From Creator to VC: Caspar Lee’s Playbook for the Creator Economy | Creator Upload

0:00Welcome to Creator Upload Your Creator Economy Podcast. I'm Lauren Schnipper. And I'm Joshua Cohen. Hey, Lauren. Yeah. I got out of the house yesterday. I mean, shocking every time. You all right? Is everything okay? You went to the doctor? Something broke? How's your foot? My foot's great. Okay, great. He hurt his toots with everybody. He hurt his toots with everybody. He hurt his toots with soccer. I don't know what it was. Go on. I was playing soccer with a bunch of other adults and tore my plantar fascia. Thank you. You know you're old, but how do you know you're in your 40s without saying you're in your 40s or something?

0:33You know the word plantar fascia? Farsha. Farsha. Go on. No Gen A or Gen Z knows what the plantar fascia is. No. Zero. I mean, I'm super young, so I still don't know what it is. Go on. You have to be millennials or above to know what the plantar fascia is. Mm-hmm. Or taking like bio camera in med school. Yeah, totes. So you got out of the house. Where did you go? I went to Creator Economy Alive East. Mm-hmm. which is acronym CEL or CEL. Thanks. I needed that as a piece of the description of your day yesterday. Thanks for the acronym. Cool. How was it? And it's an offshoot of Creator Economy Live.

1:12You should just note that Josh and I, we definitely go to a lot of events, sometimes together, sometimes apart. But I feel sometimes if I can't go, I feel like I'm represented because Josh is there. And this is what I'm... This is, he's coming back with the acronym as the big takeaway. Go on. One of my best bits of the day was someone introduced themselves and I asked what they did. His name was DJ. He has this really cool startup. And he said, oh, I have an AI matchmaking startup. I'm like, what's AI? I've heard of the matchmaking part of this. I totally get, but explain to me the AI. Josh's other favorite bit as it relates to me, because it always comes back to me, is he'll be at one of these events.

1:53People are like, where's Lauren? He'll be like, we're no longer speaking. It's like a great bet. Again, keep going. So it is an offshoot of Creator Economy Live West, which happens in Vegas in January, which itself is an offshoot of Affiliate Summit West, which is this huge affiliate marketing conference. It's put on by Clarion Events, big multinational events company. And they then also have this affiliate summit East, which happens in New York in August. So for the past two years, they've put on this Creator Economy Live East. It's a nice one-day gathering of mostly influencer marketing agencies and technology with brands in attendance to speak and maybe just like a sprinkling of creators and executives and managers and agents, but more so on the influencer marketing tech side.

2:45I mean, obviously, influencer marketing relates to creators, but do you kind of feel like now we're in the phase of the creator economy where people are just like slapping the name creator on things. And like, they'd be like, we're ahead of the curve. We're like, you know, two, three to three years ago, five years ago, this would have been called like the influencer marketing conference. You know what I mean? It's now it's like creator economy live. It's like, is it? I was talking with someone at the event about this. Now that every conference is basically a creator conference, like social media week is a creator conference.

3:12Advertising week is a creator conference, creator economy lives, obviously creator conference. And yes, I think before, like it did spin off from affiliate summit. So 15 years ago would have become affiliate. Five years ago would have been called influencer and now it's called creator. Yeah. They're all marketers. They know what they're doing, but I'm just saying it's just fascinating. Yeah. Okay. So it sounds like, I mean, okay. Sorry. It was all right. Okay. That's what I'm getting. It was nice to get out of the house. And some of the brand reps that were there, I saw in this one panel, it was called Measurement Frameworks for Smarter Influencer Investment.

3:46Allie Hartman from Keurig Dr. Pepper, Jennifer Brown from Sheehan, Mallory Kunze from Expedia Group, and Anna Spitzer from Church and Dwight. Do you know what Church and Dwight does? I don't think so. No one in the room did either. And so Anna Spitzer has this whole line for it. She's like, you may have heard of one of our biggest brands, Arm & Hammer, which has something like a 90 % recall rate. Like 90 % of people surveyed know what Arm & Hammer is. It's in everybody's... I mean, it's been around for a hundred years. I mean, refrigerator, et cetera. Sure. So came away with that tidbit. And they were talking about obviously measurement in the influencer marketing area.

4:24And I was to the discussion we just had really kind of blown away by how big this industry has gotten, where I think you and I still, at least for me, part of my mind still lives in this world of like 10, 15 years ago where you could fit everyone in the space into a bar on a Thursday afternoon or evening at Busby's. And now it's just massive where you have these individuals from these huge global conglomerates and brands that are working with creators and talking about how they're working with creators in a sophisticated, refined way that's been proven out through years of now trial and error.

