Secrets Behind Building a $1B Crypto Brand | Luca Netz DSH #1210

Of course not.

You know, but it's fuel.

Because,

you know,

after he did that a couple months later, I realized that like every great story has something like this in the equation.

It just makes the story even greater.

Right.

Right?

Like everyone knows the forward-facing story, the behind-the-scenes story is just as epic.

You know, from like literally being broke.

All right, guys, got Luca Nets back on the show.

It's been a while, while, my friend.

It's been a while, two years, huh?

Yeah, you've been up to a lot in the past two years.

Just a little.

Yeah, and now it's a crypto bull run, they say, right?

Yeah,

a weird bull run, but a bull run nonetheless.

Yeah, what makes this one weird?

It's just

the other ones were a lot more explosive, but this one might, this might be good.

It might be a new era for crypto with the ETFs and things like that.

So I think with a little less explosiveness, maybe a little less nukage.

Yeah, well, Bitcoin reclaimed 100K yesterday, right?

Yeah.

Trump seems to be very pro-crypto.

Super.

Announcing Announcing a crypto reserve, potentially no tax on crypto, which would be nuts.

Crazy.

Right now it's like 40%.

So that'd be huge.

Are you

into politics at all?

Yeah,

I'm pretty political, but because of my positioning at Pudgy, I'm not really transparent on my political stance.

That makes sense, man.

Ripple's pumping.

You got any Ripple?

I don't, but kudos to those guys.

I didn't see that one coming, to be honest.

Me neither.

I mean, I always heard it was like the future of banking years ago.

I just never took it serious.

They'd be good with that narrative.

Yeah.

Apparently they make a ton of money.

And I think the institutions, they have huge PMF with the institutions.

Absolutely.

You got Pangu that launched.

Congrats on the launch.

Appreciate it.

What's the plan for that?

I think the thesis is like

when you look at these memetic tokens, this idea that memetic tokens should do nothing and be nothing.

I think is such a disservice to the category.

And if you understand the Pudgy Penguin lore and the story, a a lot of the mimetic culture that you see today

very much

was originated

through that community and through that culture back that they started in 2021.

And then you kind of look at

what does Pengu need to be and what does Pudgy Penguins need to be to kind of take it to the next level.

It's very much like a cultural phenomenon.

And so Pengu today is a mimetic cultural coin

that I think is going to push the boundaries and continue to break barriers within the industry around what I think these type of tokens can ultimately be.

And it's predicated on

trying to continue to do things in crypto that I think only we can do.

And so it's a really interesting position it's in today.

One that I think was

really necessary for this ecosystem to kind of take that next leg forward.

And I think it's going to follow the same path that the NFTs have followed over the last couple of years.

Yeah, I thought the launch was excellent.

Most NFTs launch coins and they don't do too well, if we're being honest.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah, we gave $1.2 billion to the people.

Crazy.

You know, PUDG has always been for the people, by the people.

And so not only did we give, I think, $600,0700 million to our NFT holders, We gave $600 $700 million

to a bunch of crypto users, both within within the Ethereum and the Solana ecosystem.

And again, I think it just comes down to the story that we're trying to tell, which is like, I want Pudgy Penguins and Pengu to be the face of crypto, the mascot of crypto.

I think it's this cycle's cultural phenomenon.

And

it just seemed like the right way and the right strategy to do it.

And so a lot of people are happy.

I think we have like 650,000 on-chain holders.

one of the biggest tokens on chain from a holder base within four weeks.

And I'm pretty sure by the time 2025 is over, it'll be the biggest

on-chain holder base in crypto.

Incredible.

I was watching you on Scott Hillsay's show.

Shout out to Scott.

And you were saying how you wanted Pudgy to be the face of penguins overall.

Not just like a Pudgy penguin, but the actual penguin animal.

Yeah.

There's two facets, right?

Because you, because Pudgy also is a very successful Web 2 business, right?

And that Web 2 business is

capturing a category

around the penguin that I think very few companies are capturing.

And so on one side of the spectrum, when people think penguins, I want them to think pudgy penguins.

And on the other side of the spectrum in the crypto world, I want when people think culture coins and mimetic coins and cultural phenomenons.

And what is the best animal token within the crypto industry, I want them to think, you know, pudgy penguins.

So there's two missions.

Those missions really cross-pollinate and help each other in a meaningful way, right?

If Pudgy Penguins is the face of penguins around the world, that transcends into crypto in a super meaningful way.

And if, you know, Pudgy Penguins is the face and the mascot of crypto, I think that transcends into, you know, being the face of penguins around the world.

So they're very much a yin and yang.

It's almost like bridging the two worlds together, right?

It's the only thing in crypto

that

has manufactured that bridge.

I think there's things in crypto that have bridged that gap in the past, but it was almost like lightning in a bottle.

And this is a very different story.

It's very much a consistent, steady climb to the right,

one that

was earned and developed and fought for.

I took this over at the beginning of the bear market, right?

And so all odds stacked against us, and we've just been kind of just fighting through, doing what we thought was needed for the industry and for the ecosystem.

So I think it's a lot different than everything you've seen in the past.

You know, in terms of cryptocultural phenomenons, I think Doge and Apecoin were probably the two that we had seen up until this point.

But again, I think very different stories

in terms of

how each of those got there.

And obviously, I think Pudgy Penguins is taking, it's more of like an evergreen story, one that

isn't just a flash in the pan or a moment in time.

You can kind of see it gradually just kind of inching and fighting towards, you know, hopefully the end destination, which is being number one across many different verticals.

So obviously we have a lot to go, a lot to fight for, a lot to continue to grind towards.

