Today’s guest started styling himself as a creator to sell fish.
Kyle Lee owns a wild-caught seafood business in Alaska. After the pandemic, when his business supplying restaurants temporarily dried up, he decided to launch a direct-to-consumer function; he got in front of the camera and started making day-in-the-life videos.
I called Kyle to discuss how becoming a creator changed his fish business.
— Francis Zierer, Lead Editor
Give your AI the whole story
You know exactly what this week's issue should say. Who it's for, the story you want to open with, where the sponsor fits, the tone you're going for. Then you open ChatGPT and type one line, because typing out the rest feels like writing the issue yourself.
With Wispr Flow, you just talk it through. Say the whole brief out loud the way you'd explain it to a co-writer, and Wispr Flow turns it into clean, ready-to-send text right in the prompt box. Ramble a little, change your mind halfway through, throw in an um. Only what you meant makes it in.
More context in, a better first draft out. ChatGPT, Claude, beehiiv, a DM. Any app on your phone or computer, four times faster than typing.
Wispr Flow is free. Get one month of Wispr Flow Pro with unlimited words through our link.
A commercial fisherman becomes a creator
Warm and dry.
I was warm and dry the first time I saw one of Kyle Lee’s videos. And he, at least in the video, was on a boat somewhere off Alaska, wrestling with a net full of writhing salmon.
In the space of about one minute, I learned that Kyle was an Alaskan wild fisherman, supplied seafood to high-end restaurants across America (including Nobu), and that I, too, could purchase his product directly.
And I was entertained. It’s a food-and-travel show, but it’s always also an ad; you will learn those basic facts (Alaska, Nobu, available to purchase) in nearly every Fisherman Kyle video. Even as he has leaned more into the trappings of creatordom (last month he ran his first ad for a product other than his own, Meta One), the fact remains: Kyle is on camera to sell fish.
Until COVID, Kyle’s customers were restaurants across the country. When they shuttered, his business — then called Alaskan Salmon Company, now Outerseas — dried up. By April 2021, they had launched a direct-to-consumer site (Kyle made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list the next year). Now they needed to drum up demand.
Their first marketing push included Meta ads, Google ads, email marketing, SEO, and organic content. SEO worked best; Kyle wrote the content himself, hacking his way through.
Kyle began consuming more content and understanding that he’d have to move into organic social video. They hired a social media manager, who would post recipes and other seafood-related content, but “it just wasn’t working,” and they “axed” that program.
Their next play? Creator seeding. The issue with creator seeding was that nobody knew anything about their brand yet.
Alaskan Salmon Company’s social accounts barely had any followers, and the content was mostly photos of salmon dishes, with a few scrappy videos of Kyle, his crew, and the sea. They were about to send out “thirty boxes” of fish the next day, and they needed an introductory video at the top of their socials.
“I honestly just recorded at eleven thirty at night on Sunday. I'm on my couch. I recorded a snippet of who I am, what I'm trying to do. ‘Hey, I'm a fisherman in Alaska. We want to skip the middleman and ship directly to you guys.’
And that was our first video that, you know, to us, went viral. Like a couple hundred thousand views overnight.”
Kyle became the creator. It worked; he comes across as earnest, hard-working, charming. You see him hauling the fish in himself, alongside a small crew; you see the provenance of this product and trust his claims of quality.
That breakout video was posted in July 2022. It has 1.9 million views on TikTok today, with a further 155k on Instagram.
Why would a creator-focused venture fund back a fisherman?
To contextualize Kyle’s work, we can look to Alaska Seafood’s 2026 report on the state’s seafood industry (using yearly-averaged data from 2023 and 2024). During that period, per year:
Alaskan fishermen harvested 5.1 billion pounds of seafood
Processors turned that harvest into 2.4 billion pounds of salable product, valued at $4.2 billion
The industry directly employed 41,800 workers
Kyle was one of 5,350 individual commercial salmon permit holders in Alaska this year. The majority are not running direct-to-consumer e-commerce plays.
Content is how he stands out.
Content is also how Kyle landed an investment from the Slow Ventures Creator Fund last year. Unlike the two other fund portfolio creators we’ve featured (Tayla Cannon and Center Consoles Only), the investment details haven’t been publicized, just that the amount was between $1 million and $3 million.
When Slow first pushed to invest, Kyle was unsure: “I’m not your guy. Like, I’m just a fisherman. I’m gonna keep fishing. This is my one thing.”
In a recent long-form YouTube video, Kyle drives his brand-new $500k boat from Washington back to Alaska. I asked him if the Slow investment had purchased the boat. No; it was financed through the state’s generous loan program.
I asked why Slow would even invest in a fishing business to begin with. Where’s the scale opportunity?
“A business entity can’t own multiple fishing permits, right? So that’s obviously a [roadblock] for a VC investment. You can’t scale that part.”
Down the line, the more Kyle’s platform grows, there may be a scale opportunity to help distribute other fishermen’s products. For now, he’s still building his own platform.
