’s also what we all love about this space. When you enjoy being creative and being extemporaneous and you get bored easily probably, it’s fun to have to readjust to whatever is next and come up with something new.

The next NFT LA is going to look so different from the first. We had over 300 requests to be on the show in the last few months. If you merged all the innovations together that all these amazing people are doing, it’s incredible.

Your digital identity is just as valuable as your physical identity. Click To Tweet

It’s from everywhere. That’s what’s cool. What I like about the space is you could have someone like Richerd or Eric in Manifold doing amazing innovation out of Vancouver. It’s not coming just out of New York or Miami, which I have a lot of respect for, LA, San Fran, or the traditional hubs. It’s everywhere.

We’ve got some fans that I met at NFT LA. A guy that bought one of our Spirits Seeds, which we mentioned earlier coming out of Latin America, and these two business partners. The guy told me that his buddy wrote this little Bible on NFTs and made him read it. It’s from everywhere and every angle, and in interesting places. We found out one of our hugest demographics on YouTube is in the Philippines. We knew people were listening to the podcast in the Philippines. They’re one of our major stakeholders in the YouTube audience. It’s fascinating.

I find that the ability that the Web3 ecosystem does to provide commerce with the long tail of the world has all of a sudden, opened up experiences that you wouldn’t ever think of, connections that you would have never anticipated, and markets for artists and collectors that people never thought were possible.

I want to switch the direction here a little bit. I’m back to some of the projects that TIME is doing here. We had the Micah Johnson TIME cover that came out here. It has received a lot of attention. Why do you think that’s the case? It’s metaverse focus. What does the metaverse represent to you and TIMEPieces?

D.W. Pine and Edward Felsenthal, the Editor in Chief and the Creative Director, called me and said that they had an exclusive excerpt of Matt Ball’s book. Given how it played towards the Web3 space well, they said, “Do you have any ideas as to who could do a great cover?” If you step back and think about TIME, its real superpower is the cover and what that cover ultimately is. That’s not discounting the editorial. The editorial is excellent, but the cover is its superpower. It’s the meme. The cover is capturing living history. The reasons that it hit everyone so hard and positively are numerous.

One is there was a recognition that we’ve been talking about things like metaverses for many years, but it never hit the cover of TIME. It’s beginning to get discussed in the general zeitgeist. You can see that everywhere you go. The reason that the Aku cover did well is what Micah Johnson and Summer and the team are building is something bigger than an NFT. If you’ve ever met Micah, he is one of the nicest and greatest guys. He’s a TIMEPiece artist. I consider him a friend. If you’ve ever met Summer and his precedence, she’s brilliant in all intents and purposes.

When you think about the story of Aku, this was my rationale for why I called Micah up. I said, “I have a question for you.” He’s like, “What’s up?” I go, “Do you want to do the cover of TIME for the metaverse issue? I have a cool idea.” It was not even a discussion or anything. He was so into it right from the get-go. Think about the origin of Aku. You have Micah on a couch, depressed that his baseball career is over. By the way, I’m going to make sure Micah listens to this. I want to throw in one side note, which is Micah holds a stat for the most stolen bases in one season in the MLB. Also, as a Major League Baseball player, he never hit a home run as a professional. He did in the Minors.

He was laying on the couch and his nephew comes up and says, “Can an astronaut be Black?” The answer is yes, but NASA can never promote or market itself. It’s a natural question. I have an eight-year-old daughter. She once asked me, “Why can’t women be president of the United States?” I had to say to her, “Women can be president of the United States. They just have not yet been president of the United States.” I had to explain to her the difference.

I’m looking forward to it. Thank you.

**Keith, are you familiar with Sweet.io? **

I am not.

If it’s for the mayor, put me in touch.

Is there competitiveness among mayors?

I’m not hating on Miami.

I know Jason.

**It’s like a sequel or a remake. **

Vanilla yogurt-covered pretzels.

Probably seashells when I was younger.

**A true de-materialist. **

I would buy an island where I could go and sleep.

No.

Humor.

Humor.

I have a meeting.

You can follow me on Twitter, @KeithGrossman. I’m also on Instagram @KeithGrossman and LinkedIn as Keith Grossman. It would be weird if I was not LinkedIn Keith Grossman. Those are the three main platforms that I’m on. @TIMEPieces exists on Twitter. You should check it out there, as well as on Discord.

Important Links

• TIME

• TIMEPieces

• Sweet.io

• Instagram – Keith Grossman

• Twitter – Keith Grossman

• Maloka

• ZHOVAK.com

• @ZHOVAK – Instagram

• Keith Grossman – LinkedIn

• @TIMEPieces – Twitter

• Spotify – Edge of NFT Podcast

• iTunes – Edge of NFT Podcast

About Keith Grossman

Accomplished C-Suite executive with a proven track record in digital and all traditional platforms, in leading large and complex teams through turnarounds, innovative development and product launches. A frequent speaker, writer and contributor across high-profile industry, educational and philanthropic events.