Mike Tokatlyan | 6 Boston Developers to Watch in 2025
Developers to Watch
Oct 16
NAME: Kyle Young
COMPANY: Young Strategic Ventures
So both of my parents were actually in biotech and pharma. They have two doctorates each, my dad going down the entrepreneur path and my mom teaching at the School of Pharmacy in Maryland. As a kid I always imagined becoming a CFO or CEO of a biotech company. That just seemed like the natural route for me. Then between my freshman and sophomore years at Bentley (University), I interned at one and realized I hated it. I was stuck behind a desk, working on things I didn’t really understand. That’s when I shifted to investment management.
It was definitely excitement. From a young age my parents helped me understand our family’s finances—things like real estate allocation, public markets, and the early-stage startups they were involved in.
I’d always enjoyed learning about that world, so the pivot was more of an, “Oh cool” moment that helped me see business in a different light.
I took a hedge fund internship, then an insurance sales role at Northwestern Mutual that leaned heavily towards transactional sales—selling insurance to family and friends, that kind of thing. It was a great starting point, but it made me realize I was more interested in advising people and building longer-term relationships. That then led me to Merrill Lynch where you’re paid on assets under management, so it’s all about growing those long-term relationships rather than constantly selling. It was a natural fit and I built my first wealth management practice at Merrill.
Yeah so this is where the story gets a bit crazy. I started at Merrill in 2013 while I was still playing football at Bentley. I grew up in Maryland and was one of the top players in my county. I had D1AA offers from schools like Bryant and Cornell but tore my ACL, MCL, and meniscus in my senior year of high school.
After the injury most of those offers disappeared. I was still chatting to a few other schools but I just fell in love with Bentley. The coaches, the football team, the business school. I medically redshirted my freshman year because of the injury, then started the next four years as middle linebacker.
Then in my fifth year I had my first child. So I was raising a family, attending class, playing football, and building my practice at Merrill. It was wild. Family, school, sport and business all at once.
It was definitely sink or swim. Sometimes it felt like I was being thrown to the sharks, but it really helped me grow up fast. My wife was a huge support system, making sure I kept my head on straight and didn't live the typical college life when we had so much going on.
Being around entrepreneurs, prospects, and clients that I looked up to helped a lot too, and football was massive for my discipline and personal development. Freshman and sophomore year, we had workouts starting at 4:30 AM, doors closed at 4:31. If you weren't there, you weren't there. I quickly learnt how to structure my time, prioritize family, and not lose focus on work and school.
People approach it differently, but I worked with high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals. Unless there was a clear path to earning 90% or more of their business, I'd hold off until we could make it more meaningful. In the meantime I’d stay in touch, add value where I could, and keep building a relationship with them.
I wasn’t interested in managing a lot of small slices of multiple people’s portfolios. I find it’s hard to build meaningful relationships that way, and that carries over into how we run Young Strategic Ventures (YSV) now: go deep with fewer people and really get to know them, rather than being spread too thin.
Some of it, yes, but every situation is different. I find that if you really want to advise people in the right way and not just manage their money, you can’t have hundreds and hundreds of clients. It’s just not possible.
I treated my clients like family, I knew their kids and grandkids. To this day many of them still invest with me because I understand their overall picture.
So while certain aspects are applicable from client to client, planning is unique to each person, and to be someone’s “family CFO,” you have to go deep.
About two or three years in. I started working with Carmen Scarpa, a private equity superstar in Boston who’s the father of a former teammate and someone I’d looked up to for a long time. He opened my eyes to alternative investments like private equity, early-stage startups, and real estate. My mentor at Merrill also coached me up around the value of illiquidity and what that can do for a portfolio.
Around the same time, outside of Merrill, I started managing part of my family’s real estate portfolio. My focus there was on capital stack and refinancing and understanding how to add value to retail holding through tenant lease up. . I already knew the numbers and financial side, but this was turning book knowledge into hands-on operational experience.
You know, the biggest learning curve was actually working with banks. Some are conservative, others not. The market also changes. Right now almost every bank is ultra-conservative. New construction loans that used to be 85% loan-to-cost might now be 75%, if that, which throws off your metrics. Learning which banks are good for what, and when to use a mortgage broker, was a big lesson.
