At just 15 years old, Tuan Le made a bold promise. I told my parents that I would help them retire in 10 years.
The family had recently immigrated to Canada from Vietnam, and Lee’s parents worked tirelessly to support him and his sister.
“I remember my grandfather coming home at like 7 a.m. and my mom telling me after a week that she had lost about 5 pounds,” the 25-year-old told CNBC Make It. “That was a wake-up moment for me. That’s when I said to my parents, ‘Give me 10 years and I’ll retire.'”
His parents wanted to give Lee and his sister better opportunities, he says. Although her family was “very comfortable in Vietnam,” there weren’t as many opportunities for college graduates as there were in the United States, Lee said. Lee says her parents “sold everything” to move the family to Canada, but the move caused a lot of depression and anger for Lee, who didn’t speak much English at the time.
But in 2025, Lee made good on his promise to help his parents retire. The success of the Toronto-based video production company he founded, ShortsCut, allows Le to send his parents 5,000 Canadian dollars (approximately 3,652 USD) each month. That’s enough to cover their rent and living expenses, as they live about an hour outside of Toronto.
“My parents said they wanted to do something with their time, so I’m still working, but I don’t have to work,” he says. His parents work two days a week at his mother’s farmers’ market stand.
Lee achieved her goal of helping her parents quit their jobs in 2025.
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Le founded ShortsCut in 2023, which creates short-form videos for brands. The company primarily produces videos for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. He says he started with small jobs filming food at restaurants around Toronto and eventually leveled up to creating high-quality videos designed to go viral on social media.
In 2025, ShortsCut made a profit of $1.08 million, with a net income of just over $488,000, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The company typically has 10 to 12 customers, including pet food and technology companies, Le said.
“If you’re the best in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”
While struggling to adjust to life in Canada, Le, a teenager, played a lot of video games and eventually started cutting video montages of his gameplay, he says.
“That’s how I got into video editing,” he says. From there, “I started editing videos for League of Legends YouTubers, and then I funded YouTubers (and) some dropship YouTubers.”
At the time, he says, he was charging C$20 for about 20 minutes of video. He enjoyed the video editing process so much that he decided to pursue it professionally and enrolled in the Toronto Film School a year after graduating from high school in 2018.
Tuan Le founded ShortsCut, a Toronto-based video production company, in 2023.
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One of his first assignments was to create a video about a topic that was meaningful to him, and he created a short film about his parents. According to Lee, the film was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame, but he decided to drop out at that point, just four months after enrolling.
“For me, it was like, ‘Wow, that’s disgusting,’ but I also heard things like, ‘If you’re the best in the room, you’re in the wrong place,'” he says.
“I’ll help spread the word.”
After dropping out of film school, Lee cold-mailed “every CEO, production company, marketing agency in Toronto,” trying to find “any job” that would allow him to make a living making videos. However, he lacked professional experience and received no offers.
Ultimately, Lee offered to work for three months for free at a Toronto-based content production company in exchange for training in business operations, such as writing emails and negotiating deals.
Meanwhile, Lee began filming his own videos on the side. He said he sent a message to “every restaurant” in Toronto asking if they would be willing to make a video in exchange for a meal.
“I was shooting videos of restaurants in exchange for free food, and I was living out of a suitcase on a friend’s couch with my laptop,” Lee says.
Lee began studying at the Toronto Film School, but dropped out after four months.
Scott Drucker CNBC Make It
He started making videos of small food stalls and mom-and-pop shops on his phone before upgrading to a better camera obtained from Facebook Marketplace. Still, Le found that when restaurants posted videos on Instagram, they weren’t getting as many views or engagement.
At the time, TikTok was really starting to take off, and Le saw it as an opportunity. He charged his customers $2,000 to make 10 TikToks.
“If it doesn’t work or doesn’t get any views, I’ll give you your money back,” he reportedly told them.
The first video Le created for a client had 700,000 views, he says. And the next one was 300,000. His strategy was simply to identify trending video formats and create similar videos to promote his restaurant. He says his viral videos helped one client gain 9,000 followers overnight.
“After that, I thought, ‘Wow, I feel like I got something here,'” he says. “I introduced that case study[to other clients]and was like, ‘Hey, I can help you go viral.'”
After three months of unpaid work, Le resigned and launched ShortsCut at the end of 2022. The company was officially launched in January 2023.
“You can be a little paranoid.”
Le quickly began working with brands outside the restaurant world, including Buldak Ramen and AI software company Replit.
As Le’s portfolio grew, so did his prices. Initially, ShortsCut charged $2,000 per client per month. We use a retainer model, so the number of videos produced each month varies depending on the client. Currently, the company charges between $10,000 and $16,000 per month.
In the company’s early days, Le would guarantee virality and refund customers’ money if they didn’t, but he only had to refund it once, he says.
“Now that I have a track record of making things go viral and I’ve earned the credit for myself, I don’t have to make that commitment anymore,” he says.
Mr. Le first joined the company in February 2023, and by the end of 2025, the staff had grown to 15 content creators, scriptwriters, project managers and other talent worldwide.
“You have to be a little bit delusional to play this game,” Le says.
Scott Drucker CNBC Make It
Lee said he’s proud of the company he’s built and its ability to achieve his goal of helping his parents retire, but he’s not done yet.
“(ShortsCut) wants to be $100 million (in revenue) within five years,” Le says. “I’m a little paranoid…you have to be a little paranoid to play this game.”
Conversion from Canadian dollars to US dollars was performed using the OANDA exchange rate of 0.73 Canadian dollars to 1 US dollar on December 31, 2025. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.
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