Considered an ‘OG’ [original member] of YouTube’s creator community, Caspar Lee amassed over 6 million subscribers to his channel until he halted posting in 2019.
Since then, Lee has co-founded three endeavours: Influencer.com, an influencer marketing agency; MVE Management, a creator management firm, and Creator Ventures – a $20m venture fund he is a partner in alongside his cousin and investor Sasha Kaletsky.
At TechBBQ in Copenhagen, TI met with Lee to find out more about his YouTube hiatus, the changing landscape of content creation and how the business of being an online creator has changed following several technological innovations.
Tell us about your working life, post YouTube…
I decided to take a week off in 2019. That week turned into a month, and then COVID happened. After that, I felt I couldn’t upload because I’d been away for too long. I thought any return would need to be significant, but it just got longer and longer. In hindsight, I was happy to have hung up my boots where I was very satisfied with what I’d achieved.
Since then, I’ve been working on several ventures. I already had a company called Influencer.com and another with Joe Sugg called MVE, which is a management business. Influencer.com is an agency, while MVE focuses on managing creators’ careers.
About three years ago, we launched our first fund, Creator Ventures. That has gone well too. I still love watching YouTube and uploading content on social media every now and then. It wasn’t so much about quitting social media, but more about focusing on other things. YouTube is a full-time gig in my opinion
How has the business of content creation changed since you first started?
When I started in 2010, there wasn’t much of a business aspect; it was just for fun. By 2014 or 2015, money started coming in through Adsense and brand deals, but it wasn’t on the scale it is today. Back then, creators with a few million followers were making over a million a year, which was crazy considering they made nothing just three years prior.
Today, if you’re one of the biggest creators, you can make tens of millions a year, largely in profit. Some are building businesses that are worth over a billion dollars, like Mr Beast. There’s also a significant group of mid-sized creators with a few hundred thousand followers who do well through brand collaborations, since these brands get good ROI. Even creators with smaller audiences can now make money by creating great content, either for businesses or other creators. So, millions are now making money compared to maybe just 20 people doing so when I started.
How has your own experience inspired your work with influencer.com and MVE?
At Influencer.com, our goal is to funnel a billion dollars that might not have gone to influencers within the next 10 years. We’ve already generated $100 million in revenue, helping many people either supplement their income or become full-time creators by connecting them with brands. On the other hand, MVE is more involved, working with about 50 creators to manage their entire careers. I enjoy seeing them grow and achieve their dreams.
How do you use your time as a creator to inform Creator Ventures?
At Creator Ventures we invest in technology behind internet culture. For instance, ElevenLabs is a voice AI platform that can convert a YouTube video into 60 different languages using the creator’s own voice or a synthesised one. Sync Labs offers lip technology for AI avatars, which is so cool because when you look at an AI avatar, the big giveaway is its lips. So, to see them improve that is exciting and enhances the realism of digital characters. Beehiiv is another investment; it’s a newsletter platform which allows creators more control over their audiences because their subscribers will receive their newsletter, whereas on other platforms the algorithm decides who sees their content.
Is there any current tech you wish you had access to when you were more active on YouTube?
It seems very small but manually adding subtitles was a huge waste of time, and now they can be done with a click of a button. I’m still a bit old-fashioned when it comes to editing, I enjoy the process of cutting something up rather than just getting AI to do it. I think I would still do that, but I also think AI could have helped with thumbnail generation and translating content. Even brainstorming ideas with an AI could have been invaluable.
What tech trends are you seeing creators pick up on now?
Many creators are trying to maintain audiences across different platforms, as the lines between them are blurring. They struggle with whether to post the same content across platforms or different content for each. AI also plays a role; it helps creators produce better content or various versions of their content. However, I believe audiences still value human interactions and opinions, which AI can’t fully replace.
What do you think of AI creators?
I don’t think the clearly-AI-looking creators that have around four million followers will get any bigger…I think the ones that surface when you’re scrolling TikTok, such as a news report made with an AI avatar, may grow as users won’t care then. But, if you want to have someone talk about the report, and to learn more about it then you need a real person because people care what other people think.
That’s why we use multiple platforms because we want to know what other people are doing and what other people think. We don’t really care what AI thinks.
So, how do you take your coffee?
I usually have a decaf flat white because it rolls off the tongue, but I think my favourite is a decaf iced latte.
And how do you wind down, aside from watching YouTube?
If I’m having trouble sleeping, reading usually does the trick. But when I’m with my fiancée, just being next to her helps me relax.
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