The other thing was that it pushed my focus toward triple-net leases in the commercial space. My grandfather had a lot of residential properties, whereas my dad was more on the commercial retail side. Triple-net is more efficient operationally, which doesn’t always mean it’s easier, but you’re dealing with business owners, not residential tenants and the needs are different.
We still own multifamily and handle the asset management, but we third-party the property management for the day-to-day. That experience really clarified my preferences and how to look for scalable triple-net opportunities.
Yeah, so at first I approached founders as potential clients. But I quickly realized most didn’t have much cash available because they were pouring everything back into their businesses. Building relationships with them taught me how to invest and structure deals—things like SAFE notes, convertible notes, and straight equity—which helped me identify founders I truly believed in.
For me, it’s about betting on the people as much as the idea. You still need to like the product and see real demand for it, but a great pitch deck isn’t enough—it comes down to the strength of the team. I've invested in food companies, a big beer brand, and some early-stage tech. Really a full mix.
Exactly. These investments were personal, but that's part of what drove the eventual shift. Clients at Merrill became friends, saw what I was doing and wanted in, but it was a conflict of interest to offer "sell-away" investments off-platform.
I was acting as a fiduciary, but if I believed my money was better invested elsewhere, how could I say clients were best served only by what Merrill offered?
By then, I’d built experience in both alternative investments and real estate, had a growing network of partners, and could see a clearer path working independently. Before it became a bigger conflict, I decided to change paths and formalize Young Strategic Ventures.
There are four partners, including me. When I left wealth management, I brought on a former client, Steve Gibbs, as COO. He owns over 150 units in the central western Massachusetts area and has a strong operational and business mind.
We also brought in Steve’s original partner, Greg Kristoff, who'd invested with me before YSV. He's strategy-focused, handles growth and fundraising, and our third partner, Ian Burgess, has a huge amount of experience in sports complex development.
We also have Dawn Wilson, who handles admin, investor relations, and accounting. She's worked with my family for 15 years so she knows how we operate and is used to having all these things going on at once. It's a pretty nimble but balanced team, we have a lot of experience in a lot of different areas.
Two main components. First is new construction, which is high-velocity capital, driving ROI, and a bit more risk as you're timing the market. It can be operationally intensive, so we'll usually joint-venture with another developer where we provide capital, build the capital stack, and add balance sheet strength if needed. For those deals, we typically leave the day-to-day operations to our JV partners.
The second component is long-term holds in multifamily or retail, which offer strong cash flow and value-add potential. We’re typically the sole sponsor, handling everything from capital to managing rents, terms, general operations.
We believe in diversification within asset classes, not just across them. New construction gives quick ROI but carries more risk and operational load. Triple-net offers steady, more predictable returns. And multifamily is good to have in the mix, though it’s operationally heavier. But overall, if one area underperforms, another can balance it.
It’s shifted a lot. There are fewer multifamily opportunities now, but they’re still out there if the asset and underwriting make sense. At the moment, I see more potential in commercial retail, though it sometimes means looking in different markets. That comes down to having a solid management plan and the confidence to execute it, even if the property’s a two-hour flight away. On the commercial side, we’re happy to build the portfolio up and down the East Coast. With multifamily, we keep it local to New England because of the heavier operational lift.
Strictly under YSV, we have about 50,000 square feet of retail under management, nearly 100 multifamily units, and a handful of construction projects. We've put about $14 million of equity to work in the last 18 months. Between YSV and pre-YSV, we have about $20 million in equity on the street.
We’re also moving to a discretionary fund model, currently raising funds with our Vintage 1 which will all be for real estate investments.
Up to now we raise capital deal-by-deal in a syndication model, but that can be exhausting because every new opportunity requires a fresh round of pitching. With a discretionary fund model, we can focus on building investor relationships instead of selling individual deals and that gives us the flexibility to act faster and spend more time on operations, while still deepening those investor relationships.
Our private placement memorandum and investor docs are done. We have a fundraising goal of $30 million, closing January 1st, 2026. It's a typical private equity structure: three-year investment period where we call capital for specific projects as needed, followed by a seven-year fund life with extension options.
We've also included protection for our investors, so we won't call more than 45% of capital in any given year. That way, they can manage their liquidity, keep their overall financial picture balanced and avoid cash drag.