But I'm really excited to be in the position that we're in today.

And I think the ecosystem and the community and the business has never been in a better position.

And I think that only creates more leverage and more opportunity for us.

I love it.

You got holders everywhere, not just the U.S.

You recently just went to Asia, right?

Yeah, it's a family, dude.

I can go to any country, any city around the world and have a place to stay.

That's crazy.

It's insane.

So you're staying at holders' houses?

I'm not staying at holder's houses, but I'm saying if I wanted to, I could.

Yeah.

Right?

Like, there isn't a place that I can't go and have dinner and hang out with people.

It's a pretty crazy ecosystem, to say the least.

And it's one that

I'm super grateful for.

You know, that's the beauty of the Pudgy.

I say this all the time.

And most people, people, you know, I said this years ago, but the Pudgy community is so much more different because of the nature of the IP, right?

And the reason being is

it's less of a demographic and more of a psychographic.

And so the psychographic around people who wear the Pudgy Penguin NFT and participate within the Pudgy Penguin ecosystem,

it is a very wholesome, kind, funny, wholehearted, advanced, sophisticated.

It's just like you don't have these weird people that I think some of these communities have.

Obviously, there's always an anomaly and there's always an outlier.

But the sum of the Pudgy Penguin community, there's really everything for everyone, right?

You have community for elite traders, you have women in the community, a vast majority of women.

I think probably the highest concentration in an ecosystem of women, I think, in crypto.

Wow.

And, you know, you have 15-year-olds, you have 60-year-olds, you have people in Asia, you have people in America, you know, people from all walks of life and different professions.

And that is predicated around the universal nature of the IP.

So one of the things that made me really excited about Pudgy Penguins was that it was so universal, right?

Like everyone can identify with it.

Anyone can resonate with it.

And thus the TAM for demand is boundless, right?

There's almost like no handicap in terms of the TAM.

You know, you could argue at one point with Board Apes, there was a certain demographic and psychographic of people that just didn't resonate with that, as amazing of

a masterclass that was.

You know, there was always a ceiling on the TAM

in regards to where I thought that could go.

Doge, maybe less so.

But

yeah, I think it's really fascinating.

So to your point, yeah, I'm in Asia.

We're just as big in Asia as we are in America.

It's pretty fascinating.

I can bring more people out at an event in Singapore

than I think I can anywhere else in the world.

Damn.

For sure.

That's impressive.

And so

it's an amazing...

You were around when I was thinking about buying it when I started to buy it.

You couldn't have seen,

this was in the upper percentile of...

you know, what could have happened.

But now we're in a pocket that I think is a generational pocket.

So now it's like, you know, we got here not by luck.

I mean, this is very much, I think, the opposite of luck.

This was like the epitome of success in crypto via hard work.

No one, I think, can say otherwise.

I think that's social consensus

within the industry.

But yeah,

we got a lot further to go.

I still remember your tweet offering to buy the company, which by the way, it was Twitter back then.

And you bought the company off Twitter, which is a crazy story.

You tweeted out your offer, right?

Unconsciously, yeah.

And if I didn't tweet it, I would have never have got it.

Crazy.

Because he wouldn't have known.

He wouldn't have known.

And it wasn't even him who knew.

He disregarded it.

He thought it was a blunt.

It turned out I was on a boat with one of his childhood friends a couple weeks prior

via Luke.

I'd never go on boats.

I'm an introvert.

You know that a little bit about me.

I stay in the house.

So probably the third or I've only been on a boat.

I live in Miami.

So in the four years years I've lived in Miami, I've probably been on a boat three or four times.

One time, one of the three or four times I was on a boat, I was with Cole's childhood best friend.

There was eight people on a boat.

So like the odds of that are quite literally one in billions.

And

he saw, he saw my tweet and told Cole that this was serious.

And if I had inquired and Cole said, no, I thought he was bluffing.

And then Cole pinged me and then that started the conversation.

And probably one of maybe four or five pieces that I think are just like so universally aligned.

That is crazy.

Yeah, I know you're a massive introvert, but I've seen you toggle it too.

Yeah.

No, I can toggle it.

I just, when I toggle it to the extrovert side, I've got a clock on it.

Right.

And I can dig deep and I can expand that clock, but I burn out big time.

So when I do the conference tours and all that, once I'm back home, I'm out for three or four days.

Facts.

Yeah.

When I go to a conference, dude, I'm more tired from a conference than basketball.

All day.

Like all day.

All day close.

Like it's crazy.

Yeah.

I could do the most insane lift at the gym.

I'll be more tired doing five podcasts in a row than

lifting.

Yeah.

It's an introvert thing, right?

Have you always been that way, you think?

Always been that way.

I didn't really realize it until like, you know, since Pudgy, but and I'm shaking hands and kissing babies and doing the whole thing, you know.

So, and you got to show these people respect.

You know, I think like one of the big things in crypto is none of these founders show the supporters any respect.

It's fascinating because you, because you, they're, they're, they're so pivotal to your success.

and so like not only do i am i showing up i'm trying my best to leave the ultimate impression right and and i'm so you know you're you're i'm digging deep people don't realize it but i'm digging deep yeah yeah i feel that crypto overall has a lot of introverts especially the people at the top of crypto yeah there must be something there Must be.

You know, because every single person I know that's really bothering crypto is an introvert.

Because it's a critical thinking business.

It is a business that is so predicated off of decision-making more than anything.

And I think maybe I'm just speaking out loud to that point.

Maybe,

like, I think the most important thing I do in my job outside of the community building and the championing is the critical thinking and the decision-making.

And one room and one mistake in crypto is fatal.

