Early-stage VC provides market expertise, network, social media advice, and capital to build and scale next-generation consumer technology companies

NEW YORK: Creator Ventures, an early stage venture firm investing in companies empowering the next generation of the consumer internet, today announced it has raised a $45 million Fund II, more than doubling the size of its prior fund and bringing the firm’s total assets under management to $65 million. Co-founded by cousins Sasha Kaletsky and Caspar Lee, Creator Ventures’ deep consumer internet sector focus and operating expertise stems from Kaletsky’s early successes in consumer technology investing as the co-founder of the investment club that preceded Creator Ventures and in private equity at Bridgepoint and at Uber, and Lee’s background as a creator with a combined social following of over 12 million and as the cofounder of influencer.com and WME-backed talent management firm, MVE. With Fund II, the firm plans to lead and co-lead pre-seed and seed rounds with checks ranging from $200,000 to $2.5 million, scaling its support for founders building creative tools, consumer applications, marketplaces, and AI-enabled software-as-a-service (SaaS) adjacent to the consumer internet. Creator Ventures’ new fund is backed by institutional LPs including Level Ventures, Cendana Capital, Vintage Investment Partners, Sequoia Capital, Marktlink Capital, Spring Creek, Isomer Capital, and Nexus Bay.

The consumer internet sector is vast and rapidly growing, with over $1 trillion of billings passing through Apple’s App Store ecosystem, growing 30% annually [link]. In addition, Creators and online platforms are reshaping the next-generation consumer internet, with over 200 million recreational, semi-professional and professional creators worldwide [link].

Sasha Kaletsky, Managing Partner, states: “Consumer has the largest share of global GDP, almost all the biggest historical venture outcomes started as consumer businesses, and many of the clearest use-cases for AI transformation are in consumer. And yet, a small fraction of addressable venture dollars in recent years have been allocated to consumer startups. We see this as a huge opportunity, and are building our firm to be the partner of choice for these founders.”

Built on a strong foundation of angel investing beginning in 2019 with the pair’s $1 million Investment Club for Creators (“Fund 0”), Creator Ventures launched its initial $20 million traditional venture Fund I in 2022. To date the firm has backed 30 companies, boasting best-in-class returns since inception: the firm’s 2019-22 vintage “Fund 0” Investment Club is at over 4x DPI and 6x MOIC, and 2022-25 vintage Fund I is over 0.3x DPI and 3x MOIC. A sampling of Creator Ventures’ portfolio includes:

• beehiiv, an email newsletter and blog hosting platform built for creators and SMB marketers
• Praktika.ai, an AI language learning app using avatars to teach English to students globally
• Status, a social media app that creates an interaction platform, with over 1 million users globally after its public launch in 2025
• ElevenLabs, a voice AI platform for consumers and developers
• Bounce, a global network for storing luggage and packages that partners with more than 10,000 retailers
• Palabra AI, a real-time AI voice translation company
• Creatify AI, an AI video ads marketing technology platform
• Wild, a refillable product innovation company that was acquired by Unilever in March 2025
• Runna, a running training app with AI voice coach, acquired by Strava in April 2025

Caspar Lee, General Partner, states: “Sasha and I love helping founders with their go-to-market strategies and refine product market fit,” he said. “Together, our expertise helps us to identify opportunities for our portfolio companies to successfully attract and retain consumers' attention in a competitive social media landscape. When I started filming YouTube videos in my bedroom fifteen years ago, I never imagined that this industry would become so big or that those experiences would lead me here.”

About Creator Ventures

Founded in 2022, Creator Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in founders defining the future of the consumer internet. Headquartered in New York City, the firm focuses on pre-seed and seed investments in companies developing and scaling consumer apps, creative tools, application layer consumer software, and marketplaces, and PLG SaaS adjacent to the consumer internet. For more information, visit: https://www.creator.ventures/.

Fonte: Business Wire