Oh absolutely. We already have about $15 million in soft commitments for the first fund, Vintage 1, and we're already talking about Vintage 2 in two or three years' time. Vintage 2 will be bigger. Of course, there's no way we're raising $50-100 million right off the bat, so it's a conversation we're having the whole time.
Not at all! It's a lot, but I make it work. My wife comes from a family of nine, so she's used to the big family, whereas I only have one sister. I always thought I'd have three kids, my wife thought she'd have five. So we have five!
I block off my calendar, including personal time. My business partner Greg coached me to structure days where I'm in the office back-to-back and then days where I'm out of the office back-to-back. Weekends are more about fun, but there's still some prep for the week on Sunday night. At the end of the day, I’m always working because it’s what I love to do.
I'm also up and at it pretty early. I'm a big believer in getting up, getting going, and then getting my head down working. I get up around 5 or 5:15 AM to work out and go to bed by 9:30 or 10 PM. I'm not a late-night guy.
We also really protect family time. My parents never missed a sports game growing up, they never missed dinner, and that’s really important to me too. I also love getting into fall because I coach flag football and soccer, and help with the basketball team, while my wife coaches two soccer teams. I love it. It’s super fun and we've become close with other families in town. The football team has been together for five years, since kindergarten. I love seeing our kids and their friends grow both as people as well as on the sports side.
I’m really excited to move into the fund model. For me, it’s an investment tool first and foremost—real estate just happens to be the vehicle. What I’m most passionate about is the model itself, rooted in private equity and alternative investments, and I can see us building something truly meaningful with it.
Right now, between YSV and pre-YSV, we’ve got about $20 million in equity out in the market. The fund approach lets us grow that more efficiently, work with investors on full strategies rather than one-off deals, and create lasting value.
Our aim is steady doubles, not home-run swings, so a stable portfolio with strong returns in Vintage 1, then scaling from there.
Yes. I should clarify that Vintage 1 is all real estate and the minimum investment over the three-year period is $250k, but we’ll go lower for existing relationships. For us, Vintage 1 is about building relationships and proving performance so people are confident investing in Vintage 2.
NAME: Kyle Young
COMPANY: Young Strategic Ventures
So both of my parents were actually in biotech and pharma. They have two doctorates each, my dad going down the entrepreneur path and my mom teaching at the School of Pharmacy in Maryland. As a kid I always imagined becoming a CFO or CEO of a biotech company. That just seemed like the natural route for me. Then between my freshman and sophomore years at Bentley (University), I interned at one and realized I hated it. I was stuck behind a desk, working on things I didn’t really understand. That’s when I shifted to investment management.
It was definitely excitement. From a young age my parents helped me understand our family’s finances—things like real estate allocation, public markets, and the early-stage startups they were involved in.
I’d always enjoyed learning about that world, so the pivot was more of an, “Oh cool” moment that helped me see business in a different light.
I took a hedge fund internship, then an insurance sales role at Northwestern Mutual that leaned heavily towards transactional sales—selling insurance to family and friends, that kind of thing. It was a great starting point, but it made me realize I was more interested in advising people and building longer-term relationships. That then led me to Merrill Lynch where you’re paid on assets under management, so it’s all about growing those long-term relationships rather than constantly selling. It was a natural fit and I built my first wealth management practice at Merrill.
Yeah so this is where the story gets a bit crazy. I started at Merrill in 2013 while I was still playing football at Bentley. I grew up in Maryland and was one of the top players in my county. I had D1AA offers from schools like Bryant and Cornell but tore my ACL, MCL, and meniscus in my senior year of high school.
After the injury most of those offers disappeared. I was still chatting to a few other schools but I just fell in love with Bentley. The coaches, the football team, the business school. I medically redshirted my freshman year because of the injury, then started the next four years as middle linebacker.
Then in my fifth year I had my first child. So I was raising a family, attending class, playing football, and building my practice at Merrill. It was wild. Family, school, sport and business all at once.
It was definitely sink or swim. Sometimes it felt like I was being thrown to the sharks, but it really helped me grow up fast. My wife was a huge support system, making sure I kept my head on straight and didn't live the typical college life when we had so much going on.