5:05And the efficacy that they're getting from creators, it's just wild to see how far this industry has come. Well, I also think, you know, there's a level of uh i don't know suspicion is the right word whereas again in like call it 2021 ish when there were so much my favorite word the phrase that i learned entrepreneurial tourism in this space where so many people were showing up with checks and creating companies that the vast majority of which don't exist anymore in the space and they've gone on and now they're doing other things and so there's just this sense of like these people are just going to be here to try to make a buck and then they're going to go somewhere else so who who knows and i'm and then there's like people like us who evidently like can't go anywhere so there's we're still showing up you know what i mean so i just feel like um i mean i think i think what it proves is like you know when that all sort of that that 2021 sort of influx of capital into the industry happened and you know people oh the greater economy is dead it's like we were you know go back and listen we were like it ain't dead but like it's just it's it was just the wrong money at the wrong time and the wrong investments that doesn't mean that this is not a viable industry and so we're sort of on that path right now right like people are back people are here people are doing conferences and stuff like that but like a lot of these people will come and go and then it'll be we'll still be here it's different now where this feels like a very stable groundswell yeah yeah it's much more stable it feels more like a stable groundswell for sure but i still feel like people they're just chasing whatever's hot in the moment but yes it's much much more stable it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like because it's not the same thing i mean there's money coming into the market but it's not it's not right it's from brands who want to spend their advertising dollars in the most efficient way possible and have been trained to do that.

6:42And individuals at those brands that want to keep their jobs by spending the brand's advertising dollars in the most efficient way possible. And just more brands getting into it now because their advertising dollars aren't as well spent on other platforms. So it makes total sense. And it just really feels like this is the beginning. Yeah. Again.

6:58Caspar Lee:I know. I know. Before we get to the big stories, want to make note that we interviewing today, Casper Lee, creator, entrepreneur, all around just renaissance man. Very excited for everybody to hear that interview. It's a good one, Lauren. All right, let's get to some big stories. If you know me, if you know this podcast, she loves a platform change that might seem small, insignificant to some. And it also might seem like it has one yet one functionality. Yet what will happen is the community, the creators, et cetera, we'll use it in various ways. So Instagram has done some interesting things this week.

7:37The biggest thing is that, well, there are two big things. Number one, they have launched their first native feature for sharing someone else's content to your profile with full distribution power. So just zooming out TikTok, right? What are they really good at? It's distribution and discovery, right? Like that's where you go right now, typically as a creator on day one, if you've got nothing, because the distribution, the magical Chinese algorithm will get you the numbers. You won't really make any money there. So like you will either like lean heavy into brand deals and or then jump to other platforms.

8:07But like the YouTubes and the Instagrams of the world are kind of losing those first, you know, first day creators. Right. And they obviously want you from like beginning to never ending. And so what this is allowing to do historically, you could only share like like like a post. I'm talking about a feed post to your stories, which is, of course, ephemeral, it's not there all the time, or to somebody's DMs. I could message it to you, but I couldn't natively post it on my grid. Now, there were tons of third-party apps that were created to allow this functionality, but because it wasn't native to the platform, it wasn't something that was done sort of across the board or done easily on Instagram.

8:47Now that they're allowing for that, the sort of trickle-down effects of that is potentially a massive amount of discovery and distribution, right? So you can just think of any random example, you're a big creator i can put something on my feed that then is there forever and it will allow for smaller folks to sort of get discovered right so the reposts will now have their own tab in your profile and it's much like tiktok's reposts instagram has a history a very significant history of sort of taking uh features from other platforms specifically snap and making it a big thing on their own platform and stories of course is the biggest example of that they have now uh launched a Snapchat-style location map in DMs.

9:27It's opt-in, it's not real-time, but I think one of the reasons this is significant is Snap is historically used by especially the younger teenager generation as their messaging tool. And with this location service and Snap Map, it's very powerful for people to be able to share where they are. And whether it's a live event, an emergency, a celebration, whatever it is, it's a way for the communication between folks to really be heightened. And that's historically where Snap has really sort of dominated. And this is sort of Instagram's attempt to like get into that space even more. Yeah, I think to that point, Lauren, Snap Maps make the experience of being on Snapchat and seeing what your friends are up to just a lot more, adds just more color and texture to it.

