WEBTOON CFO David Lee Builds Creator Economy at Scale While Eyeing Profitability

David Lee wears two hats at WEBTOON Entertainment—CFO and COO—which makes sense when you consider the company's challenge: figuring out how to turn a massive global audience of comic readers into a sustainable business model while keeping hundreds of thousands of creators happy.

The dual role reflects the reality of running a creator economy platform at scale. Lee isn't just managing the balance sheet; he's architecting the operational infrastructure that connects creators in Seoul, São Paulo, and Seattle to readers scrolling through episodes on their phones during lunch breaks. For finance leaders watching the creator economy mature from speculative investment thesis to actual P&L management, WEBTOON's approach offers a case study in what happens when platforms move beyond growth-at-all-costs.

WEBTOON Entertainment operates the digital comics platform where creators publish serialized stories—think manga-style comics optimized for smartphone scrolling—and readers consume them, often for free with ad support or through microtransactions for early access to episodes. The company has built what Lee describes as a "billion-dollar fandom," though the path to that scale required rethinking traditional media economics.

The financial model differs from legacy publishing in fundamental ways. Traditional comic publishers paid creators upfront advances and owned the intellectual property. WEBTOON inverts this: creators retain IP rights while the platform takes a revenue share from reader spending and advertising. This means WEBTOON's finance function must track payments to a distributed network of creators across multiple countries, each with different tax treatments and payment preferences, while simultaneously managing a two-sided marketplace where reader engagement drives creator earnings.

Lee's operational responsibilities intersect directly with financial performance. Creator satisfaction affects content supply, which drives reader engagement, which generates revenue. If the payment systems lag or creator support falters, the entire flywheel slows. This explains why the CFO role extends into operations—the unit economics only work if the operational machinery runs smoothly.

The company faces the classic platform profitability question: when to stop subsidizing growth and start extracting margin. WEBTOON has raised significant venture capital, which typically comes with expectations around path to profitability. Lee's challenge is balancing continued creator investment—the lifeblood of content supply—against investor expectations for improving unit economics.

What makes WEBTOON's situation particularly relevant for finance leaders is the creator economy's maturation. Early-stage platforms could promise growth and worry about monetization later. Now investors want to see sustainable business models. That means CFOs at creator platforms must build financial infrastructure that scales: automated royalty calculations, multi-currency payment rails, fraud detection for fake engagement, and analytics that help creators understand what content performs.

Lee's dual role suggests WEBTOON views financial discipline and operational excellence as inseparable. The company can't optimize creator payments without understanding content performance. It can't forecast revenue without modeling creator behavior. The finance function becomes strategic when it's embedded in operations rather than observing from the corporate office.

For CFOs at other platform businesses, WEBTOON's approach raises questions about organizational design. Should finance leaders take on operational responsibilities when the business model requires tight integration between financial performance and operational execution? The traditional separation of duties assumes finance measures what operations does. In creator economies, the measurement IS the operation.