Being around entrepreneurs, prospects, and clients that I looked up to helped a lot too, and football was massive for my discipline and personal development. Freshman and sophomore year, we had workouts starting at 4:30 AM, doors closed at 4:31. If you weren't there, you weren't there. I quickly learnt how to structure my time, prioritize family, and not lose focus on work and school.
People approach it differently, but I worked with high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals. Unless there was a clear path to earning 90% or more of their business, I'd hold off until we could make it more meaningful. In the meantime I’d stay in touch, add value where I could, and keep building a relationship with them.
I wasn’t interested in managing a lot of small slices of multiple people’s portfolios. I find it’s hard to build meaningful relationships that way, and that carries over into how we run Young Strategic Ventures (YSV) now: go deep with fewer people and really get to know them, rather than being spread too thin.
Some of it, yes, but every situation is different. I find that if you really want to advise people in the right way and not just manage their money, you can’t have hundreds and hundreds of clients. It’s just not possible.
I treated my clients like family, I knew their kids and grandkids. To this day many of them still invest with me because I understand their overall picture.
So while certain aspects are applicable from client to client, planning is unique to each person, and to be someone’s “family CFO,” you have to go deep.
About two or three years in. I started working with Carmen Scarpa, a private equity superstar in Boston who’s the father of a former teammate and someone I’d looked up to for a long time. He opened my eyes to alternative investments like private equity, early-stage startups, and real estate. My mentor at Merrill also coached me up around the value of illiquidity and what that can do for a portfolio.
Around the same time, outside of Merrill, I started managing part of my family’s real estate portfolio. My focus there was on capital stack and refinancing and understanding how to add value to retail holding through tenant lease up. . I already knew the numbers and financial side, but this was turning book knowledge into hands-on operational experience.
You know, the biggest learning curve was actually working with banks. Some are conservative, others not. The market also changes. Right now almost every bank is ultra-conservative. New construction loans that used to be 85% loan-to-cost might now be 75%, if that, which throws off your metrics. Learning which banks are good for what, and when to use a mortgage broker, was a big lesson.
The other thing was that it pushed my focus toward triple-net leases in the commercial space. My grandfather had a lot of residential properties, whereas my dad was more on the commercial retail side. Triple-net is more efficient operationally, which doesn’t always mean it’s easier, but you’re dealing with business owners, not residential tenants and the needs are different.
We still own multifamily and handle the asset management, but we third-party the property management for the day-to-day. That experience really clarified my preferences and how to look for scalable triple-net opportunities.
Yeah, so at first I approached founders as potential clients. But I quickly realized most didn’t have much cash available because they were pouring everything back into their businesses. Building relationships with them taught me how to invest and structure deals—things like SAFE notes, convertible notes, and straight equity—which helped me identify founders I truly believed in.
For me, it’s about betting on the people as much as the idea. You still need to like the product and see real demand for it, but a great pitch deck isn’t enough—it comes down to the strength of the team. I've invested in food companies, a big beer brand, and some early-stage tech. Really a full mix.
Exactly. These investments were personal, but that's part of what drove the eventual shift. Clients at Merrill became friends, saw what I was doing and wanted in, but it was a conflict of interest to offer "sell-away" investments off-platform.
I was acting as a fiduciary, but if I believed my money was better invested elsewhere, how could I say clients were best served only by what Merrill offered?
By then, I’d built experience in both alternative investments and real estate, had a growing network of partners, and could see a clearer path working independently. Before it became a bigger conflict, I decided to change paths and formalize Young Strategic Ventures.
There are four partners, including me. When I left wealth management, I brought on a former client, Steve Gibbs, as COO. He owns over 150 units in the central western Massachusetts area and has a strong operational and business mind.
We also brought in Steve’s original partner, Greg Kristoff, who'd invested with me before YSV. He's strategy-focused, handles growth and fundraising, and our third partner, Ian Burgess, has a huge amount of experience in sports complex development.
We also have Dawn Wilson, who handles admin, investor relations, and accounting. She's worked with my family for 15 years so she knows how we operate and is used to having all these things going on at once. It's a pretty nimble but balanced team, we have a lot of experience in a lot of different areas.
