Jimmy Donaldson started posting videos on YouTube in 2012 at the age of 12, but soon after, a classmate discovered his YouTube channel and started making fun of him. Donaldson, who was born in Kansas in 1998, deleted all the videos. However, he soon began uploading again to MrBeast, which remains his profile to this day and is the world’s most subscribed YouTube channel managed by a single person (instead, fourth overall).
MrBeast currently has 118 million subscribers. His latest video, titled Hydraulic Press Vs Lamborghini, has been viewed 38 million times in about two days and features a number of bizarre and spectacular gimmicks, including a Lamborghini car being crushed under a hydraulic press and a car being crushed School buses flew over a number of cars.
These types of pyrotechnic stunts are one of the hallmarks of Mr. Beast’s videos, along with an insistence on philanthropy — particularly on environmental issues — and in general, the frequent resort to donating large sums of money to strangers, or anyone who takes part in the videos, to bring viewers closer to entertain.
For example, in December 2021, a few months after the huge success of the Netflix series Squid Game, Donaldson released a 25-minute video in which he recreated some of the challenges from the series: $456,000 up for grabs. It cost “about two million dollars plus a million and a half for the various prices,” he said, to build the massive set necessary for the multi-day shoot explained Donaldson on Twitter. The entire Netflix series, consisting of nine episodes, cost around $21 million. Videos like the one inspired by Squid Game are also made possible by a significant investment in the production of each piece of content, starting with a new 15,000-square-foot studio costing around $14 million.
The first time Donaldson gave thousands of dollars to a stranger was in a video posted to YouTube on June 16, 2017 related to TV series. So he decided to ask the company for ten thousand dollars for the video, money that he would then donate to the first homeless person he met on the street and filmed everything. He wanted $10,000 in particular because a round number in the title of the video would work better. After long negotiations, he got the money and shot the video, which was an instant success.
Since then, gifts of this kind have become increasingly excessive: in one of his latest videos, he rallied friends and co-workers whom he urged to stay on a private jet with one hand for as long as possible, promising the jet as a reward for anyone who resisted longer (a few months earlier he had done the same with a Lamborghini). A few months earlier, he had given MrBeast’s millionth subscriber a deserted island. In another case, the participants of the video had to place as many objects as possible within a triangular perimeter: whatever they could fit in, they received as a gift.
The success of MrBeast has prompted other content creators to replicate his method. In December 2021, rapper Fedez and streamer Panetty distributed a thousand euros to five needy people chosen by their audience on Twitch, the live streaming platform. The gesture attracted a lot of criticism, especially because of the vehicle the two use to move around Milan, the singer’s Lamborghini. After Donaldson, other YouTubers have done the same, including Jimmy Darts, who recently donated $20,000 to a homeless person in a controversial video.
The relationship between YouTubers, often very rich, and poor people is one of the most problematic elements of the success of MrBeast and a specific type of successful content on YouTube. The most common accusation is that charities like this are done for the sole purpose of filming and publicizing the whole thing, and are being exaggerated economically to make the content more attractive. It’s what Michigan Daily’s Sophia Lehrbaum called “YouTube’s charity complex,” noting that the phenomenon “thrives on giving the homeless things they can’t refuse (…), provided the YouTuber is also personally involved with the interaction.” benefits, both socially and monetarily.
Over the past two years, MrBeast has also been the focus of a series of allegations, beginning with an article in The New York Times in which some of his employees and associates denounced a “hostile work environment” and described “excessive demands” and also attitudes to be strict Team. Testimonials consistent with Donaldson’s self-portrayal, particularly regarding the work-life balance, which is absent in his case: Last October, he said he didn’t need the money because his only occupation was making videos, which is why he until can stay in his studio for up to twenty days without going out.
The Mr. Beast Network
As recounted on the hugely popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, Donaldson has always reinvested whatever he earned into the channel from the age of 12. The economic side of his videos is based on two elements: advertising revenue from YouTube and sponsorships, with which Donaldson tries to cover a large part of the costs of producing his videos. In the case of the Squid Game video, for example, sponsor Brawl Stars (a video game) funded it $3.5 million and increased its downloads more than fourfold in the weeks following the video’s release.