And so, you know, you very much have to be in your thoughts.

running scenarios all the time.

And I think that's probably

really well suited for an introvert.

Right.

Does that does that ever get to you?

Do you get in your own head about that?

No, because I've got a really good group.

I mean, ultimately, dude, the success that you're seeing today is like, I play a role, obviously, but

my team, you know, Peter, Lorenzo, Venant, these guys are,

I mean, it's, I don't really want to build a business.

If I were to go build another business for some reason, which I won't, but I wouldn't want to build a business with any other people.

This is my crew.

This is my, you know, it's a once-in-a-lifetime crew.

Every weakness that one of us has, the other one, it's their strength.

Wow.

So there's like, we're covered on like every base,

you know, from the technology side to the creative to the strategy to the operations, you know, to the championing and leadership.

Every single weakness that if I have a weakness, somebody else

on that, of those four guys, you know, supplements that weakness.

So you've identified your weaknesses.

Yeah, totally.

A long time ago that's important right business owners yeah a lot of people uh never take time to reflect on what they're good what they're bad at i mean dude i mean my whole career i never owned 100 of anything i think we talked about this on the last podcast i never owned 100 of anything because i know what i'm not good at and so like why

i rather have a smaller percentage of a bigger pie than and and a better lifestyle to the do to a degree, you know?

Yeah.

Than try to go and take everything myself because I know what I'm not good at.

Absolutely.

You mentioned pivotal decisions earlier.

What are some that stand out to you for Pudgy Penguins where it was like a make or break kind of moment?

Licensing the NFT IP from the holders and make the products.

So every product that you see on shelf in Walmart, Target, and everywhere else is actually an NFT held from the holder.

The symbolism around that, I think, was really important at that time because it was really an extractive industry.

And here we came, the little guy.

And we kind of also reinvented the IP business too.

We didn't really intentionally do that, but this idea that first edition collectors can be participants and not every single person within your brand ecosystem is just a consumer, right?

So in this case, if you're a Pudgy Penguin NFT holder, you have the opportunity to participate in the growth of the brand, whether it's the products or the characters, and we license that from you and we give you a royalty in perpetuity.

That was a really big decision.

The toy deal and us getting and starting those physical products was big.

Doing that at that time was big.

Not getting overly political, both within, obviously, maybe traditional politics and

more so crypto politics.

I always try to stay neutral.

A lot of crypto politics.

Yeah.

Just

no need to be a drama queen.

I think that's probably like an evergreen decision.

The idea to do

that Pengu, clearly, I think just changed everything.

The ecosystem in 2024, I felt like, was getting a little boring and a predictable.

So I ended the year with the most unpredictable bang and thing you could possibly do,

changed the dynamic.

And everyone knew we've been a leader in the space for the last couple, you know, the last 14 months.

Everyone, you know, we were a top three NFT project for the last 14 months.

But it just seemed clear that we had to do something exciting and crypto native, and so Pengu is a huge decision.

Abstract, the way that all of this is tying together.

So we have an L2 called Abstract, I think it's going to change everything.

This might be one of the biggest, this might be the biggest bang yet.

How I'm envisioning it, obviously, it has to follow that vision, but I think that's going to be huge.

That decision to acquire Frame and bring that team in, Sygar and crew, group of Chads,

that was just such a genius decision.

We could have raised a monster round.

We could have raised

a 10-figure round, and we didn't.

I think that was a good decision.

10-figures?

When was that?

Recently.

But

we've only raised, and it's via safe.

This is our business.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

No one sits on the cab table.

No one tells me anything.

To raise the...

at the 10-figure evaluation, we would have given up board seats and things like that.

And I know myself well enough.

Once I go down that rabbit hole, like the raise has to be so monstrous and has to capitalize the business so well.

And this was a good one, but like I need hundreds of millions of dollars, not a hundred, you know,

to do that.

Because then the trade-off is worth it.

The trade-off in the sense that like if I have to answer to people, it's worth answering to people or having people chime in if there's an excess amount of capital to push the boundary so far.

So that's an interesting one.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

So we've got that.

Probably.

You know, these aren't decisions that I made, but one of our business partners fucked us.

Yeah, we talked about that on the show.

You know, about that.

Yeah.

Did you ever go public with that story?

No.

Wow.

That takes a big person to not like, you know,

it's not needed, but look at it now.

How crazy is that now?

Oh, he's probably pissed.

Generational wealth, he fumbled.

He's pissed.

All over, what was it, 100K or something?

A million bucks.

Oh, he made a million bucks, but a million's not a million what it used to be, though.

Yeah, his equity probably be worth 100 right now.

Holy crap.

You know, he would have had some

out.

No, no, he knows.

He knows not to.

But it doesn't matter, right?

Because.

You know how hard that was for me at the time?

I mean, he took 20% of my balance sheet.

Yeah.

And it was my best friend, one of my best friends.

I know.

You were really hurt at the time about that.

I remember.

Yeah, I told him.

I literally pleaded with him not to do it.

And he was ruthless about it.

And he quite literally fumbled hundreds of millions of dollars.

What a story.

And he has to live with that, too.

Oh, and he will.

And he will.

Trust me.

Do you hold grudges?

I hold fuel.

So,

like, even with this launch, I thought about him every day.

Because it's not that it's a grudge.

Like,

what am I going to do?

Beat the kid up?

Like, that's

like, you know, or like get mad or call him mean names.

Like, of course not.

You know, but it's fuel.

Because,

you know,

after he did that a couple months later, I realized that like every great story has something like this in the equation.

Just makes it, it just makes the story even greater.

Right.

Right.

