James Stephen Donaldson (born May 7, 1998), known as Jimmy Donaldson and MrBeast, is an American YouTuber, entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is credited with pioneering a genre of YouTube videos that centers on expensive stunts and challenges. With over 174 million subscribers as of August 8, 2023, he is the most-subscribed individual user on the platform and the second-most-subscribed channel overall.

Donaldson grew up in Greenville, North Carolina. He began posting videos to YouTube in early 2012, at the age of 13, under the handle MrBeast6000. His early content ranged from Let's Plays to "videos estimating the wealth of other YouTubers". He went viral in 2017 after his "counting to 100,000" video earned tens of thousands of views in just a few days, and he has become increasingly popular ever since, with most of his videos gaining tens of millions of views. His videos, typically involving challenges and giveaways, became increasingly grand and extravagant. Once his channel took off, Donaldson hired some of his childhood friends to co-run the brand. As of 2023, the MrBeast team is made up of over 250 people, including Donaldson himself. Other than MrBeast, Donaldson runs the YouTube channels Beast Reacts, MrBeast Gaming, MrBeast 2 (formerly MrBeast Shorts), and the philanthropy channel Beast Philanthropy. He formerly ran MrBeast 3 (initially MrBeast 2), which is now inactive. As of 2023, he is the highest paid YouTuber, and has an estimated net worth of $500 million.

Donaldson is the founder of MrBeast Burger and Feastables; and a co-creator of Team Trees, a fundraiser for the Arbor Day Foundation that has raised over $23 million; and Team Seas, a fundraiser for Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup that has raised over $30 million. Donaldson won the Creator of the Year award three times at the Streamy Awards in 2020, 2021, and 2022; he also won the Favorite Male Creator award twice at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards in 2022 and 2023. That same year, Time magazine named him as one of the world's 100 most influential people.

Early life

James Stephen Donaldson was born on May 7, 1998 in Wichita, Kansas. He was mainly raised in a middle-class household in Greenville, North Carolina with his brother CJ. He moved often and was under the care of au pairs due to his parents working long hours and serving in the military. His parents divorced in 2007. In 2016, Donaldson graduated from Greenville Christian Academy, a small private evangelical Christian high school in the area. He briefly attended East Carolina University before dropping out.

YouTube career

Early viral attempts (2012–2017)

Donaldson uploaded his first YouTube video in February 2012, at the age of 13, under the name of "MrBeast6000". His early content ranged from Let's Plays, mainly focused on Minecraft and Call of Duty: Black Ops II, videos estimating the wealth of other YouTubers, videos that offered tips to upcoming YouTube creators, and commentary on YouTube drama. Donaldson appeared infrequently in these videos.

In 2015 and 2016, Donaldson began to gain popularity with his "Worst intros on YouTube" series poking fun at YouTube video introductions. By mid-2016, Donaldson had around 30,000 subscribers. In fall 2016, Donaldson dropped out of East Carolina University to pursue a full-time career as a YouTuber. His mother did not approve of this and made him move out of the family home.

As his channel grew, Donaldson hired four childhood friends – Kris Tyson, Chandler Hallow, Garrett Ronalds, and Jake Franklin – to contribute to his channel. They then contacted numerous YouTubers in order to obtain statistics of their successful videos and predict the platform's recommendation system[clarification needed] Franklin left the crew in 2020. Afterwards, Karl Jacobs, previously a cameraman, was promoted to take his place.

Rise to fame (2017–2020)

In January 2017, Donaldson published an almost day-long video of himself counting to 100,000, which became his breakthrough viral video. The ordeal took him 40 hours, with some parts sped up to “keep it under 24 hours.” Donaldson gained popularity during this period with stunts, such as attempting to break glass using a hundred megaphones, watching paint dry for an hour, attempting to stay underwater for 24 hours, which ended up failing due to health issues, and an unsuccessful attempt to spin a fidget spinner for a day. By 2018, Donaldson had given out $1 million through his outlandish stunts, which earned him the title of "YouTube's biggest philanthropist".

During the PewDiePie vs T-Series rivalry in 2018, a competition to become the most-subscribed channel on YouTube, Donaldson bought billboards and numerous television and radio advertisements to help PewDiePie gain more subscribers than T-Series. During Super Bowl LIII, he bought multiple seats for himself and his team, whose shirts spelled out “Sub 2 PewDiePie.”

In March 2019, Donaldson organized and filmed a real-life battle royale competition in Los Angeles with a prize of $200,000 (two games were played, making game earnings of $100,000 for each game) in collaboration with Apex Legends. The event and prize pool was sponsored by Apex Legends publisher Electronic Arts.

Donaldson was accused of using counterfeit money in his video titled "I Opened A FREE BANK", published on November 23, 2019. He later explained that he used fake money to avoid participant safety concerns and that participants received real checks after the shoot.