10:13It makes it more tangible. The look and feel of it is one that just brings you closer to those friends experiences. And a number of Instagram's product updates, especially recently, have been along the lines of trying to make some more connective tissue between you and your friends on the platform, especially in regards to it being a messaging app, because that's where they lose a lot of market share to Snap. It's also worth noting that when this feature was first announced, there were some privacy concerns about you exposing your location when you didn't mean to. If you're stamping from your house, then people might know where you live, etc.

10:50Instagram is saying the feature is opt-in only in real time. So that should assuage most of the privacy concerns. If others come up, I'm sure they'll be able to squash those relatively quickly because this could be a cool app, again, to create some more connective tissue between your friends on the platform. Just a quick word on like the opt-in versus it being default on, it being default off. I'm just I'm just such a big believer in friction. I think it is so such an underestimated. It's funny. It's like, it's not underestimated if you're working in UI because you know how much that like can detract people from doing things or not doing things.

11:22Yet so many of these features have been opt in and to the detriment of teens and this and that. But it's like, I've recently installed way too many apps on my phone that allow that sort of like monitor my time spent. And so these all most of my phone, like I can't even I have to literally be like, okay, are you going to ignore your time limit for today and press like two buttons. and it detracts me, not all the time, but like, let's say even if it's 50 % of the time, like it does, it makes you pause, it makes you think. And so I just think I like to pause on those kinds of moments because those are one of those things that it's like a little thing, but it's a psychological thing.

11:58And it being, I don't know, I just think about a lot of, we were talking a lot about sort of teen safety and all that sort of stuff. And I think this is, it's a critical component that it is often. Friction is a great thing. And I think this also shows that these platforms are getting wise to what people actually want. instead of just trying to get growth at all costs from their users. I think they're being backed into a corner.

12:22Maybe they prefer not to do this, but at least they're being hit with sticks enough to know that they should. And then with the advent of reposts here, I think it's going to be incredibly fascinating to see how this plays out. Lots of these types of product developments have these unintended consequences. like when Instagram released trial reels as presumably when they first launched it, it was a way for individuals to test out new types of content on their Instagram channels that would be sent out to not their subscribers, but other users on Instagram. They could then see how those trial reels performed and then decide whether or not they wanted to send it out to their subscribers.

13:01Again, for the purposes of creating some new style of content or some format that they think their subscribers may not be into, but that they really want to test. And how it became used was basically put up a bunch of old Instagram reels that crushed it, put those out as new trial reels, have it go out to a whole new audience that isn't in your subscriber base, and then never send it to your subscriber base. And you get this total inflow of new subscribers, this like free ad, basically from Instagram, that wasn't going to mess up your feed at all. so it'll be cool to see how reposts actually gets used right now there's no other easy way to shout out another creator on instagram so if you're a huge creator calling out a smaller one yes you can post it to your stories but this can be much more effective so i think we'll start to see some like smaller creators start to get shout outs from bigger ones and start to explode because of that like their trajectory their vogue interview tube filter interview hollywood reporter interview variety interview in a year will be like, oh, I initially got called out by this creator, this artist, this musician, this actor.

14:12They reposted my stuff and then it was kind of game over from there. Okay. One other big thing I want to talk about platform wise is YouTube is giving some sort of channels what one might deem a Netflix makeover for all for lack of a better kind of terminology. So as we mentioned before, the fastest growing service for YouTube is connected TVs. And so what that really does is puts it in the sort of same growing, similar playing field to like a Netflix, right? Which where you obviously can watch on your computer, your phone or your TV. And so in order to sort of what I would argue to sort of synthesize those experiences is some channels on web have actually gotten some sort of a makeover that make it look a bit more Netflix-y, for lack of a better word.

14:55So a couple of things. So the new UX is it sort of looks more like a streaming service like i said there's episode descriptions watch now buttons shelves of scheduled content more dynamic home page featured video area cycles through top videos with large thumbnails and overlays view count length etc um programming schedule channels can showcase upcoming content up to 12 hours in advance enhanced organization playlists and show groupings now have descriptions making navigation and discovering easier um lawn crime uh when the number one trial channel on YouTube. We recently had their president on the podcast, Rachel Stockman.

15:33They are one of the channels that this is not rolled out to everybody, but they are the one of the channels that is displaying this new UI. Josh, what do you think about this? Lauren, I love this. First of all, the feature is called shows. It's currently viewable, at least according to YouTube, by 10 % of YouTube users in certain locations. And it's available to an even smaller subset of YouTube channels. Like you said, our friends of Law and Crime were one of the channels in this initial subset of test creators. And what you can do is if you can go to their channel and you're in the beta, you can see that it's a dramatically different layout with these huge, big carousel images, little blurbs about the video you're going to watch.

