Ep. 79: He had 15M followers, then he quit — here's why ft. Caspar Lee

**Caspar Lee** (0:00)
Having something that you're obsessed with, for most YouTubers, is something we all have in common. If you're not doing YouTube, what are you doing?

**Francis Zierer** (0:07)
You, I think, at your peak, had 15 million total audience. How did you pull off this exit?

**Caspar Lee** (0:12)
Every day I worked really hard, and every day I saw, okay, what do I have that I've created value in, that I can create more value from in the future? Most creative businesses today are still merch companies or clothing lines. That's not a good business to have.

**Francis Zierer** (0:26)
Let's say like five years from now. What do you think you're working on?

**Caspar Lee** (0:28)
The goal is to funnel a billion dollars within the next eight years to creators.

**Francis Zierer** (0:33)
Wow. Welcome back to The Creator Spotlight Podcast. My name is Francis Zierer, and today we're speaking with Caspar Lee, formerly one of YouTube's biggest stars, who has semi-retired now and hasn't really been uploading videos for six or seven years, but at his peak, had 15 million followers across platforms. Today, he is an entrepreneur, the co-founder of an influencer marketing agency, a creator talent management firm, a student housing company, and Creator Ventures, which is a VC firm. Full disclosure, Creator Ventures was an early investor in Beehive, and Creator Spotlight is owned by Beehive. We had a great conversation about exiting as a creator and translating creator skills into entrepreneurship to build long lasting businesses. I hope you enjoy. One topic that I haven't had the chance to talk to many people about is the idea of the exit for the creator, right?
You, I think, at your peak had 15 million total audience mostly on YouTube, but also cross platforms. Instagram, I think, is your second biggest. And you have kind of successfully left that behind. Now you are an entrepreneur much more than you're a creator. You don't. I mean, I think your most recent YouTube video was two years ago. You haven't really posted maybe three in the past seven years. You've successfully exited. But my question is, like, when did you start planning that? Was this something that you were very consciously like, okay, I'm getting a little tired of being on camera and I need to engineer a future for myself? How did you pull off this exit?

**Caspar Lee** (2:01)
I like calling it an exit. That's the first time someone's done that. Usually an exit involves being paid a bunch of money. But this exit, I guess, yeah, it wasn't planned. I mean, I kind of just took off a week and that week turned into a few months and then a few years.
So that's what's strange, because basically I'd built this other, I guess, couple of platforms that I felt could be where I could spend more of my time in life, which one was an influencing marketing agency called influencer.com. I'd co-founded that with a guy called Ben Jefferies. And then another one is called NVE. I'm still at both. They're not was, they're not in hindsight. But they were both opportunities for me to not worry too much about stepping away. And then not only stepping away, but actually, as you say, exiting or others call it quitting while they're ahead. But yeah, so that's kind of it was it was kind of a bit smoother than maybe it sounds in hindsight, where I've taken a big risk or I've like, like, you know, announced a big goodbye. It was more smooth. But I'm really happy that while I was a creator, I was always thinking about building other things that I could go and do when I wasn't a creator, not only from a financial point of view, but also just from like a meaning in life. Having something that you're obsessed with, I think for most YouTubers is something we all have in common. And if that's only YouTube, if you're not doing YouTube, what are you doing? So for me, I realized YouTube was an obsession, but what I loved actually even more about YouTube was collaborating and building things from scratch and convincing people to make videos with me. So being an entrepreneur is very similar. You collaborate with loads of people, either co-founders or teammates. You start things from scratch, you invent things, and you have to constantly spend time convincing people to do stuff with you. So there's a lot of leverage in entrepreneurship and a very similar sort of leverage that you get in YouTube, where you get to a certain level, you can convince certain people at that level to collaborate with you. Same in business.

**Francis Zierer** (4:19)