Like, everyone knows the forward-facing story.

The behind-the-scenes story is just as epic.

You know, from like literally being broke on our last dollar to like raising that round out of like hell, quite literally hell in the Black Swan events that we got to like a month later, my, one of my best friends trying to whop me for a million bucks.

It was 1.5, you know, it was 1.5 after taxes and everything.

So

it was,

yeah, and so it's just fuel because I'm just like thinking to myself, like, if we pull this off, I know how he's, you know, success, and the moral of that story is success is the greatest revenge.

It always is.

Facts.

It always is, dude.

Always.

Every girlfriend who's cheated on me, every, you know, whatever, it's just like, dude, you know, partners who backstab you, friends who betray you.

I mean, just like,

there's nothing for me to tell him.

You know what I mean?

And sure, you know, so it's fuel.

It's motivation for me to push forward and to go really hard.

Yeah.

And

yeah.

So

I think as entrepreneurs, you need that chip on your shoulder.

I remember when you were first raising your money, you got a lot of denials totally from VCs.

And you had a massive chip because you saw these other projects raising millions and you felt like you could have done that.

But I think as entrepreneurs, it helps you in the long run having that chip.

The chip is my fuel, dude.

It's the most powerful fuel for me.

And there's a little bit of a deeper story with that chip for me because it goes down to like childhood trauma.

Yeah.

Like I always was the kid with the least, you know?

So I was always trying to, you know, I couldn't fight my way to proving anyone wrong when you're 12 or 14 or 16, you know.

So being in the position that I'm in today, I can control the chip, right?

The chip can be, I can make people

rue that.

So

it's not the purest fuel.

There's a better fuel than that, but it's probably the second most powerful fuel.

The first most powerful fuel is probably like overwhelming purpose, right?

And there's a that exists within me,

but the one that really gets me to like

the one that puts me into overdrive is the 200, 300 VCs that told me no when they deployed capital and every other VC and NFT, it's every NFT fund who went to go buy a bunch of art.

Yeah.

You know, they had a $100 million NFT fund and they bought a bunch of art and crypto punks

and they just got, you know, and then, you know, and then I'm competing on behalf of, you know, a fund, you know, my friend Spencer's funds, all penguins, basically.

And so I'm competing on his behalf against them and he just mopped the floor with all those CryptoPunk

funds by a Texas miles, not even close.

Yeah.

A thousand acts, he outperformed them.

Crazy.

You know, so, so, you know, or this partner and friend of mine screwing me in the worst way, the most ruthless way possible,

most heartless way possible, truthfully.

You know, that, that, that gets you going.

If that can't get you going, because, you know, I'm also a sports fanatic, right?

I grew up playing sports.

I love watching sports.

All I know is winning.

All I know is competition.

As I get older, I will mature out of that.

I know I will.

But, you know, I'm 26.

You know,

I should be in the league.

Me and you should be in the league

right now.

So this is basketball for me.

This is soccer for me.

This is just like, dude,

I'm here.

I'm here to make every person who's ever listened to me, who didn't believe,

who

counted us out, who placed their bets elsewhere, I wanted to make them all feel stupid.

And as long as I'm at the helm of this company,

yeah, there might be ups and downs.

And I can't control what happens in the short term.

But on a year-over-year basis, I will make them all feel stupid.

And

that's been the case up until this point.

Everyone who passed on that seed round feels stupid.

There wasn't a better seed round in the bear market than this.

And if that doesn't reign true, that will reign true very shortly.

You know,

there wasn't a better NFT investment in the bear market than this.

You know, history can only tell, but there won't be a better, you know, blue chip culture token, meme token investment than this.

Right.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes and it will continue to rhyme as long as I'm at the helm of this.

I love it.

I love that confidence, man.

That comes with success, right?

Or were you always this confident?

I was always this confident.

I always knew, dude.

I knew when I was 15, I was going to be.

I don't know what it was.

I don't know what it was, dude.

I knew.

I knew.

And obviously, as I continue, as I, at this point, I'm like three for three, four, four, four.

You know, so like, I can't, it's like, it's like at what point, like, if Michael Jordan keeps winning championships, like, and Michael Jordan, you know, and Kobe keeps winning chips, and he's sitting you and saying that he's not the best, then something's wrong.

Yeah.

Right.

So I was always confident, but I wasn't always vocally confident because I'm also really pragmatic.

Like my word and the things that come out of my mouth, it's really important that

I don't rue the day that I got on this podcast and was this confident.

Right.

But at this point, like the data is supporting my confidence so well

that it's like,

yeah, you can say what you want, dude.

But at the end of the day, I'm four for four.

Right.

I did the influencer monetization stuff.

I was one of the pioneers of that.

You know that.

That's how we met.

Yeah.

Like no one was really doing that.

I could have done that way better in hindsight.

Obviously, I didn't know what I, I mean, I could have been doing Mr.

B.

I could have been at the, you know, I could have, we won't talk about that, but that was a huge win.

No one did that.

No one was doing that.

Von Dutch.

I mean, that was humongous when I brought that back.

Gelblaster, right?

And then this, and then this has many wins within it, right?

The NFT is a win.

The token is a win.

The brand is a win.

These are very much independent businesses of themselves.

Like they are very much their own Goliath.

You know, they are not one in the same.

They are.

And they, they, they, again, they cross-pollinate, but,

you know, like the Web3 success is its own beast with its own team, you know, and then the brand success is its own beast with its own team.

So,

you know, at this point, it's just like,

I know I'm going to be one of the greatest here.

And if people, you know, and people not believing that even today

after the track record is fine with me because that's just more fuel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You've done it in so many verticals.

