Building A Billion-Dollar Fandom With David Lee, CFO And COO Of WEBTOON Entertainment

Why It Matters

WEBTOON’s IPO validates the creator‑economy as a high‑growth, public‑market asset, signaling strong monetization potential for user‑generated digital media. The company’s scale and youthful audience position it to dominate future entertainment and licensing revenue streams.

Key Takeaways

• 24M creators produce 120k stories daily.
• 160M monthly active users worldwide.
• 18‑25 demographic drives engagement.
• IPO June 2024 under ticker WBTN.
• Global creator economy fuels billion‑dollar fandom.

Pulse Analysis

Webtoon’s rapid ascent illustrates how a platform‑centric creator economy can rival traditional media powerhouses. By leveraging algorithmic curation, the service surfaces high‑quality comics from a massive pool of independent artists, turning casual mobile scrolling into a lucrative subscription and advertising model. This approach not only democratizes content creation but also creates a pipeline of IP that can be repurposed for streaming services, merchandise, and film adaptations, expanding revenue beyond the digital page.

The June 2024 IPO marks a watershed moment for digital‑content marketplaces, providing public‑market capital to accelerate global expansion and technology investment. Investors are drawn to Webtoon’s impressive engagement metrics—average session lengths of 30‑60 minutes—and its dominance in key markets across Asia and the West. The company’s focus on the 18‑25 demographic aligns with advertisers seeking high‑value, mobile‑first audiences, while its multilingual publishing infrastructure enables rapid cross‑border content diffusion.

David Lee’s leadership underscores the importance of operational rigor in a fast‑moving creative environment. His blend of advertising, consulting, and financial expertise drives a culture of accountability that balances artistic freedom with disciplined growth targets. As Webtoon continues to monetize its vast creator base and explore new licensing deals, the platform is poised to shape the future of entertainment, setting a benchmark for how user‑generated content can generate billion‑dollar valuations.

Building A Billion-Dollar Fandom With David Lee, CFO And COO Of WEBTOON Entertainment

Interview with David Lee, CFO & COO of WEBTOON Entertainment · Interviewed by Jack McCullough

Companies must be ready to change as market trends and customer demands evolve. To avoid losing momentum and keep your entire team on the right track, maintaining a culture of accountability is a must. David Lee, CFO and COO of WEBTOON Entertainment, explains how creating such a workplace environment helped make WEBTOON the world’s largest digital‑comics platform.

In this conversation with Jack McCullough, Lee discusses how to achieve entrepreneurial success in a global company without sacrificing artistic touch and human connection. He also shares how his mentors, his experiences working with different companies, and the most important lessons of his childhood shaped him into a versatile CFO in today’s volatile market. The Q&A, lightly trimmed and edited for clarity, follows.

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Podcast intro

“This is going to be a great episode of The Secrets of Rockstar CFOs. I have a CFO who’s certainly had one of the most interesting backgrounds of anyone I’ve interviewed on this show. He’s worked for some of the most transformative companies in the industry, and I’ve actually wanted to work with him for quite a while. The fates just didn’t allow it until this moment, so I’m really excited. Please welcome David Lee, CFO and Chief Operating Officer of WEBTOON Entertainment. At a 10,000‑foot view, WEBTOON is the world’s largest digital comics platform, home to some of the biggest artists, IP and fandom in all of comics. David, welcome to the show.”

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Jack McCullough: Great, thank you. It’s been a long time coming and I’m eager to spend time with you, Jack, as well.

David Lee: Absolutely. WEBTOON’s a fascinating company, and one of my gifts—and one of my sins—is that I oversimplify things, but you could maybe give a little bit more of a holistic view of the company.

Jack: Absolutely.

David: WEBTOON at its core is a global digital‑storytelling hub. On the one hand, we have 24 million creators who are producing over 120 000 new stories every day that arrive on our platform. We use technology to surface the best of those stories. For the most part, these creators have full‑time jobs; we work really hard to let anyone with a Wi‑Fi connection see if the story in their head can become a global success.

On the other side of our business, we have over 160 million monthly active users, and we’re the category creator and leader in every market in which we compete. A creator gets the benefit of publishing in one language—his or her home language—and quickly finding success globally. The format is quite interesting in the palm of your hand on a mobile device.

Our strongest demographic, by the way, is 18‑to‑25 year‑olds—my daughter’s age. You can just flick your finger and see where a story is going very quickly. On the other hand, you can choose to deeply engage for 30‑60 minutes on average, which is what we find amongst our consumers. The last bit is, I think, that the world needs a source of evergreen stories that don’t come from the tried‑and‑true, possibly tired sources that have previously dominated the market. I’m excited to give a platform to creators and to allow consumers to find a story they didn’t expect to find anywhere else.

