In a good mark for online startups for consumers, Creator Ventures raises $ 45 million

“I have a beautiful wild story to tell you about,” says YouTube’s star early on YouTube Caspar Lee at A. Tikhak.

He continues to tell the story of how the startup founder has slipped into LinkedIn DMS with a stadium about an environmentally friendly deodorant called Wild. He ignored the message at the beginning, but his cousin Sasha Calitsky, then BridgePoint investor, asked me whether he and some other creators want to enter the seed tour. In April, about five and a half years later, Wild was sold to Unilever £233 million, or about 286 million dollars.

The wilderness will be just a tip of the iceberg of Calesky and Lee. In 2019, they formed Creator Ventures, which is a pre -seeds investment fund that focuses on Internet companies for consumers. Now, Creator Ventures launches its second fund for $ 45 million, more than twice its previous fund of $ 20 million.

Creator Ventures already has a busy record in making some solid bets on startups in the seed phase. Eleven Labs, an Amnesty International Voice Company, is now valued at more than $ 3.3 billion, part of the Creator Ventures I. The company also invested on the loud newsletter platform BeehiveAnd he led the application of learning the language of artificial intelligence PracticingA seed tour.

After six years of working with its first fund, the Creator Ventures II will continue to invest in companies facing consumers, but taking into account artificial intelligence-this is not a surprise to hear it in 2025.

“There is a trillion dollars of spending that passes through iOS and Android apps every year, and if a small percentage of that becomes taken by consumer AI applications, this will be a large group of uniforms.”

Regardless of the interest in artificial intelligence, Kalesky sees some other prosperous trends in the consumer internet space. He is especially interested in Microdrama flow Applications, which were long -standing in the Asian market, but began to make a real year in the United States

“The crazy part of Reelshort, which is great, is pricing,” said Calitsky. “People sometimes do not realize that they charge $ 20 a week … it’s much more expensive than Netflix.”

To date this year, according to applications of applications for the application store, Microdrama Apps Dramabox and ReelSHort have achieved $ 99 million and $ 152 million in application purchases in the United States, respectively. These numbers reflect 203 % and 233 % growth on an annual basis of the same time frame in 2024.

Some Creator Ventures ‘Betthade’ are more guessed. Kaleetsky and Lee are also excited to apply what is in their named wallet conditionAn application that resembles the social network where users publish updates to an audience of artificial intelligence robots, which means that no one actually sees what they publish. Robots may love your posts or cancel you. The company markets itself as “Sims but social media”.

These startups were social networks full of artificial intelligence Recklessness Over the past year, although the attractiveness of the social experiences of Amnesty International may only seem doubtful. But according to Creator Ventures, Status has more than a million global users after its launch earlier this year.

Although Creator Ventures is not necessarily a fund for the creative economy, parallel to entrepreneurship among the founders of startups and content creators such as lee remain in the company’s vision center.

“Many Internet founders find consumers that the strategy of going to the exciting market is about social,” he told me. “Many of these founders have become creative in itself … and this is something I like to participate in as a person who comes from this world.”

The second box is raised by level, Cendana, Vintage, Isomer Capital, Sequoia, and other partners. Kaletsky said that some Fund II supporters have not invested in the money that was delivered to consumers more than ten years ago.

“I think, I hope people will start seeing the capabilities of the consumer in this era,” said Calitsky.

“It is good for us to be able to invest in things that our friends and family can encounter,” he added.