I think only 4% of businesses get to a million in revenue.

You've done that multiple times.

At this point, it's not luck.

No.

Like, what do you attribute you succeeding multiple different industries to?

I think it's one of that, back to that mindset that I told you, that we talked about it five minutes ago, which was I put pieces together.

Influencer monetization business, I was just one, I was one cog.

I was the glue to the influencer, to the fulfillment, to the factory.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I was the, I just put it together.

With Von Dutch, maybe that was, you know, Von Dutch had a great brand, a great logo, great great quality products, you know, and I came in and put what I did best, which is, you know, put the pieces of the influencers and the celebrities and the marketing machine together.

Gel blast or same thing.

Like, I'm not an inventor.

I'm not a product, you know.

I was just the machine, the marketing machine to it.

So I think it's probably this consciousness, this true consciousness of like what I know I'm good at, right?

And like not pretending that I'm something that I'm not and not being greedy and really just understanding that

I'm in the business of putting putting wins on the board, right?

And not trying to squeeze the most out of any single grape back to like a team.

It's a, you know, and me being competitive.

This is, I treat this like a team.

Like Kobe doesn't win chips without Shaq and Derek Fisher and, you know, Ron Artes and the rest of the crew, MJ and Pippin.

And, you know,

it's evidently clear to me that this stuff is predicated on team.

And so I think I'm super, I've spent a lot of time working on my consciousness and self-reflecting and understanding who I am, you know, what my personality is, what my faults are, what my strengths are.

And so I probably would attribute a lot of my success to that.

Now I think I have a really deep understanding of marketing.

That's my superpower.

Where do I come into the equation and where do I provide that high proprietary edge?

Prior to Pudgy Penguins, it was marketing.

Post-Pudgy Penguins, it's marketing and community building.

I don't think anyone can do those two things in crypto better than me.

And so I think that kind of

I think those things, but I think it starts with just understanding what I am and who I am and then being able to put the pieces together,

and being able to communicate and inspire somebody to take that leap of faith to come and join this.

Even Peter for Pudgy, he was really on the fence for a long time.

Even for the first year, he wasn't really both feet in.

But it was my ability to kind of

lead and communicate to him and bring him in.

And Peter's one of the most important people in the company.

There'sn't four people more important than the company than Peter.

He runs the entire creative.

It's a creative business.

You could argue he's probably the most, for putchy penguins, you could argue he's the most important person.

Wow.

Truthfully.

Right.

I mean, you know?

Yeah.

Maybe you could argue me and then me and him, right?

In that respect.

Because creative is so important.

But I can't even say that.

All four of them are so important to this business.

So it's just that understanding, right?

That consciousness.

I encourage all entrepreneurs to understand that, right?

I just, I'm not in the business of doing 100% of anything.

So, yeah.

I love that.

Yeah.

A lot of entrepreneurs try to micromanage.

They try to do every single thing.

And I think we all start that way, and then you're able to kind of see the bigger picture from there and branch off.

There's two marketing strategies I want to talk about that you do so well.

The first one's the gifting list.

I saw you talk about this on Scott's show, and I feel like that is something not a lot of people do.

You have one of the biggest gifting lists in the world.

Yeah, one of the best in the world.

Yeah.

I can get product in the hands of everyone.

I scaled that through Von Dutch.

So I was with the full send crew for a while.

Jesse had some interesting people that we sent stuff to.

Von Dutch is when I got the craziest list though.

Right.

And then

obviously some of the Supreme Patty stuff and that earlier influencer monetization.

And then jailblasters.

It's like people love free stuff.

So I got all of my all of my friends that are

within arm's reach of everyone.

There isn't a person I can't get something to if I want to get something to them.

And there's something about that omnipresence.

One, it puts a good taste in people's mouth, right?

Because people love free stuff.

No matter what you send, I love when people send me free stuff.

No matter how much money I have, I'll always love something for free.

I'll always love something for free.

It's great.

And then if the product is good or has some sort of meaningful value, there's some sort of conversion there.

Conversion is usually small, 5%, 10%, but they place it somewhere in some piece of content.

So it's just like omnipresent marketing.

And in crypto, our edge is, one of our edges is the physical because everyone's living in digital la land.

And it's like, yeah,

ready player one is probably like a real probable future, but we're like 30, 40 years away from that truly being the case.

Right.

Yep.

And so, you know, you still got to meet people in the real world.

And that's where the products just crush.

So, you know, not only now is it gifting to celebrities and influencers, but now I'm sending it to venture capitalists, to hedge funds, to liquid funds.

Smart.

Right.

There isn't like a liquid fund that there isn't a so many of these guys have just penguins everywhere.

Every major office of every major crypto company, Uniswap's office is covered.

And I'm a monad, you know, everything.

Yeah.

And it's so relatable.

Like anyone, any age, anyone.

It's a cute, great penguin.

It's great product.

It's great product.

You know,

they just, they keep it at some of the kind collectibles they keep in the office.

You know, some they take home and give to a family member.

Everyone loves Pudgy.

That's why this thing is not going to lose.

Again, I can't control what happens in the short term, but you think you're going to beat this beast over a long period of time?

I know we take Doge.

I promise you we will at one point.

I don't know when, right?

It could be two years, could be one year, it could be five years, doesn't matter.

As long as I'm at the helm doing this, that compounding, it's like a compound interest.

You just can't beat compound interest at a certain scale.

Yeah.

You know?

Absolutely.

When you study the top retail brands, you notice all of them have that emotional connection with the product or service, right?

And you guys have done phenomenal with that.

But yeah, the mailing list, that's an underrated marketing tactic.

