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Val Katayev

Founder & CEO, Jocalio · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutiveinvestor@ValKatayev ↗LinkedIn ↗jocal.io ↗

Val Katayev is an entrepreneur who bootstrapped several digital media and advertising companies to over $100 million in exits and profits, notably founding ToneFuse and ToneMedia. He operates the jewelry platform Jocalio and is a managing partner at Prime Meridian Capital Management.

12statements → 7claims → 1claims resolved → 3.58/5average certainty → 1.33/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 37said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 6 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 6 assertions · 1 insight · 4 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 6 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Val argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Katayev: Global Fine Jewelry Is a $300B Market Dominated by Independents
“And this is a three hundred billion dollar industry, by the way, globally which fragmented, but controls is actually bigger. Independence are bigger part of the business find jewelry than the majors, the chains.”
Val Katayev Jan 26, 2022 ▶ 24:51 $1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Val Katayev on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Val Katayev said on My First Million that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Disclosure
Katayev systematically restricts resources from his kids to teach them natural resourcefulness
“I suppress resources for my kids systematically. Not like I don't feed them, like they're very, they're doing just fine. Like they're, they go to school and everything. They live in a nice neighborhood, but I systematically make sure that they're not given all…”
Val Katayev Jan 26, 2022 ▶ 36:57 $1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Katayev's Ringtone Matcher platform reached 500 million monthly users
“I was in front of ringtone match. It was in front of a half a billion people a month.”
Val Katayev Jan 26, 2022 ▶ 14:57 $1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ringtone Matcher hit $10 million in annual revenue as a solo operation
“I think, I believe the year, I think the year we merged, it was ten million.”
Val Katayev Jan 26, 2022 ▶ 16:33 $1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It
Disclosure
Katayev personally invested over $10 million into his fine jewelry startup
“I mean, at this point I put in eight figures into this business.”
Val Katayev Jan 26, 2022 ▶ 25:48 $1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It
Insight
Digital arbitrage windows have compressed from six years to one year
“The windows of opportunity, those white spaces, right? The windows, windows are becoming shorter and shorter and shorter every iteration, right? There was the page search probably lasted a good six years. After that or around that same time, there was display …”
Val Katayev Jan 26, 2022 ▶ 30:24 $1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It
Assertion Not checkable as stated
An unnamed cosmetics brand scaled to $80M using only YouTube influencers
“I know I know like for one company, they scale to like, eighty million in sales a few years ago. I'm not gonna mention the name of it, but they scale up to like, eighty million in sales just on the back of YouTube influencers.”
Val Katayev Jan 26, 2022 ▶ 32:32 $1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It
Disclosure
Katayev: Underpriced paid search inventory drove massive affiliate marketing profits
“And at the same time, the media wasn't expensive. Right. Because the supply was there, but the demand wasn't there. So that's what I took advantage of. I start buying up a lot of the supply. Mostly it was search, search page search. And that's what made everyt…”
Val Katayev Jan 26, 2022 ▶ 7:56 $1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It
Assertion Supported
Katayev: Global Fine Jewelry Is a $300B Market Dominated by Independents
“And this is a three hundred billion dollar industry, by the way, globally which fragmented, but controls is actually bigger. Independence are bigger part of the business find jewelry than the majors, the chains.”
Val Katayev Jan 26, 2022 ▶ 24:51 $1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Katayev's six real estate development projects have a combined value approaching $100M
“The value of the combined sale value of value of those projects would be approaching a hundred million dollars.”
Val Katayev Jan 26, 2022 ▶ 29:14 $1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It
Disclosure
Katayev: Driven primarily by winning and fear of losing everything
“I think what I'm driven really is by just winning. And there is, I think there is a bit of sense in me of that I'm one step from losing it all.”
Val Katayev Jan 26, 2022 ▶ 38:10 $1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Katayev: Dot-com crash collapsed ad CPMs from $3 to 30 cents
“Then the.com bubble hits. My revenues disappeared. 90%. My traffic was still up there, but I had no revenues because all the ad revenue disappeared. Like it went from being three dollars CPM down to 30 cents CPM.”
Val Katayev Jan 26, 2022 ▶ 5:02 $1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Katayev generated $10,000 per month brokering online ads in high school
“So I went to all these other video game sites and like just was a broker for advertising. So that was kind of like my first you know, making decent amount of money. I was making five and then like just from the site and I was making probably another 10 a month…”
Val Katayev Jan 26, 2022 ▶ 5:59 $1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It

The other half of the tape: Val Katayev's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 36 times in 5 episodes on My First Million. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Sam Parr 29Shaan Puri 7

Statements about Val Katayev, by other people (1)

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Val Katayev scaled a solo ringtone business to $10M annual profit
“He started a cell phone ringtone business. He was the only employee and it did ten million in revenue in year three. He was started when he was 18, so this is when he was like 21. Ten million, so ten million in profit, he said.”
Sam Parr Jul 14, 2021 ▶ 37:05 When to Go All In on an Idea & the Crypto Exchange That Could Have Been | My First Million #200

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
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0242021202220232024episodes it came up in
001322542021202220232024episodesmentions per episode
2024 12 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
2021 24 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
$1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It Jan 26, 2022 29m
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