16:16And it looks much more like what we'd think of as a television style viewing experience. and because of that, more premium. And I think YouTube is doing this for a few different reasons. One, to create a more premium quality viewing experience regardless of viewing device. So whether you're on TV, whether you're on mobile, whether you're on desktop, for channels that have shows that can be organized like this, you're gonna get a much more just quality, seemingly premier viewing experience. Why is that important? because that's going to just make YouTube overall seem like a more premier quality video sharing site, which is gonna lead to more advertising dollars, which is gonna lead to better advertising rates.

17:01The second thing it does is it gets creators to think about their content in terms of episodes, seasons, and show style formats. Why does he want to do that? Because as it continues to dominate YouTube viewership, I mean, it was a 12.5 % of total US television consumption in May. That's according to Nielsen. So as YouTube continues to get that percent share of television viewership up, it wants to have as much content as possible for that screen. Why again? Because that screen commands higher advertising rates. And so it wants creators to really think about their programming in this context. And the third thing this does is it really trains creators in the backend.

17:42So you can organize your content into shows in the YouTube studio and YouTube wants creators to kind of do the heavy lifting here. So when it does transition this format to television screens on the YouTube app, it's a seamless transition where creators have already done all the hard work of organizing their content into these shows and episodes with certain descriptions, certain type of images, et cetera, so that it can easily pour over to the television. And then you could be watching YouTube the same way, same feel, the same UX, the same design, right very similar that you could be watching netflix or any of these other quote premiere streaming services it's just so funny i just feel like it's like you know it's not even not even cut to five years it's going to cut to like a year or two and like it's just like everything it's what is old is new again everything is cable everything is streaming everything looks the same it's like we're paying way more than we ever played with cable for all these different streams i mean we already are um and youtube is it's just interesting too because the evolution about how like YouTube got to this place because of course there was the historically the originals team that came in to do like more premium programming and then it's like they had to go through that to realize like actually there already is premium programming on YouTube and it needs like this is a platform that needs to come natively from the sort of creators not without YouTube support but like not necessarily with an original team although I have no doubt that there will be another originals team at some point if this continuing in this trajectory of like sort of looking like a Netflix like it just feels like that's probably going to happen again um but I also think that like what people don't realize is like historically it's actually been really hard to find series on YouTube I knew somebody a long time not even that long ago probably like four or five years ago that was sort of trying to create like he was using the YouTube API to create to like find the sort of web series and like you know organize them and then it was like then the API was like cut off because YouTube was like you're not you're not how to do that basically which is a whole other story but um but it's actually been like not organized that well and like not not conducive to like that kind of viewing experience and so should they want that music viewing experience they have to make these kind of changes yeah like if you're watching a video from a creator the next video you get in many cases is not another video from that creator yeah even if it's in a sequential kind of series or lineup so yeah that's what they're hoping to do with this as well is shows will have a higher probability of being served to viewers in that sequential kind of way.

20:10Yeah, exactly. Lauren, so excited about this interview with Casper. Such a refined South African gentleman living in England now. Nothing if not refined. Yes. I've known Casper for a long time. I met him for my memory for first meeting him was at Summer in the City, which was sort of the UK's answer because he's based in the UK, has been for a while. God, if it was 2016, maybe something like that. Long time ago. Yeah. With like Zoella. Remember Zoella? And he's, of course, who doesn't remember Zoella? He's had this incredible career. First as a creator, he had over 15 million subscribers across all of his social networks, almost 7 million subscribers on YouTube, and was among the top YouTube creators in the world at a certain point.

20:56Yeah. especially during this kind of like second wave UK invasion of all these YouTube vloggers back then. Yeah.

21:05Caspar Lee:That were so big. Yeah. And what he was able to do is transition all that experience, expertise, probably revenue that he made as well, into just a broad set of these entrepreneurial endeavors that we get into, including the influencer marketing agency, Influencer.com, MVE, which is a talent management joint venture with WME, and the VC firm, Creator Ventures, which recently raised its second fund with$45 million. So now with all their assets under management, they have about 65 million bucks across their two funds. I've invested in companies like Beehive, Eleven Labs, and more. I mean, he's doing great so far.

21:44So it was really a pleasure to talk to him. Excited for y 'all to hear it. Casper, thank you so much for being here on the podcast.