Jack: It’s an amazing story, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you went public a little less than a year ago as of the time we’re having this conversation.

David: Yes. The company went public on NASDAQ under the ticker WBTN at the end of June 2024, and I joined in November 2023 to shepherd our globalization and our passage to being publicly traded. It’s been quite recent. We are new to the world of being a public company, and frankly a lot of consumers know us really well—they’ve seen our stories on Netflix and Amazon because they turn into great films. A lot of our investors are realizing that their households know this. Often, their 18‑to‑25‑year‑old friends or family members are aware of us. For those of us who are a bit older, it may be a new story.

Jack: I have to admit I was more familiar with you because you went public than because of the actual underlying business model, but it’s just a really fascinating company. Before we get into it, I want to chat a little about you, David. Where did you grow up?

David: I grew up in what felt like a rural town called Spokane, Washington, on the border between Idaho and Washington State. My parents came over as medical doctors and ran a two‑doctor practice. They would go on home visits, serving marginalized parts of the population. I remember seeing them get paid in apples, venison, or IOUs.

I grew up in an entrepreneurial setting where my parents were business owners with a vocation—trying to create a positive externality for the community. From there I spent time on the East Coast, in the Midwest for college, and now I’m here in California.

Jack: Your parents literally had the black medical bags.

David: It felt like a TV series out of the past, a traditional medical practice. They were primary‑care physicians who helped bring children into the world and watched them grow. For them, being a doctor was a definition of care to a community that, in our modern age of healthcare, may have been lost a bit.

When large HMOs and managed‑care companies arrived, they stuck to their tradition of providing the best care one patient at a time. Seeing them fight hard to pay bills and still serve patients for free left a strong imprint on me: great business that delivers returns can still be paired with a positive difference in the world.

Jack: It’s funny you mentioned a TV show. When you said the black bag I immediately thought of Dr. Marcus Welby, MD.

David: That’s right. It’s not before my time, but I thought it better to let you bring it up.

Jack: When you said paying in apples, I thought of the doctor from Little House on the Prairie.

David: Little House on the Prairie was my father’s favorite series. I may have seen every episode a couple of times.

Jack: Did your parents migrate from Korea?

David: Yes. They came from Korea in 1965, a time when the United States was struggling to serve more rural communities with healthcare professionals. They had both graduated from medical school in Korea, did their residencies in New York and Ohio, and then set up practice in Spokane.

Jack: You had a fascinating childhood. Does that impact your worldview now that you work for a globally oriented organization?

David: Looking back, I was imprinted with the idea of evaluating every situation as if it were the first—never assuming because you’ve seen something before that it will be the same. That mindset has stuck with me throughout my career. It’s why I’ve tended to work on large transformations or on “new‑to‑the‑world” startups. There’s also a first‑ or second‑generation immigrant mentality of pulling yourself up and believing in the American Dream of hard work leading to success. That belief, that work ethic, and being taught that you can do business differently and perhaps solve problems better has been a theme throughout my career.

Jack: Parents have an indelible imprint. You attended Harvard—what did you major in?

David: I did. I arrived at Harvard without a rural background, but the tall buildings of Boston and Cambridge impressed me. I was equally interested in the sciences and the liberal arts, so I majored in Government (essentially Political Science) while also fulfilling all my pre‑med requirements.

During college I created entrepreneurial groups, booked gigs, and fell in love with business outside of medicine. By my senior year I realized I didn’t want to be a medical doctor; the profession felt very different from my childhood experiences. I wanted to walk in the shoes of consumers, predict what they would want to buy, and be better off in any business pursuit.

I moved to Chicago and worked for the Leo Burnett Company, an ad agency. My first‑year salary was less than $20,000. Impoverished but learning quickly, I launched new brands and products, managed teams early, and eventually spent four years there managing a large team. That combination of marketing, advertising, and “air‑traffic‑controller” experience with clients like General Motors was a pivotal first job.

Jack: First jobs can set you up for long‑term success if you have good mentors.

David: Exactly. I was lucky to have mentors who took an interest in me early on. Later I pursued an MBA at the University of Chicago. While completing the MBA, I was already working for McKinsey as part of an experimental group of three associates—usually post‑PhD, post‑MBA. Balancing the MBA and a post‑MBA role at McKinsey was intense, but McKinsey became a second source of education in management, finance, and operations, opening doors beyond advertising.

Jack: It sounds like the MBA helped unlock those opportunities.

David: Absolutely. It gave me the foundation and credibility to move into finance and strategy roles, eventually leading to my current position at WEBTOON.

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End of interview.