In April 2020, Donaldson created a rock, paper, scissors competition stream that featured 32 influencers and a grand prize of $250,000, which at the time became YouTube's most-watched live Original event with 662,000 concurrent viewers. The event was won by Nadeshot. In October 2020, Donaldson hosted another influencer tournament featuring 24 competitors with a grand prize of $300,000. The tournament was won by the D'Amelio family, which caused controversy due to claims that they cheated.

Mainstream success (2021–present)

On January 1, 2021, Donaldson released the video "Youtube Rewind 2020, Thank God It's Over". In Donaldson's video, he explains that he had always believed that YouTubers "should get more say in Rewind," and with this in mind, he decided to call "hundreds of YouTubers". At the end of the video, Donaldson gives a shout-out to PewDiePie, citing him and his 2018 Rewind as the inspiration for Donaldson's Rewind.[57] A month later, Donaldson signed a Facebook and Snapchat content distribution deal with Jellysmack.

In November 2021, Donaldson uploaded "$456,000 Squid Game In Real Life!", a recreation of the survival drama streaming television series Squid Game in real life. The video had 456 people compete for a $456,000 cash prize. The video has more than 466 million views as of January 25, 2023, making it Donaldson's most-viewed YouTube video and making it one of the most-watched YouTube videos of 2021. A review of the video in Vice stated that it "badly misunderstood the anti-capitalist message of Squid Game". Despite this, Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has reacted positively to recreations and parodies of the series.

In December 2021, Donaldson created a third influencer tournament featuring 15 competitors with a grand prize of $1,000,000. In January 2022, Forbes ranked Donaldson as YouTube's highest-earning creator, earning an estimated $54 million in 2021. Forbes stated that his income in 2021 would have placed him 40th in the 2020 Forbes Celebrity 100, earning as much money as Vin Diesel and Lewis Hamilton did in 2020.

On July 28, 2022, Donaldson surpassed 100 million subscribers on his main channel, making him the fifth channel and the second individual YouTuber to achieve the milestone. On November 17, 2022, Donaldson achieved the Guinness World Record of "Most Subscribers for an Individual Male on YouTube" with his MrBeast channel at 112,193,139 subscribers. The previous record holder, PewDiePie, had held the record as the most subscribed YouTuber for almost ten years. Donaldson achieved 1 billion video views over a period of 30 days on his main YouTube channel in November 2022.

Business model

“Once you know how to make a video go viral, it's just about how to get as many out as possible, ... you can practically make unlimited money. [But] the videos take months of prep. A lot of them take four to five days of relentless filming. There's a reason other people don't do what I do.”

Donaldson's videos leverage YouTube's recommendation algorithm in order to go viral, mainly by maximizing click-through rate and viewer retention. To maximize click-through rate, he focuses on creating effective topics, titles, and thumbnails. In an interview with Lex Fridman, he stated that for him to create a viral video, it needed to be "original, creative, something people really need to see, ideally never been done before". His titles are designed to attract attention by promising outrageous stunts and using certain keywords like "24-hours" and "challenge". His thumbnails are designed to be easily understandable, clearly focused, and brightly colored. To maximize viewer retention, Donaldson paces the videos to have viewers engaged throughout the video. His videos typically span 10 to 20 minutes. He hooks viewers by explaining the premise in under half a minute at the start of the video and promises a "finale" to have viewers engaged until the end of the video.

Donaldson's videos are categorized into three genres: stunt videos, where Donaldson or other participants perform challenges that are interesting, challenging, or dangerous; junklord videos, where Donaldson uses a large quantity of a particular product in an unusual way or spends an extravagant amount on it; and giveaway videos, where Donaldson gives away large amounts of money or extravagant prizes to people, usually including a competitive aspect. Giveaway videos are considered to be a distinctive feature of Donaldson's content.

Donaldson's fundings for these videos mainly come from sponsorships and Google's AdSense program. As of 2022, Donaldson spends about one million dollars on each video. Although Donaldson's videos rarely turn a profit, he is concentrated more on expanding his YouTube channel rather than earning a profit, stating in an interview with Rolling Stone, "I could be doing cheaper videos,But I just don't want to. I want to push the boundaries to go bigger, bigger". Most of his funding come from sponsorships. Donaldson uses his reaction channel and gaming channel to help finance his main channel, as their videos are relatively cheap to produce and make a substantial amount of money.The Verge noted his revenue is self-perpetuating: “The more viral he becomes, the more brands want to work with him, and the bigger his own AdSense earnings get. He can then entice viewers with even bigger giveaway videos. It's a never ending cycle.” In addition to sponsorships and AdSense, Donaldson earns passive income through merchandise, MrBeast Burger, and Feastables.

