#241: NFT M&A ft. Boss Beauties, Gutter Cat Gang, and Pudgy Penguins

Over the past week, there’s been a string of smaller headlines in the NFT space that indicate a trend that is unsurprising and emerging in the depths of this relatively stale market:

• Boss Beauties Acquires BFF

• Noah signs deal to acquire Gutter Labs, the company behind Gutter Cat Gang

• Spencer Ventures acquires 144 Pudgy Penguins NFTs from 3 Arrows Capital (a now-defunct crypto hedge fund)

This aligns well with a recent thread by Casper Johansen, co-founder of The Spartan Group, regarding the state of web3 startup ecosystem. He followed up with a tactically relevant thread several days later for founders asking ‘What should I do?’

The result? The headlines I mentioned above.

IMO this news is more good than bad with a happy-ish ending in each: There’s a buyer! Let’s break down each of these stories into its respective high-level themes.

Boss Beauties acquires BFF

The details of the acquisition are undisclosed, but the acquisition is a great fit. Both Boss Beauties and BFF are focused on “making web3 more inclusive and accessible to everyone, especially women and girls.”

On top of that, Boss Beauties has flexed its partnership muscles in the past with Barbie, United Nations, Neiman Marcus, and more.

This is an acquisition between companies, but also a merger of communities with an aligned mission and target audience.

Gutter Cat Gang has a new owner

Is the new owner of Gutter Cat Gang another NFT project? Is it a brand from another industry?

Nope — It’s Noah, a Gutter Cat Gang community member. Before the news was official, Noah shared a public thread regarding the acquisition offer and his reasoning:

• Noah will put $500k of his personal capital into the newly formed LLC

• Has been a part of the community for over a year

• Called out the need for a public-facing leader with clear communication

• Will focus on IP, licensing, creators, and physical collectibles

• Has had experience being an executive at a SaaS startup that was sold for $1.2 billion in < 5 years

Noah’s thread has some parallels to Luca Netz’s $2.5 million acquisition of Pudgy Penguins in April 2022.

In the case of Gutter Cat Gang, Noah is a web3 version of an activist investor: an activist community member.

Source

An activist investor and what I’m calling an activist community member obviously are not the same, but there are parallels:

• Typically a specialized hedge fund: An activist community member isn’t a hedge fund, but they do have funds and have qualifying skill sets (business and operational experience). Noah emphasized this by investing $500k of his personal capital, has spent ~75 ETH (~$120k in today’s prices) in acquiring Gutter ecosystem NFTs, and shared his professional experience.

• Buys a significant minority stake: Owning a NFT is not the same as owning equity in a company, but there is a relationship.

• In order to change how it is run: Noah lays out his vision of what he will be focusing on once the acquisition is complete.

With the change in leadership and revamped vision, the community has been reenergized and I hope that we can see another example of new ownership positively impacting a web3 community.

Spencer Ventures acquires 144 Pudgy NFTs

Earlier this morning, Spencer Ventures (a crypto fund focused on NFTs and the related ecosystem), announced the acquisition of 144 Pudgy ecosystem NFTs for ‘mid-six figures’.

The acquisition consists of 48 Pudgy Penguins, 48 Rogs (these were claimed by Pudgy holders in the past and will have a role in the ecosystem in the future), and 48 unclaimed Lil’ Pudgies.

Spencer shared the fund’s reasoning for the acquisition:

• Pudgy Penguins is well positioned for the next NFT cycle

• Luca Netz has created a compelling narrative around resurrecting NFT projects (what Gutter Cat Gang is striving for), giving life beyond the original founder/creator

• Pudgys have strong traction on social platforms for distribution and IP rights, which I’ve covered before

• External revenue streams provide a higher chance of sustainability as a brand an company

For all intensive purposes, we can consider Spencer Ventures as an ‘institutional buyer’, or dare I say…institutional community member.

‘Institutional community member’ sounds like an oxymoron. Can you imagine being at some community meetup with your favorite JPEG friends, and somebody dressed up in a suit shows up representing Blackrock or Bridgewater?

Fortunately, Spencer isn’t like that. He’s more like one of us at the local Walmart sweeping Pudgy Toys into his shopping cart.

Spencer Ventures’ approach is institutionally-sourced capital, but community-oriented engagement.

For the ‘community-oriented engagement’ bit, it has a nice ring to it, and there is substance behind that. Spencer hints at something for the currently unclaimed Lil’ Pudgies:

What about the bigger players?

Like…Disney?? They could acquire a top NFT IP and jump into the space with a splash.

As optimistic as I’d like to be about a brand like Disney directly entering the web3/NFT space, my realistic side reminds me that it doesn’t make sense (yet?):

• The space is too volatile

• The space is unproven

• There needs to be significant internal executive support

• There needs to be a knowledgeable internal team to strategize and execute

• They don’t need to create net new web3 IP and communities. They can license it out via partnerships like VeVe.

IMO the biggest exception to this has been and still is Nike acquiring RTFKT back in 2021. With everything that’s transpired over the past couple of years, it really feels like a match made in heaven on the blockchain.

However…we are seeing more variations of what involvement in the space can look like and how the different flavors of M&A might look.

And like a modern-day ice cream shop the space will introduce more flavors in the future. In the words of the legendary PinkyDoll: “Ice cream so good”.

See you Thursday!