YouTube sensation Caspar Lee on why he quit the platform to build a business empire

Caspar Lee belongs to a crop of content creators who found early success on YouTube back in the 2010s, commanding millions of views on the platform.

The 30-year-old serial entrepreneur, who was born in England and raised in Knysna, a town in South Africa, said he lucked out on the YouTube scene after restarting his channel three times. He racked up over 6 million subscribers through a range of comedic videos, including pranks and challenges. 

He credits his success to collaborating with other famous YouTubers from the likes of Zoe Sugg, Marcus Butler, Joe Sugg, MrBeast and KSI.

The YouTube sensation also featured celebrities like Ed Sheeran, Justin Timberlake, Anna Kendrick and Kevin Hart in his videos and gained anywhere between 1 to 18 million views for each.

"I was lucky to be part of a group of individuals who all came up together, so I never necessarily had talents I don't think, other than the fact that I was able to collaborate 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 years old when I started to get millions of views and looking back, it was just the dawn of this whole creator economy, and I didn't really know what that was at the time. I don't think any of us did. We were just having a bunch of fun."

The creator economy refers to people making an income by monetizing their skills, talents and hobbies online. And it's a booming industry estimated to grow to $480 billion by 2027, up from $250 billion in 2023, per a Goldman Sachs report. 

Being 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