Slow’s funding solved “inventory and supply chain,” ensuring the business has enough product to sell; this has enabled Kyle to focus more on content; on growing the business.
Fishing for views
Kyle’s total 2025 Instagram short-form-video post count was 19. This includes two collaborative posts originally posted by accounts other than his or his company’s. Total view count? 24.45 million.
His first video of 2025 was posted in January; his last was posted in October; he wouldn’t post another until February 2026.
“I can plan to shoot all the content. But when I get on the boat, and we actually start fishing, I don’t care … My focus is keeping the crew safe and finding the fish. That’s my only job.”
Most of those views (15.6 million) come from one video, characteristic of his most popular uploads: a day-in-the-life video where the viewer sees the hard work that goes into catching and processing wild seafood.
On TikTok, where Kyle first started posting, the video has a comparatively low 1.7 million views:
This year, so far, Kyle has published 29 videos — to 17.5 million total views, a lower total view count than the previous year. Does the decrease in views matter?
“Our behind-the-scenes, day-in-the-life fishing videos … some of them get great reach. We reach a lot of new followers, a lot of new people, a lot of clicks, but it doesn’t convert. It’s crazy.”
He says TikTok helps with awareness, but Meta’s platforms drive the most sales.
Did I buy Kyle’s fish after I saw that first video, sat scrolling on my couch? No. But I’ve kept watching the videos, and I’ve been to the website and checked out the prices. I asked Kyle how much of Outerseas’ sales now come through organic content versus other channels.
“True attribution, that’s the billion-dollar question, right? So the direct sales that we can measure and track are very small. Maybe less than five percent. But it has overflow into all of our other channels … when a video performs and does well, CAC [customer acquisition cost] decreases.”
A rising tide, as they say, lifts all boats.
A successful leap from short-form to long-form video
Success in short-form video does not guarantee success in long-form video.
Two guests I enjoyed speaking to about this recently were Imran Mumtaz and Jack Settleman. Imran was still figuring out how to make the jump. Jack figured it out, but as part of the process, he abandoned a YouTube channel with over 500k subscribers that kept failing to generate long-form views.
Kyle’s success in short-form has translated to long-form.
His first YouTube video, uploaded this July, only has 11k views. He’s published four more since, all of which have broken 100k. The record-holder has 646k views:
The most impressive part of this successful short-to-long-form leap is that the core value to Kyle and his business has not changed. It’s still just an ad for his fish! Hundreds of thousands of viewers are still watching it! And they’re spending ten-plus minutes with it instead of just one minute.
What’s working here that hasn’t worked for other creators making the jump?
The packaging: Kyle is hardly reinventing the wheel. In fact, he’s stealing it! The above title and thumbnail are simply Kyle and his team applying what worked for a bigger creator to his specific scenario.
Nick DiGiovanni used this packaging 1 year ago to the tune of 22 million views.
Kyle isn’t even the only creator to replicate this format:
Danny Kim used this packaging 6 months ago to the tune of 2.2 million views.
Don’t overthink it. Great YouTubers develop their own packaging style and formats, but there’s nothing wrong with covering the hits when you’re still learning.
The content:
It’s a food-and-travel show. Kyle isn’t quite Anthony Bourdain, but his appeal overlaps.
It’s a scarce product. Any schmuck can go out in the streets of, say, New York, grind out 100 street interviews, and stumble on some great guest who then goes viral. That same schmuck doesn’t own a decade-old wild Alaskan seafood business; he doesn't have a boat to film on, and he doesn't have fish to bring to a stranger’s door.
In this particular video — rejection, risk. We understand that Kyle will be undergoing the humiliation ritual of asking strangers to let him into their homes and cook for them; we understand he will face rejection before he gets a yes. We’re promised a payoff!
What does this video share with his successful short-form?
Adventure. When was the last time you were on a boat? In Alaska? Fishing?
Kyle. He’s a capable host — charming, handsome, slightly awkward in the creator-host role in a way that signals authenticity.
Establishes authority. Kyle shows us the warehouse where his fish are stored, shows workers processing said fish, and — crucially — name-drops some famous and fancy restaurants he supplies.
Where does this video differ from his short-form?
Production value. Kyle’s short-form videos are shot by him and his fishing crew. He edits them himself. For the YouTube videos, he has a dedicated shooter with appropriate, high-quality equipment: “With the long form there’s a lot more production to it. So we have our videographer, we have our editor, and we have our producer for that.”
Characters beyond Kyle and his crew. Out in the world, other people enter Kyle’s story, which also serves to color his character as we see how new people understand and interact with him.
“If you grow the community on YouTube, because … the content is more thorough and there’s just more for the viewer to sink their teeth into, you can build a deeper relationship. Whereas short form, it’s the retention edits … what’s gonna keep them watching this next one-second clip, right? … On YouTube, if they care, they’re gonna stick and watch… the people who are staying are the ones who want to know.”
I’m reminded of another recent Spotlight guest, Jess Ramos. For her, YouTube videos were effective at funneling viewers to her paid courses. Long-form converts; this is the bet Kyle is making with YouTube.
