The Digital Publishing industry is a place where creatives can take their passion and bring it to people all over the world. It’s an industry that values the ability to think analytically about communication, ideas, and what makes people interested in each other’s stories. No one jumps into this career without passion, or without loving their craft wholeheartedly. Working at Valnet helped me focus on all of this: my passion, my craft, and my career in a way I never thought possible. And to this day, I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity.
The Beginnings
"Knowing now how my role would evolve, it’s funny to say, but on my first day, I was a wreck with nerves. I had worn a full suit as armor for the day to hide my nerves, and sent my Mom a single picture to share my headspace with someone I knew would understand how anxious I was."
I started at Valnet after applying to a freelance writing job for a soon-to-be-announced new gaming site (TheGamer). This was nearly a decade ago now, and I had no idea it would be the launch pad for my career, and see me work through a variety of roles including Writer, Editor, Lead, Manager, and eventually land me as the Content Director of Valnet Gaming. Knowing now how my role would evolve, it’s funny to say, but on my first day, I was a wreck with nerves. I had worn a full suit as armor for the day to hide my nerves, and sent my Mom a single picture to share my headspace with someone I knew would understand how anxious I was. I remember that walk to the bus stop in absolute detail — it was (and still is) an important day in my life.
I’ll spare anyone reading the details of my Rocky-style montage learning the ins and outs of the industry from my friends and peers in the office, but I will say that a moment that helped crystalize the magnitude of what we’re building here at Valnet was starting to see the kind of work we were doing be replicated across the industry. Even in the early days of my time here, it was clear competitors were watching what we were building and mining it for ideas. And as a hungry newcomer to the industry, I was honored to know our work was good enough to copy. I always took it as a compliment, Humble and Hungry (Valnet’s Company motto) fit well here: we were proud to be noticed, but never sat on our laurels.
Developing Skills as a Team
From brands that publish 5-10 articles a day, to brands that publish hundreds I can tell you that the clearest reason we’ve been so successful is simple: it’s the people. It sounds cliche (and it is), but whether it’s the whip-smart editorial teams we have working on all of our sites or the people who impress me every day at our offices — Valnet is what it is because of the team of people we have working here every day. I’ve never had a question unanswered, and it’s thanks to being surrounded by people who are curious and constantly developing their skills that I’ve been able to develop mine. And to shout out a few specific people in the building, Ji Kim (Director of Marketing) has repeatedly taken the time to teach people how Ads work on our network during his already busy week, and Fabio Del Greco (Lead Functional Analyst) regularly works his entire day with a line of people behind him with questions big and small.
These are just a couple of small examples of people who have helped build Valnet into such a special place. When I started at Valnet I had limited professional knowledge of anything that happened outside of a Word Document. Today I’m equipped to help train and develop other newcomers who are just learning how to engage with analytics, SEO, advertising, development, and general business priorities at the company. Our teams never stop learning, and I’ve had the great pleasure of watching people I’ve worked with for almost my entire tenure, as well as newcomers who just joined us, become experts of their craft. We simply have a world-class team.
Expanding our Scope
Valnet Gaming, in particular, has had the great fortune of welcoming multiple beautiful sites into the group since I started here. Too many to give them all the detailed description here that they deserve. But I will note one: GameRant, our flagship site, and one of the irrevocable pillars of the game industry. We acquired GameRant in 2019, and since that, it’s gone from a brand with 200,000 readers a day to a publication that reaches 85+ million readers a month.
We did this by working closely with the existing editorial teams, including Anthony Taormina who has captained the site as its Editor-in-Chief for over a decade, to refine and polish everything that has made GameRant just a critical part of the industry since its inception. No acquisition or integration is simple, but working with the team on GameRant always felt like a natural fit. It’s been a joy to get to work so closely with the team.
Since Valnet took ownership of the brand, together we’ve introduced countless new initiatives, everything from vital pillars like our extensive guide coverage, to leading authoritative sections like GameRant Advance, which highlights one new release each month and deep-dives into what makes it special along with the help of the game developers themselves, and so much more. GameRant celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2024, and we’re excited to see it grow for another 15 years.
Continuing the Quest for Excellence
In my last post on the Humble and Hungry blog, I spoke about the importance of industry events. Reminiscing about my start here at Valnet makes it even more electric to recognize that in my time here I’ve been able to watch GameRant and TheGamer go from enthusiast sites to brands that can help launch games and developers to new heights while sponsoring major industry events. To say nothing of how grateful I am to have been able to welcome industry mainstays like Fextralife and OpenCritic into Valnet Gaming.
The best is yet to come, and I’m still so excited to keep watching all of our teams grow.