21:51Caspar Lee:Lovely to see you again last time. I saw you were in the back of a sprinter van and I felt trapped. Not because of me, just in general. We were in Cannes Lions, or at Cannes Lions, for Cannes Lions. And yeah, we were at a beehive party actually, which is an amazing company that I've managed to become an investor in through Creative Ventures. So got to hang out with Tyler, which was really cool. He's a great CEO. and then I was whisked away into a van for an interview and you were the culprit, I think. No, I was not. Brendan Gann was the culprit. Oh, yeah. So you were being interviewed as well.

22:34I was being interviewed as well. Oh, yes.

22:36Caspar Lee:Sorry. That's horrible that I said that was you if it wasn't. I was also trapped inside the van, but we made the most of it. It was a nice air-conditioned respite from the humidity of Cannes. Yeah, that's true. In the mountains at a beautiful beehive party. any case great to see you again i really just want to dive into it you've been a youtube creator in a past life very successful youtube creator in past life millions of subscribers one of the top creators in the world for a period of time and now you're off doing all these other business ventures kind of like what phase of the creator economy do you think that we're in you've had this interesting bird's eye view this pov from a bunch of different phases in your career so i think you have just particular insight here and to kind of tell us where we're at right now yeah it must be around six or seven uh phase six or seven like if you think about it we had uh your freds do you remember fred hi fred yes um then i'd say we're like second phase i managed to be in like second and third phase maybe um and then and then yeah you you've had a few creators who came in between fourth fifth um yeah so i say i think like sixth now and we're going back towards more kind of relaxing long form content but there was a time when everything became really hyper uh hyperactive short quick and i know we do it all obviously you get it all online but i think like what i'm starting to see is people just like starting channels as like truck drivers or um someone doing a three-hour what it's like on my holiday with me video and like it's going more towards that kind of phase where i was doing youtube which is exciting because i love to watch that kind of content and then what about from a business perspective in terms of phases i mean yeah we're seeing we're seeing a lot of brands now thinking about um social media and creator marketing as like the number one priority for them.

24:43Caspar Lee:You know, you're hearing companies like Unilever's CEO doubling down on influencers. You're seeing creative for massive campaigns starting on social media and going out. At Canline, I was really lucky to be part of the social and creative jury. And there were just incredible campaigns from the world's biggest brands who now really understand each platform, why they should be on it, how they should do it. And so, yeah, we're going into that phase of people now get it. They're now putting the accelerator on in terms of the amount of money they're spending on it. But with that also means there's a lot more scrutiny and competition in the market.

25:22Is this a relatively new shift? Like, have you seen a definitive acceleration since Cannes, or is this a gradual kind of uptick over the last few years?

25:32Caspar Lee:It feels gradual, but it's obviously, it's just every year it just gets bigger and bigger. We've been talking about it for a long time and I'm surrounded by people who talk about it. So for me, it's hard to see it as a new thing because every year for 10 years, we've been talking about it at all these events. But you're really seeing action now starting, well, not even starting to happen. You're seeing it getting to full throttle. and so it's super exciting to be kind of at the center of that and helping our clients that influence and navigate it and really start to think like creators and I think in general businesses are you know going through this transition brands not only creators and within media but businesses are starting to have to be entrepreneurial with how they are and I think creators are a great example for that so we're excited to help them obviously when it comes to content, but just to think more like creators is something we're excited to do too.

26:29And what does that mean really to think like a creator? What are you telling all the brands that you work with as influencer? Is there like a standard kind of commandments of how to operate?

26:38Caspar Lee:A way we like to help our clients operate is to be a lot more agile, especially on social media, because it's so important to have speed. And so as one of the kind of the larger independent influencer marketing agencies, I think our clients are We're really excited to work with a team of people who can literally react at a moment's notice, but also change minds and be flexible. And that's like one, a very creative first thing, but it's also a very entrepreneurial thing that we love to do at Influencer. Obviously, we also are trying to help brands when it comes to letting go a little bit of the idea that you have to control every single thing that is being said about your brand.

27:18Caspar Lee:people are understanding that but you can't just tell them to completely let go and not care at all because that can also end in problems so having that delicate balance of letting go but also having like the safety net and the technology to be able to vet the creators you're working with and the kind of content you're doing so those are like two kind of highlights I would call out but then the other thing we're trying to do is just like help educate them on the nuances of all the platforms and and just social in general what's trending now it's creators are so good at understanding and having instinct and brands are uh you know that maybe they're as a brand you've you've worked at one company and now you've come to a new company and it's a whole new challenge whereas a lot of creators have been doing what they've been doing for many years and so we try and help with data and ai to like educate the people working with on exactly where they should be looking within social, what kind of trends they should be jumping on, and how they can really go from strength to strength on social.