I remember getting stuff from Prime when they started, feastables.

And, you know, people make videos, they get millions of views.

And you spent like 20 bucks sending them something.

You know, it's such a good method for marketing, especially if you're like a gorilla marketing.

Yeah.

The next one I want to talk about is the meme page content strategy.

You guys are getting 40 million views a month, right, off the videos that Pudgy Penguins, the male and the female penguin.

Oh, on Instagram.

On Instagram.

It depends what month.

Some months it can be 500 million views, some months it can be 100 million views.

Yeah, that does pretty well.

Actually, to because I think it's more of an interest, one's unbeknownst to most is probably the gifts and the stickers.

I'm clocking 300 million impressions a day.

Holy crap.

On stickers and gifts.

You could pull it up on Giphy on the chart.

Yeah, no, my editors have used those without my discretion on the clips.

It's a complete clinic.

And if I, I never said this before, but I'll give you the alpha.

I'm probably spending 20 grand a month on gifts and stickers.

And I'm getting

call it 4 billion impressions a month.

Wow.

So you just do the math on that CPM.

That's the best CPM I've ever heard.

Of all time.

Yeah.

So now the problem is it's not a direct conversion, so no one does it.

Right.

Right.

But in my business, it's a direct conversion.

Because, you know, girlfriend sends Pudgy Pengu

gif

to whale.

Whale's like, what?

Whale goes, puts a million bucks on Pengu or a million bucks on pudgy penguin NFTs.

There's a huge conversion.

Right.

I made a tweet five months ago.

That's why these meme coin folks,

I'm really going to pioneer this space, I promise.

Because I said five months ago, I was like, the best, if you're a meme coin, the number one thing you should be doing is gifts and stickers.

None of them are doing it.

I'm like, you guys are schmucks.

That's why I'm happy to be in this category because I'm like, it's the same.

This penguin in the meme category is the same thing I thought about when I took over Pudgy Penguins in the NFT category.

I'm like, you guys are doing nothing.

And the obvious things you're not doing.

And so I'm just going to come in and mop

and mop the floor and just

take it all, take all the market share from you and just lead.

Because

this idea that

stagnant, non-sentient

things

are going to lose or are going to beat

proactive, omnipresence,

sentient, mimetic proliferation, just not going to happen.

Yeah.

You know?

Like you have one thing, right?

Like let's use Doge as reference.

Like Doge's cultural memetic relevancy was in 2013, 2014.

Its peak financial relevancy was in 2021.

Maybe it has more financial relevancy this cycle and peaks even more.

We don't know.

But the point of the matter is,

outside of the community that pushes the Doge meme and the indexing of the meme that's already embedded into internet culture, that is a dwindling metric, right?

So

Doge inflates $5 million a day, and then its relevancy dwindles every day in some capacity with occasional spikes.

But that's a separating, that's a gap.

That's a separating gap.

That's not creating.

While on the other hand,

I am every day

more views at Pudgy, more initiatives.

I'll have a movie one day.

I'll have a TV show one day.

I'll have games one day.

So I'm just climbing the chart of relevancy.

Right.

And here you have, so it's just like, it's a matter of when, not if, because that

gap widening through the top memetic coins like Shiba and Doge,

yeah, that has some sort of moat, and crypto has this thing with dyno tokens where it kind of just indexes for a long time,

which is like so fascinating to me.

But like

I will have a more explosive peak than Doge because the force is too powerful.

It's just too, it's too,

it's explosive.

And this line of thought is not

theory, right?

Like I'm not theorizing this to you.

Just look at Pudgy Penguin's success on the NFT side.

It was driven through this same line of thought, right?

Through the same assessment and through the same thought process.

That's how we succeeded.

And that's how we got here.

And that's how we'll continue to get to where we need to be.

But the Penguin side is the same thing as the Pudgy Pudgy.

It's the same, you know, one just has way deeper liquidity and an easier barrier at entry, and one's maybe more of a digital identity and Vieblin, you know, status symbol within the crypto space.

But

it's this, it's the same principle, and it's going to follow the same path.

Absolutely.

Yeah, because when you first inherited the company, was Pudgy even top 100 on the NFT charts?

60.

It was number 60, and now it's number two, right?

Yeah.

Oh, in terms of floor price, I don't know.

It was 60 all-time volume.

Now it's seven all-time volume.

And now

it's two only behind Crypto Punk.

And when I took it over, I don't know.

Yeah, probably between 50 and 100 in terms of floor price.

I mean, everything was above 18th floor, and I bought it when it was at 0.8.

Crazy.

Dude, that's nuts.

You've been climbing the leaderboard.

So you might even pass punks this year.

I for sure will.

That's like the easiest trade in crypto.

I love the confidence, man.

I mean, I could have flipped punks on if I held Pangu a little longer.

Thing is, we have Abstract.

And the way that Abstract's kind of structured with what I think it's going to do, the FDVs on something like Abstract are ginormous.

So

Pengu is a really high liquid float.

Basically, there's like very little unlocks, right?

So what you see is what you get.

Right.

Typically, chains, because you have to, because they're incredibly expensive to sustain.

And there's a lot of moving parts with the ecosystem and things like that.

They tend to be lower float, higher FDV.

So I've seen that, yeah.

A lot of unlocks, right?

So yeah, so

the

initial opening price will be, I think, higher

in terms of like, if Pengu's $3.5 billion a day,

you know, Abstract could be $5 billion, $10 billion.

I mean, there's vaporware chains that are launched.

We're going to put on it.

It's going to be a spectacular masterclass.

By the time this launches, it's probably live.