Today, the MrBeast brand consists of several YouTube channels specializing in video games and reactions to other people’s content, a virtual chain of burger joints run by “ghost kitchens” across the United States, and a line of snacks and candy bars called festivals. In a recent episode of US comedian Andrew Schulz’s podcast, Donaldson confessed to turning down a multi-billion dollar offer to buy MrBeast, while according to news site Axios, some mutual funds may invest in the company in the future, giving it a rating of about one and a half billion dollars.
Prior to today’s success, MrBeast had made a name for itself with less expensive but more bizarre designs. In 2017, he rebounded while repeating popular YouTuber Logan Paul’s name hundreds of thousands of times, inevitably drawing attention – and compliments – from Paul himself. During the same period, he had counted from one to two hundred thousand in a 24-hour video (the maximum length allowed for a video by the platform).
However, the success of the MrBeast channel isn’t just tied to these gimmicks or random donations. Since he was 12, Donaldson has been obsessed with YouTube, its creators and viewers, what makes a video go viral, and what additions or changes can help make it a success. For years, while uploading videos almost daily, he studied the evolution of the site’s algorithm and the content he seemed to favor. Today, thanks to this decade of experience, each of his videos shows a remarkable attention to detail, starting with the thumbnail (the preview image), specially packaged by a specialized team, above all a designer who signs himself @venturepsd and work with other successful ones channels together.
6 YouTube Thumbnails I Made Recently…
and how they performed in the end📈
See all before and after pictures below⬇️ pic.twitter.com/D1ctsPpXdw
— Venture ✨ (@venturepsd) June 29, 2022
One of the distinctive elements of a MrBeast thumbnail is a particularly spectacular scene as a background (for example, a Lamborghini under a hydraulic press) accompanied by a close-up of Donaldson, almost always with his mouth open. Even the title is correct, written in the first person, with few words and a penchant for large numbers (usually indicating prizes to be won or the many participants in a challenge).
Once clicked on the image, the viewer immediately finds himself in front of MrBeast: there is no performance in the studio or on camera, he is immediately immersed in whatever confusing situation is at the heart of the content. Often screeching, Donaldson presents the video content, which is tightly-edited and accompanied by plenty of subtitles to ironically emphasize or comment on specific moments.
In order to increase his audience and not limit himself to the English-speaking market, Donaldson created “MrBeast en Español”, a channel where he dubs his videos into Spanish with the help of famous locals and even opens some in Portuguese, French and Russian speakers . All have several million subscribers.
Classic financial investors are rarely interested in YouTube channels, but what makes the difference in the case of MrBeast is precisely the diversification that characterizes the brand. MrBeast Burger, which opened in August 2020, is one of the prime examples of this strategy, which led to the creation of a burger that can be ordered through takeaway delivery apps. It was an instant hit, and in its second phase the project included the opening of the first store in a large New Jersey mall.
The inauguration was attended by about ten thousand people, mostly very young, who came from all parts of the United States, in what Donaldson called a world record for hamburgers sold in a single day. To publicize the event, a few days earlier he had published a video in which he organized a game of hide-and-seek with a hundred of his members in the huge shopping center where he would later inaugurate the restaurant.
And then there’s the Feastables line, a line of snack foods sold online and in stores by Walmart, the world’s largest supermarket chain, an example of how great digital creators are using the food and beverage sector to make their To monetize fame (the aforementioned Logan Paul co-founded a very successful drink called Prime with British KSI).
Donaldson himself often uses the term “obsession” when discussing his relationship with YouTube and fame. It is an element that emerges, among other things, from one of the videos that have contributed most to building his fame. It’s called “Dear Future Me (Scheduled Uploaded 6 Months Ago)” and was filmed in October 2015. In the video, Donaldson talks to himself about the future, wishes him success and that he has reached one million subscribers. As the title suggests, the video was scheduled to be released six months later on April 4, 2016.
It had just over eight thousand subscribers when it was released and by the time it was released it had reached about twenty thousand. Also thanks to this video they started to grow in a couple of weeks. Barely a year later, MrBeast had indeed reached its first million subscribers and hasn’t stopped growing ever since, following what appears to be a sophisticated plan for worldwide expansion.