Soon after he got his first computer in 1999, Val Katayev, then just 17 years old, created PSX Extreme, a digital magazine all about PlayStation games. It was a fun project – but also an unintentional crash course in the potential of targeted digital marketing.
The revenue he got from running ads on his site was nice. But companies would pay him a much larger bonus every time a click on an ad generated a sale for them. Digital ads were fairly cheap, Katayev realized, especially after the Dotcom Bubble burst in March 2000. If he placed ads on the right sites and search results pages, Katayev figured – the ones people actually looking to buy something frequented – then he could make way more money on those sales bounties than he'd spend on the campaigns.
So Katayev forged affiliate deals with a few companies, started placing ads for them, and – after a little trial and error – made bank. Poise Media, the company he built around this arbitrage, brought in $1.5 million in profits in its first year of operations, ultimately placed ads for over 800 client companies, and helped shape the world of data-driven, highly-automated paid search marketing. From that starting point, he pivoted to ventures in mobile advertising, ringtone sales, and peer-to-peer lending – and eventually branched into venture capital and angel investing. While not as flashy or high-profile as some of his fellow successful tech founders, by the 2010s Katayev had established himself as a thought leader in adtech, data utilization, and digital entrepreneurship.
But in 2021, 20 years and "over $100 million in profits and exits" after he founded Poise Media, Katayev opened up on Twitter/X about a new venture he'd quietly launched a few years prior: Poise Property Group, a real estate development firm. They'd already built a couple townhouses on a lot in Greenpoint, a rapidly evolving neighborhood on the northern fringe of Brooklyn, and had five more projects in the works in hot markets across the borough. One of the townhouses sold for $4.25 million, a record for a new residential building in the area, and Katayev (correctly) predicted he'd have many more success stories to share in the years to come: As of publication, he's completed seven projects and has four more in active development. Collectively, Katayev estimates, they're worth over $250 million.
"Not too bad for a tech guy!" he quipped towards the end of his 2021 Twitter/X thread.
But how did a tech guy, accustomed to virtual operations and VC returns, end up in real estate – and not just as an investor but as a developer?
The answer is simple, Katayev told GPLetters: He was bored.
After years of breakneck, nonstop work on his ventures, Katayev tried to retire in 2014, aged 32. But ever since his childhood in Tashkent (then part of the USSR, now the capital of Uzbekistan), where he spent his spare time assembling and packaging door lock mechanisms for a small local producer, he'd lived for the hustle. He loved learning about new fields, figuring out a good angle on them, and building something from the ground up. So after three years of restless peace and quiet, he decided he'd try to build a new firm – something outside of the e-commerce space.