YouTube star Caspar Lee explains why he quit his job to build a business empire

Caspar Lee, 30, is a former YouTube star turned serial entrepreneur.

Casper Lee

Caspar Lee is part of a group of content creators who found early success on YouTube back 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 the South African town of Knysna, says he’s been lucky on YouTube after restarting his channel three times. He has attracted more than 6 million subscribers through a series of comedy videos, including pranks and challenges.

He attributes his success to working with other famous YouTubers such as Zoe Sugg, Marcus Butler, Joe Sugg, MrBeast and KSI.

The YouTube sensation also features Ed Sheeran, Justin Timberlake, Anna Kendrick and Kevin Hart Starring celebrities, each video has between 1 and 18 million views.

“I’m lucky enough to be part of a group of people, so I don’t necessarily have talents that I thought I didn’t have, other than the fact that I get to work with some amazing people and hopefully make my audience 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 the whole creator economy, and I didn’t really know what it was. I don’t think any of us did that, we were just having fun.

The creator economy is when people earn income by monetizing their skills, talents, and hobbies online. It’s a booming industry expected to reach $480 billion by 2027, up from $250 billion in 2023, according to Goldman Sachs Report.

I’ve always wanted to do something other than YouTube because I knew that in my 30s and 40s, I didn’t want to just rely on that.

Becoming a YouTuber can be a lucrative career. Lee said creators with millions of subscribers can typically make millions of dollars a year by joining the YouTube Partner Program and earning money by placing Google ads on their videos.

MrBeast is an American YouTube celebrity with the largest number of subscribers in the world, earning $600 million to $700 million annually through his channel.

However, just in 2019, when Lee was at the peak of his career, he left YouTube, leaving his fans wondering why he quit.

“It’s really difficult to maintain this level of audience,” Lee said. “This may seem simple, but as YouTube progresses, it becomes more and more competitive,” he added.

“I’ve always wanted to do something other than YouTube because I knew that in my 30s and 40s, I didn’t want to just rely on that.”

Lee, who began dabbling in entrepreneurship during the YouTube era, has now moved full-time into business and launched a series of companies in the creator economy.

“Just like when I started YouTube, there weren’t that many people doing it, and I wanted to start the next thing before too many people did it. In business, that’s a useful strategy,” he said.

“Creators are born entrepreneurs”

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

He added: “Being a creator is very transparent. People see how you perform every day and like running a public company, which I don’t do but if you do it’s hard,” he added. Because someone is going to check the status of your stock to do that, so I think there’s that pressure.

Lee said his first attempt at entrepreneurship was in 2017, when he co-founded influencer marketing company Influencer.com with Ben Jeffries. Lee is also its chief visionary.

He subsequently went into business with YouTuber Joe Suggs and in 2018 founded talent management company MVE in partnership with IMG and Endeavor Group.

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

Casper Lee

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

“In my life, I try to surround myself with people, I’ll answer any call, I’ll go to any meeting, and if a good idea comes up, I’m ready to do it,” Lee said.

Li was recognized Forbes “30 Under 30” Featured on the 2020 European Charts for its partnership with Influencer.com.

His most successful venture to date was a partnership 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. These include Praktika, an artificial intelligence language learning app that has raised $35.5 million to date.

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

Creator Ventures will raise a second round of funding in the coming months.

Creators should not rely on their own fame

Li said creators who want to be successful entrepreneurs must build businesses that can survive on their own without relying on their own fame.

“The bottom line for these businesses, much like mine, is that it can only go so far with the support of its creators. You actually have to build a good business that provides your customers with Amazing service,” he said.

“They need to be able to continue to be effective without relying on their own relevance.”

TikTok darling Addison Rae, who has more than 88 million followers, has her own cosmetics brand Beauty products dropped by Sephora Just two years later, it was expected to launch in 2023 due to weak sales.

Respectively, Instagram userAriana Renee During the first price reduction on her clothing line in 2019, she failed to sell 36 T-shirts to her 2.6 million followers.

“You don’t want to create false traction, which won’t actually help you when you launch a business because you might get some initial revenue, but if the traction is only there because people like the YouTube videos you make, But they don’t necessarily like the toilet paper you’re selling, and as long as you’re relevant on YouTube, you can sell it for a few months or only to a certain size audience,” Lee said.