Wow.

It's going to be so different than what anybody else is doing.

So, I think in that respect,

you know, there's,

you know, that that thing is going to be worth, you know, probably coming out the gates five, 10 billion bucks.

So it's been fun watching your journey, dude.

And I love how you're documenting it as well.

Yeah, I documented the whole thing.

Can you believe that?

And people thought I was nuts.

You know what I never got?

Is like a lot of people faded who knew me.

And I was like, well, did you really think I was going to spend two and a half million dollars and document this thing publicly and not smash it out of the park.

I mean, I would have, because I basically put myself in a situation where if I failed, I would have looked like a schmuck.

I literally forced the success for that reason because I knew, I knew myself.

I knew myself.

And I knew I was like,

there's so much on the line here that I might as well just put it like really all on the line.

You know?

Yeah.

And so for those who are not familiar, those are listening, we have a series on YouTube called Building in Public.

We documented the whole thing.

It's a little like e-newsy, you know, Bravo TV fucking, you know, reality TV show type of thing.

But, and there's a lot of the nitty-gritty, like hard things you don't see in there.

But there'll be a movie.

We have all that footage.

So

10 years from now, you'll see the real, you'll see that.

You'll see that kid fucking, you'll see that kid screwing us.

Yeah.

You'll see all that shit.

I love that you post the low moments on there because that doesn't get showcased on social media ever.

Yeah.

You know, the low moments of business.

There's a lot of them.

Every time you think you're in the clear, something pops up.

Something.

Dude, it's crazy.

It's insane.

It's like inevitable.

At this point, I just accepted it because I'm numb to it now.

You're numb to it.

Yeah, because I say it all the time.

Like, what is the number one thing to be a successful entrepreneur?

It's probably stress tolerance for that exact reason.

Right.

A lot of people fold under stress.

You know what I mean?

They just have nervous breakdowns and they like they just break under it.

To be in the position of like leadership on a company that is seeing huge success, you need to be incredibly stress tolerant because if you break and fold under pressure, that will not be good for you.

Yeah, I agree.

The first time I was faced with some pressure, I folded so bad, dude.

First lawsuit ever.

And I just folded.

I like stayed in my bed for like a month.

Yeah.

And I had to get past that to become an entrepreneur.

Yeah.

You know, that first lawsuit's always the scariest.

Yeah.

I remember that.

I remember mine.

What was yours about?

Can you talk about it?

It was the Ball Harbor house.

Guy assumed me.

It wasn't a business.

It was kind of business because Patty and them were breaking the house.

Remember that big house?

We had the biggest house in Ball Harbor in Miami.

You've been there.

Yeah, I think block to block.

We balled there, right?

Yeah, we balled there.

Yeah.

That ginormous 10-bedroom mansion.

Yeah, yeah.

I busted your house over there.

Yeah, you did.

Fancy Cini.

We're really cooking chicken roll.

We got that chemistry.

Yeah, but

Patty and them were breaking the house.

Yeah.

So at the time, it was like an $8, $9 million house, but now it's like a $30, $40 million house.

Insane, yeah.

Miami skyrocketed.

But they were breaking the house and the landlord's kids watched us

and told the landlord, like, ah, listen, everybody's in her house.

And he's like, breaking doors and shit.

And so

he basically came to the house.

I mean, this guy was the epitome of evil.

No, no, I'm serious.

This guy was so evil.

I was, you know, 18, just came in with some money, and he just took advantage of us so bad.

He said he would throw us in jail.

He'd sue us for everything.

He forced me to stay in the house, and I had to pay him like $500,060,000.

I wrote him a check right then and there.

Two months later, he's then moving us out.

The cops were in front of our house every single day.

They were targeting us.

You know, Ball Harbor.

Ball Harbor is like the, the, you know, they've got like, Ball Harbor is a little island in Miami, and they've got like literally like 50 police cars for like 500 homes.

Wow.

And these guys were just literally harassing us on behalf of the landlord because it's just like this small community.

Super Jewish community, right?

Like, so like, you know, he ran like the synagogue and he was able to, you know, it all like just ran the show.

Connections.

And

he sued us and the dude just bullied me.

So hard.

He broke me, dude.

He broke me, but I learned so much.

Wow.

So I'm glad that it happened.

And

baby, I remember mine.

That was soggy.

Yeah, tough times, man.

Yeah, you need good legal these days, especially now because you're a target.

I got all the good legal.

I got the best legal in my corner.

Oh, especially in your space.

The U.S.

hates crypto.

Yeah, not anymore.

Trump will fix that.

Yeah, but I remember they went after every U.S.

exchange under Biden.

Yeah.

Crazy.

You know, Uniswap, all of them.

Whatever.

Made it tough.

You had a tough battle, my friend.

That's why you got my respect because the odds were stacked so against you for this company.

Yeah.

You know, almost everyone probably doubted you.

Yeah.

Even family and close friends.

I doubt.

Yeah, everyone thought I was nuts.

Yeah.

But how are you going to make money on this?

Why would you build a real brand and spend $2.5 million like the Penguin?

And they removed fees right when you bought it, too.

That's how all NFTs.

Royalties went to zero.

Right.

That's how NFTs were surviving.

Think about the beat that I got.

I put $2.5 million into it, put another 500 Gs into it.

No one was getting paid for the first year, pretty much.

Royalties went to zero.

Black Swan after Black Swan basically a month after I bought it.

Insane.

Yeah.

Hats off to you, man.

One last question since you've brought up MJ a few times.

MJ or LeBron?

MJ.

Is it close for you?

It's close for sure.

It's got to be.

I mean, dude,

what is LeBron going to be?

