Author: Luca Netz, Founder of Pudgy Penguins
Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow
On October 7th, Twitter user Horlomite Research accused Luca Netz, the founder of the NFT project Pudgy Penguins, of using funds from 4 different Rug projects to acquire Pudgy Penguins.
Shortly after, Luca Netz shared his 8-year entrepreneurial journey after high school graduation on social media, seemingly in response to Horlomite Research’s allegations.
Deep Tide TechFlow has compiled and translated the above content.
Dropping out of high school and seeking a livelihood
Luca was disappointed with his academic life and faced difficult family circumstances. In high school, he decided to drop out and start making a living, which became the starting point of his entrepreneurial journey. He organized underground rap shows in Los Angeles and achieved some initial success. However, he also realized that running a show had too many risks, and it would be better to find a stable job.
First job: Packaging worker at Ring
Luca sent out resumes everywhere and finally got his first job packaging boxes at Ring, a smart doorbell company. This simple physical labor opened the door for his livelihood and entrepreneurship.
After working at Ring for a few months, Luca was promoted to the QA (Quality Assurance) and RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) departments, which were dedicated to ensuring product quality and providing satisfactory after-sales service to customers. At that time, Ring was expanding rapidly, but Luca also realized that his personal promotion opportunities were limited. This prompted him to start thinking about transformation.
Entering e-commerce
Luca started purchasing various online courses and eventually chose cross-border e-commerce. He quickly found product market fit in the jewelry industry and achieved explosive growth.
Luca adjusted his business model, stocking products in the United States and achieving 90% domestic shipments, with the remaining 10% of orders still being drop-shipped. He successfully sold this e-commerce business to the largest competitor at that time. This first successful exit marked the beginning of his investment career.
Creating popular internet celebrity IPs
Using the knowledge he gained there, Luca began monetizing social influence and became the driving force behind many self-owned brands of internet celebrities.
He collaborated with influential individuals to establish consumer-facing brands around their portraits. He was responsible for product management, order processing, customer service, and website development, while the influencers decided on the products they wanted to sell and related positioning and marketing strategies.
This business was very successful and inspired him to establish Netz Capital for venture capital investments, as he believed it would have the greatest impact.
Investing in multiple startups, but hit hard by COVID-19
In 2019, he invested $3 million in 15 different companies, covering various fields including athletic shoe retailers (CNK), SaaS products (SSB), and other direct sales brands (unhappy).
However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many of these companies faced significant challenges, including CNK, which had physical stores. To provide support, he provided a loan to CNK to help them get through the difficult times.
When the CNK team decided to launch an NFT project, this loan was repaid.
Inspired by NFT, focus on brand building
This became Luca’s opportunity to get in touch with NFT. He also realized that the internet celebrity economy has no sustainable commercial value, so he decided to focus on brand building.
His first attempt was to revive the Von Dutch brand in early 2020. However, after the second transaction with Von Dutch failed to reach an agreement, during the COVID-19 crisis, Luca decided to create an online course about what he had learned so far.
He realized that online courses can change lives, so he decided to provide others with the same opportunities he had received from others. Today, he can confidently say that hundreds of people’s lives have been changed because of this.
Subsequently, Luca Netz became the largest investor and chief marketing officer of Gel Blaster, starting the development journey of one of the fastest-growing toy companies in North America. During the Gel Blaster period, he became very enthusiastic about collecting and learning NFT, starting to collect his first batch of 1/1 NFTs and PFPs.
Spooky Boys and disputes
During the NFT craze, one of Luca’s friends contacted him, hoping that he could help operate the NFT project Spooky Boys, as he had been trying for a month but had not found a solution.
Luca agreed to help and told him that if successful, he would need to pay Luca’s costs and a certain percentage of fees. The project was successful, and Luca fell in love with this industry. After weeks of back and forth communication, he saw the prospects of this project and wanted to become a partner in the project. Despite many disputes between them and the inability to reach an agreement, it eventually led to Luca’s proposal to buy the project, which resulted in more arguments and ultimately the estrangement of their friendship. The project was owned by the friend. The community eventually took over the project, and Luca Netz re-joined the project as an advisor (still an advisor to this day).
Luca said that the best part of this experience was meeting the project’s developer, Lomel, and he will always be grateful for this experience.
Capturing the NFT media advertising craze and successful arbitrage
With what he learned here, Luca saw an opportunity to arbitrage Instagram posts. At the time, the prices of posts on Instagram were rising every day, and course sellers, information product experts, and emerging NFT projects were inflating advertising prices.
Luca saw this as an opportunity to buy as many ad slots on Instagram pages as possible and resell them when the prices went up. He became the gatekeeper of these platforms and once the sale was made, he would negotiate with the buyer and the page owner about the creativity and posts. This business was operated by two people in Luca’s alpha team, and he basically automated the entire business, earning millions of dollars in a few months. More information can be found in the posts he published. (Related links)
Acquisition of Pudgy Penguins, Aspires to Create the First Web3 Mass Brand
Several months later, Luca Netz saw the opportunity to acquire Pudgy. He stated that Pudgy was his first truly high-return transaction as an NFT trader, and he has always recognized and seen its potential. It is evident that Pudgy possesses all the elements to become an NFT spokesperson.
Three months later, he embarked on a journey to create the first mass brand on the Web3 market. After a year of hard work, he successfully raised funds.
He firmly believes that the company must be built in the right way and has personally experienced the impact of neglect and exploitation on the community. Therefore, they come here with the vision of establishing Web3 IP, and set the North Star as the benchmark for establishing Web3 IP to ensure that the company’s development does not harm the community, but instead has a positive impact on it.
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