YouTube sensation Caspar Lee shares why he left the platform to build a business empire

30-year-old Caspar Lee was once a YouTube megastar and is now a serial entrepreneur.

Caspar Lee

Caspar Lee belongs to a group of content creators who found early success on YouTube in the 2010s, racking up millions of views on the platform.

The 30-year-old serial entrepreneur, who was born in England and grew up in Knysna, a town in South Africa, said he got lucky on the YouTube scene after restarting his channel three times. He amassed over 6 million subscribers through a series of comedic videos, including pranks and challenges

He credits his success to collaborations with other famous YouTubers from Zoe Sugg, Marcus Butler, Joe Sugg, MrBeast and KSI.

The YouTube sensation also featured celebrities like Ed Sheeran, Justin Timberlake, Anna Kendrick, and Kevin Hart in his videos and earned anywhere from 1 to 18 million views for each.

“I was lucky enough to be part of a group of individuals that all came together, so I don’t think I’ve ever necessarily had talent, except that I’ve been able to collaborate with some amazing people and hopefully make my audience to laugh along the way,” Lee said in an interview with CNBC Make It.

“It was a very exciting time. I think I was 20 when I started getting millions of views and looking back, it was just the dawn of this whole creative economy and I didn’t know what it was in. I don’t think any of us were having fun.

The creator economy refers to people who earn an income by monetizing their skills, talents, and hobbies online. And it’s a booming industry that’s estimated to grow to $480 billion by 2027, up from $250 billion in 2023, according to a Goldman Sachs report.

I always wanted to do something outside of YouTube because I knew that in my 30s and 40s, I didn’t necessarily want to rely on that.

Being a YouTuber can be a lucrative career. Lee said creators with millions of subscribers can typically earn millions of dollars a year by joining the YouTube Partner Program and monetizing through ads placed by Google on their videos.Â

MrBeast, an American YouTube personality with the most subscribers in the world, earns $600 to $700 million a year through his channel.

However, just as he was at the peak of his career in 2019, Lee left YouTube, leaving his fans to wonder why he left.

“It’s really hard to maintain an audience of that level,” Lee said. “It certainly happens [as] easy, but as YouTube progressed, it became more and more competitive,” he added.

“I always wanted to do something outside of YouTube, because I knew that in my 30s and 40s, I didn’t necessarily want to rely solely on that.”

Lee, who first dabbled in entrepreneurship during his YouTube days, has returned full-time to the business and launched a portfolio of companies in the creator economy.Â

“Like when I started YouTube, when there weren’t that many people doing it, I wanted to start this next thing before a lot of people did. In business, that’s a useful strategy to have,” he said.

“Creators are natural entrepreneurs”

Lee said he believes “creators are natural entrepreneurs” because they’re already serving a customer base — their audience.”

He added: “Being creative is very transparent. People see how well you do every day and you love running a public company, not like I do, but if you do, it’s difficult because you have people checking that how are your stocks doing and so I think there’s that pressure.” Â

Lee said his first venture into entrepreneurship was when in 2017 he co-founded influencer marketing company Influencer.com, along with Ben Jeffries. Lee is also the chief vision officer.

He then went into business with fellow YouTuber Joe Suggs and together they created talent management company MVE in 2018 in partnership with IMG and Endeavor Group.

Lee co-founded venture capital firm Creator Ventures with his cousin Sasha Kaletsky in 2022.

Caspar Lee

Lee then co-founded Proper Living – accommodation in Cape Town for students and young professionals.

“In my life, I’ve managed to surround myself with people and I’ll take any phone call, I’ll take any meeting, and I’m ready to do a good idea if it presents itself,” Lee said.

Lee was recognized on the Forbes “30 Under 30” Europe list in 2020 for his work with Influencer.com.

His most successful venture yet has been in collaboration with his cousin Sasha Kaletsky – a former private equity investment professional at Bridgepoint.

Lee and Kaletsky co-founded London-based venture capital firm Creator Ventures in 2022, which closed its first $20 million fund in March of the same year to invest in global consumer internet startups. This includes AI language learning app Praktica, which has raised $35.5 million to date.Â

Other clients range from Beehiiv, a newsletter platform for creators, and Eleven Labs, a text-to-speech, AI voice generator.

Creators should not rely on their fame

Creators who want to be successful as entrepreneurs need to build businesses that can stand on their own without relying on their fame, Lee said.

“What’s so important about those businesses and very similar to my business is that it can only go so far with the kind of lift you get from the creator. You actually have to build a good business that provides amazing services to your customers,” he said. .

“They have to be able to not rely on their importance for it to work consistently.”

TikTok darling Addison Rae, who has over 88 million followers, had her cosmetics brand Item Beauty pulled by Sephora in 2023 due to declining sales after just two years.

Separately, Instagrammer Ariana Renee failed to sell 36 T-shirts to her 2.6 million followers during an initial drop for her clothing line in 2019.

“You don’t want to create fake traction, and that won’t actually help you when you’re starting a business because you might get some initial income, but if the traction is just because people love the YouTube videos you make, but They don’t necessarily like the toilet paper you’re selling, you’ll be able to sell it for a few months or as long as you’re relevant on YouTube, and only to a certain size audience,” Lee said.

“But if you actually have real traction, then you can go into the whole world of buying toilet paper.”

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the estimated scale of the creative economy.

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