Two main components. First is new construction, which is high-velocity capital, driving ROI, and a bit more risk as you're timing the market. It can be operationally intensive, so we'll usually joint-venture with another developer where we provide capital, build the capital stack, and add balance sheet strength if needed. For those deals, we typically leave the day-to-day operations to our JV partners.
The second component is long-term holds in multifamily or retail, which offer strong cash flow and value-add potential. We’re typically the sole sponsor, handling everything from capital to managing rents, terms, general operations.
We believe in diversification within asset classes, not just across them. New construction gives quick ROI but carries more risk and operational load. Triple-net offers steady, more predictable returns. And multifamily is good to have in the mix, though it’s operationally heavier. But overall, if one area underperforms, another can balance it.
It’s shifted a lot. There are fewer multifamily opportunities now, but they’re still out there if the asset and underwriting make sense. At the moment, I see more potential in commercial retail, though it sometimes means looking in different markets. That comes down to having a solid management plan and the confidence to execute it, even if the property’s a two-hour flight away. On the commercial side, we’re happy to build the portfolio up and down the East Coast. With multifamily, we keep it local to New England because of the heavier operational lift.
Strictly under YSV, we have about 50,000 square feet of retail under management, nearly 100 multifamily units, and a handful of construction projects. We've put about $14 million of equity to work in the last 18 months. Between YSV and pre-YSV, we have about $20 million in equity on the street.
We’re also moving to a discretionary fund model, currently raising funds with our Vintage 1 which will all be for real estate investments.
Up to now we raise capital deal-by-deal in a syndication model, but that can be exhausting because every new opportunity requires a fresh round of pitching. With a discretionary fund model, we can focus on building investor relationships instead of selling individual deals and that gives us the flexibility to act faster and spend more time on operations, while still deepening those investor relationships.
Our private placement memorandum and investor docs are done. We have a fundraising goal of $30 million, closing January 1st, 2026. It's a typical private equity structure: three-year investment period where we call capital for specific projects as needed, followed by a seven-year fund life with extension options.
We've also included protection for our investors, so we won't call more than 45% of capital in any given year. That way, they can manage their liquidity, keep their overall financial picture balanced and avoid cash drag.
Oh absolutely. We already have about $15 million in soft commitments for the first fund, Vintage 1, and we're already talking about Vintage 2 in two or three years' time. Vintage 2 will be bigger. Of course, there's no way we're raising $50-100 million right off the bat, so it's a conversation we're having the whole time.
Not at all! It's a lot, but I make it work. My wife comes from a family of nine, so she's used to the big family, whereas I only have one sister. I always thought I'd have three kids, my wife thought she'd have five. So we have five!
I block off my calendar, including personal time. My business partner Greg coached me to structure days where I'm in the office back-to-back and then days where I'm out of the office back-to-back. Weekends are more about fun, but there's still some prep for the week on Sunday night. At the end of the day, I’m always working because it’s what I love to do.
I'm also up and at it pretty early. I'm a big believer in getting up, getting going, and then getting my head down working. I get up around 5 or 5:15 AM to work out and go to bed by 9:30 or 10 PM. I'm not a late-night guy.
We also really protect family time. My parents never missed a sports game growing up, they never missed dinner, and that’s really important to me too. I also love getting into fall because I coach flag football and soccer, and help with the basketball team, while my wife coaches two soccer teams. I love it. It’s super fun and we've become close with other families in town. The football team has been together for five years, since kindergarten. I love seeing our kids and their friends grow both as people as well as on the sports side.
I’m really excited to move into the fund model. For me, it’s an investment tool first and foremost—real estate just happens to be the vehicle. What I’m most passionate about is the model itself, rooted in private equity and alternative investments, and I can see us building something truly meaningful with it.
Right now, between YSV and pre-YSV, we’ve got about $20 million in equity out in the market. The fund approach lets us grow that more efficiently, work with investors on full strategies rather than one-off deals, and create lasting value.
Our aim is steady doubles, not home-run swings, so a stable portfolio with strong returns in Vintage 1, then scaling from there.
Yes. I should clarify that Vintage 1 is all real estate and the minimum investment over the three-year period is $250k, but we’ll go lower for existing relationships. For us, Vintage 1 is about building relationships and proving performance so people are confident investing in Vintage 2.