All-time, 30 all-time points.

It's going to be probably all-time rebounds and assists or be up in the top three, right?

You would know the number.

Yeah.

Top three.

I mean, he probably, I think he plays until his 25th season.

I think that's a good number for him.

So he's going to be all-time line points.

You know, but

you got

you got to respect the crunch time.

It's all about crunch time.

It's all about the clutch.

It just is, dude.

And every, you know what I mean?

It's like,

it's like if I wasn't clutch and Pudgy Penguins, like,

I don't know.

Like, it's just something about being clutch and the crunch time and being that dog.

And it's a little more for me because like I

identify more with the MJ culture.

Like, I don't need you to like me.

Like, I don't need you to listen to this and to like me.

I need you to listen to this and know that I'm going to win.

Hold up.

You liking me doesn't really matter to me.

Just make sure you have a penguin or a little pudgy or some penguin because if you don't, you'll be upset that you don't.

You know?

Yeah.

Like that said, I don't need you to.

I feel like LeBron is more of like,

yeah, you can like me, but,

you know, I'm, it's to the last point to the person who screwed me.

It was funny.

Because his dad was mediating the deal.

And

they had said something because this was a really stressful time.

So I'm not going to act like I was perfect.

I definitely helped create some of his resentment.

Got it.

So let's not just act like he completely was off the wall.

Now, mind you, I had found out that he was working on other NFT projects as like a consultant.

I was like, dude, what the hell?

Are you crazy?

Right.

You know what I mean?

Things like that.

Like helping them with marketing and just like Instagram stuff.

I was like, craziness.

So he hadn't, he had really no ground to stand on.

But the straw that broke the camel's back for him was the way that I was speaking to him.

But I was speaking to him a certain way because the pressure was on.

We were about to lose all this money.

We were in this business.

And he was like, he was doing 100 different things that weren't about the business.

And

I remember his dad being like,

this being like a huge reason.

And I was like, I remember being at Ring.

That was my first job.

I was early days at Ring and Ring sold a billion bucks to Amazon.

Jamie used to punch holes in walls.

Wow.

Right?

He used to be like screaming at people, and I never did that.

Yeah.

Right.

Like,

it never got that egregious.

Maybe one time where I was like, dude, are you fucking nuts?

I think he promoted like an open edition mint from one of our holders.

I went like ballistic.

I'm like, dude, you crazy.

We have no money.

And you're promoting open edition mints, you know, for one of our holders.

I think they froggy did a mint.

And I love froggy.

I'm not going to get into semantics, but I love this guy.

And I'm like, but dude, we're not like, we have no money.

If we need to promote anything that's going to make money, it's for us because we're broke.

Right.

And I remember telling him, I was like, dude, I was like, do you know what it's like to build a business?

And

like, I remember in that time, I felt like MJ.

Cause it's like over here, you have this like little crybaby.

like crying about some words when we've got millions of dollars on the line in a community who has tens of millions of dollars on the line.

And dudes want to sit here and talk about feelings

and

dudes are not even working, you know, working two, three hours a day, literally dragging the entire ship, literally like an anchor.

And I don't take this as a responsibility just for me and my crew and my immediate executive team and my partners and investors.

I think of the community first,

right?

Like, dude, these people have so much money on the line.

And you want to drag an anchor on this ship?

And you want to sit here and say it's because I'm talking to you a certain way because you're not doing your job.

And now you want to go and try to fuck the entire company?

Someone told his dad, like, I felt like MJ

because MJ, everyone hated MJ.

Yeah.

You know, but MJ won chips.

Now,

I did do some self-reflecting, and I did become, because I didn't want to be hated within my own company.

That sounds like an awful, and this is not basketball completely, right?

Straight jobs.

Yeah, this is not completely basketball, but like, so I've, I've found this balance between like expecting the most out of people and expecting to win and to have, and to, we're in the business of securing championships right with the balance of also

um

you know trying to be somebody that people want to work with right so i've i think i've really hit that balance but at the time i was very much mj everyone in the company hated me at the time wow i learned in hindsight really yeah but we won you know so even then like they can people can say that like you know and we talk about it in hindsight and talk to lorenzo who's like you know the the operator behind all this, who's really the person who makes this business happen.

He was talking to me.

I was like, yeah, like you weren't great, but like we won.

And it's like, suck it up.

We're here to win.

He's also super competitive.

He did a lot of sports.

So it's like, you're either built for this or you're not.

Hey, look, at the end of the day, the dude who left us, he made his million bucks.

He wasn't built for it.

He was not built for this.

He never will be, right?

Because he folded.

And so he will live his good life.

with his family.

I wish them nothing but the best.

I wish him nothing but health, happiness, and success.

But there's levels to this.

And he'll never be on, he'll never do what we're doing.

And that's it.

When you look at the goats like MJ and Kobe, you really dive into their mindset.

It's what separates them because they're, everyone at that level is super athletic, right?

But what separates you?

It's what you talked about earlier, the clutch, the mindset.

Some people fold in the clutch.

Yeah.

You know?

So I think you have that.

Can't fold in the clutch.

Absolutely.

Dude, where can people learn more about Pudgy, potentially get one and get involved in the ecosystem?

Follow Pudgy Penguins on Instagram, on X,

on all socials.

And, you know, if you got 10 bucks, you can buy some Penguin.

If you got 100 grand, you can go buy a Pudgy Penguin NFT.

A little Pudgy would cost you about $15.20, I think, right?

$15.

I'll be like $10 to $15 right now.

I'm joining the winning team.

Don't bet against this guy, guys.

We'll link everything below.

See you next time.