Luca Netz firmly believes in establishing a company in the right way.

Authored by: Deep Tide TechFlow

On October 7th, Twitter user Horlomite Research posted a tweet accusing Luca Netz, the founder of the NFT project Pudgy Penguins, of using funds to acquire Pudgy Penguins from four different Rug projects.

Shortly after, Luca Netz shared his 8-year entrepreneurial journey after high school on social media, seemingly in response to the allegations made by Horlomite Research.

Deep Tide TechFlow has compiled and organized the above content.

Dropping out of high school and forging his own path

Luca was originally very disappointed with his studies, and his family environment was also very difficult. 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, achieving some initial success. However, he also realized that running a show involved too many risks, and it would be better to find a stable job.

First job: Packaging worker at Ring company

Luca sent out resumes everywhere and finally got his first job packing boxes at the smart doorbell company Ring. This simple physical job opened the door for his entrepreneurial endeavors.

After working at Ring for several months, Luca was promoted to the QA (Quality Assurance) and RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) departments, 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 there was limited room for personal advancement. This prompted him to start thinking about transitioning.

Venturing into e-commerce

Luca began purchasing various online courses and eventually chose cross-border e-commerce. He quickly found a 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 shipping, with 10% of orders still being drop-shipped. He later successfully sold this e-commerce business to the then-largest competitor. This first successful exit marked the beginning of his investment career.

Creating internet celebrity IPs

Using the knowledge he gained, 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 based on 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, as he believed this 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 such as 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 offered a loan to CNK to help them through the tough times.

When the CNK team decided to launch an NFT project, the loan was repaid.

Inspired by NFTs, he decided to focus on brand building

This was Luca's opportunity to get involved with NFTs. He also realized that the internet celebrity economy lacked sustainable commercial value and decided to focus on brand building.

His first attempt was to revitalize the Von Dutch brand in early 2020. However, after the second deal with Von Dutch fell through during the COVID-19 crisis, Luca decided to create an online course about what he had learned so far.

He realized that online courses could change lives, so he decided to provide others with the same opportunity to gain value from others that he had received. Today, he can confidently say that the lives of hundreds of people have been changed as a result.

Subsequently, Luca Netz became the largest investor and chief marketing officer of Gel Blaster, one of the fastest-growing toy companies in North America. During his time at Gel Blaster, he became very passionate about collecting and learning about NFTs, starting with 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 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 the fees. The project was successful, and Luca fell in love with the industry. After several weeks of back-and-forth communication, he saw the potential of the project and wanted to become a partner. Despite many disputes and the inability to reach an agreement, it ultimately led to a proposal for him to purchase the project, which resulted in more arguments and ultimately led to the distancing of their friendship, with the project being owned by the friend. The community eventually took over the project, and Luca Netz re-joined the project as an advisor (still to this day).

Luca stated that the best part of this experience was meeting the project's developer, Lomel, and he will always be grateful for this experience.

Seizing the NFT media advertising craze, successful arbitrage

Based on what he learned, 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 all inflating ad prices.

Luca saw this as an opportunity to buy as many ad spaces on Instagram pages as possible and resell them when the prices rose. He became the gatekeeper for these platforms, and once sold, he would have the buyer negotiate with the page owner on creativity and posts. This business was run by two people in Luca's alpha group, and they basically automated the entire business, earning millions of dollars in a few months. More information can be found in his posts (related link).

Acquiring Pudgy Penguins, aspiring to build the first Web3 mass brand

Several months later, Luca Netz saw the opportunity to purchase Pudgy, stating that Pudgy was his first truly high-return trade as an NFT trader, and he had always known and seen its potential. It was clear that Pudgy had all the elements to become an NFT spokesperson.

Three months later, he began the journey of creating the first mass-market brand on the Web3 market. After a year of hard work, he successfully raised funds.

He firmly believes in establishing the company in the right way, having personally experienced the impact of neglect and exploitation on the community. Therefore, they came here with the vision of establishing a Web3 IP and set the North Star as the benchmark for establishing a Web3 IP, to ensure that the company's development does not harm the community, but rather has a positive impact on the community.

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