Caspar Lee, a YouTube sensation, discusses his reasons for leaving the platform to establish a business empire.

In the 2010s, Caspar Lee became a successful content creator on YouTube, earning millions of views.

A 30-year-old entrepreneur from England, who grew up in Knysna, South Africa, found success on YouTube after restarting his channel three times. He gained over 6 million subscribers through various comedic videos, including pranks and challenges.

He attributes his achievements to working with renowned YouTubers such as Zoe Sugg, Marcus Butler, Joe Sugg, MrBeast, and KSI.

The YouTube sensation attracted a large following and featured popular celebrities such as Ed Sheeran, Justin Timberlake, Anna Kendrick, and Kevin Hart in his videos, garnering between 1 to 18 million views per video.

In an interview with CNBC Make It, Lee stated that being part of a group of individuals who developed together allowed him to collaborate with amazing people and make his audience laugh.

"The time when I started getting millions of views was incredibly thrilling. At that time, I was around 20 years old, and it was the beginning of the creator economy. We were all clueless about what it meant, but we were just enjoying ourselves."

The creator economy, which involves individuals earning money through online monetization of their abilities, is a rapidly expanding industry projected to reach $480 million by 2027, up from $250 billion in 2023, according to a Goldman Sachs report.

Earning millions of dollars a year is possible for YouTubers with millions of subscribers, as they can join the YouTube Partner Program and earn money through Google-placed ads in their videos, said Lee.

Through his YouTube channel, MrBeast, an American personality with the most subscribers globally, earns between $600 million and $700 million annually.

In 2019, Lee abruptly left YouTube, leaving his fans puzzled about the reason behind his departure.

"Maintaining an audience of that level is really challenging," Lee stated. "It may seem effortless, but as YouTube evolved, it grew increasingly competitive," he explained.

"Since I knew in my 30s and 40s, I didn't want to solely depend on YouTube for my career."

During his YouTube days, Lee began exploring entrepreneurship and has now fully committed to it, launching a collection of businesses in the creator economy.

He wanted to start the next thing before it became too popular, just like when he started YouTube when it was still relatively new. This strategy is useful in business, he added.

'Creators are natural entrepreneurs'

According to Lee, creators are natural entrepreneurs because they already have an audience to serve as customers.

He stated that being a creator involves transparency, as people can observe one's progress daily, similar to running a public company. However, this comes with added pressure, as individuals monitor stock performance.

In 2017, Lee co-founded Influencer.com, an influencer marketing company, with Ben Jeffries. He currently serves as its chief vision officer.

In 2018, he formed a talent management company, MVE, with fellow YouTuber Joe Suggs, in partnership with IMG and Endeavor Group.

Proper Living, an accommodation option in Cape Town for students and young professionals, was co-founded by Lee.

"I've surrounded myself with people in my life and am ready to take any call, attend any meeting, and execute any good idea that comes my way," Lee stated.

In 2020, Lee was included in the Forbes "30 Under 30" list in Europe for his contributions to Influencer.com.

His most successful venture has been collaborating with his cousin Sasha Kaletsky, a former private equity investment professional at Bridgepoint.

In 2022, Lee and Kaletsky founded Creator Ventures, a London-based venture capital firm that raised $20 million in its first fund to invest in global consumer-internet startups, including the AI language learning app Praktika, which has already raised $35.5 million.

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

In the upcoming months, Creator Ventures will secure its second round of funding.

Creators shouldn't rely on their fame

To achieve success as entrepreneurs, creators must establish independent businesses that do not depend on their fame, according to Lee.

"The creator's leg up can only take businesses so far, and to build a successful business delivering exceptional services to clients, you must go beyond that advantage," he stated.

"For it to continuously work, they must not depend solely on their own relevance."

In 2023, Sephora dropped Addison Rae's cosmetics brand Item Beauty, which had over 88 million followers, due to poor sales after just two years.

In 2019, Ariana Renee's clothing line failed to sell 36 t-shirts to her 2.6 million followers during an initial drop on Instagram.

Lee stated that creating fake traction won't help when launching a business, as initial revenue may be obtained, but if the traction is only due to the popularity of YouTube videos, and not the product being sold, it will only last as long as the YouTube relevance and the size of the audience.

"If you truly possess genuine momentum, you can venture into the entire realm of toilet paper purchasing."