Other ventures

Finger on the App

In June 2020, Donaldson, in collaboration with Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF, released a one-time multiplayer mobile game titled "Finger on the App". In the game, players touch their phone screen and the last person to remove their finger from the screen wins $25,000. In the end, four people ended up winning $20,000 each after keeping their finger on the app for over 70 hours. The game was reportedly so successful that a sequel titled "Finger on the App 2" was planned to originally launch in December 2020. The game was postponed to February and then further delayed to March 2021 due to a flood of downloads, causing the game to crash and requiring the game's developers to upgrade their servers. This time, the game featured a grand prize of $100,000.[85] The winner kept their finger on the phone screen for around 51 hours. The second-place finisher also received a prize of $20,000.

MrBeast Burger

Will Hyde, a producer for the MrBeast channel, announced in a November 2020 article with The Wake Weekly that Donaldson would launch a virtual restaurant called MrBeast Burger in December 2020. Hyde said his team worked with Virtual Dining Concepts during the development of the restaurant concept. He said that MrBeast Burger will sell franchise rights to serve the burgers to restaurants across the U.S. and customers will be able to order the burgers via online delivery services.

In August 2022, Donaldson announced that he would bring a MrBeast Burger shop to the American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, near New York City, to be the location of his first U.S. restaurant. The restaurant opened on September 4, 2022.

On June 17, 2023, Donaldson expressed wishes to shut down MrBeast Burger due to fears that quality cannot be guaranteed, saying he regrets signing "a bad deal" with Virtual Dining Concepts, LLC, but said the company “won't let me stop even though it's terrible for my brand.” On July 31, 2023, Donaldson sued Virtual Dining Concepts to end their partnership, alleging that the company damaged his reputation by prioritizing the expansion of the MrBeast Burger brand over food quality. Donaldson also claimed he received no payment from the partnership. Virtual Dining Concepts disputed the claims, stating Donaldson had grown his reputation due to the MrBeast Burger brand, and accused Donaldson of attempting a new deal for personal gain and resorting to "bullying" when rejected.

Feastables
 

MrBeast Bar

In January 2022, Donaldson announced the creation of a new food company called Feastables, which launched with its own brand of chocolate bars called "MrBeast Bars". At launch they offered 3 flavors of bars, original, almond and quinoa crunch. The launch corresponded with a sweepstakes with over $1 million in prizes, including 10 grand prize winners who would receive a chance to compete for a chocolate factory in a future video. The video was released in June 2022, which featured Gordon Ramsay as a cake judge and a $500,000 cash prize.

The video contained a series of elimination challenges where the winner won the chocolate factory. The video contained cameos from competitive eaters Matt Stonie and Joey Chestnut. On February 2, 2022, Feastables announced partnerships with Turtle Beach Corporation and Roccat to provide prizes for the sweepstakes. Feastables reportedly made $10 million in its first few months of operation.

On March 3, 2023, Donaldson asked fans on Twitter to "clean up the presentation" of Feastables displays on store shelves and suggested they obscure competing products. Feastables offered fans entry into a $5,000 raffle if they provided proof of their assistance. The tweets drew criticism and accusations that Feastables was exploiting fans for unpaid labor.

On April 7, 2023, Donaldson revealed that Feastables collaborated with Karl Jacobs to release a line of gummy candy called "Karl Gummies".

Initially available only at Walmart, in May 2023 Feastables became available at 7-Eleven locations, including Speedway and Stripes locations.

Investments and partnerships

Donaldson is an investor in the tech startup Backbone, which produces the Backbone One, a controller that makes smartphones appear more similar to Nintendo Switch controllers, and the Backbone app, a content creation and social tools app for its users.

In March 2021, Donaldson partnered with Creative Juice financial network to introduce Juice Funds, a $2 million investment fund for content creators.

In April 2021, Donaldson became a long-term investor and partner of financial technology company Current. The same month, Donaldson received backlash after fans lost large amounts of money in a cryptocurrency scheme that Donaldson had invested in and promoted.

Philanthropy
 

Team Trees

On October 25, 2019, Donaldson and former NASA engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober announced a collaborative fundraising challenge event on YouTube called #TeamTrees. The goal of this project was to raise $20 million for the Arbor Day Foundation by January 1, 2020, and plant trees "no later than December 2022." Every donation goes to the Arbor Day Foundation, which pledges to plant one tree for every dollar donated. Notable YouTubers such as Rhett & Link, Marshmello, iJustine, Marques Brownlee, The Slow Mo Guys, Ninja, Simone Giertz, Jacksepticeye, and Smarter Every Day brought attention to the project, and trees began to be planted in October 2019 in US national parks.

On December 19 of that year, the $20,000,000 goal was surpassed. The project has received large donations from corporate executives Jack Dorsey, Susan Wojcicki, Elon Musk, and Tobias Lütke, as well as from companies such as Discovery, Verizon and Plants vs. Zombies. Tobias Lütke, founder and CEO of Shopify, holds the record for the highest donation at 1,000,001 trees planted. As of February 11, 2023, the original goal of 20 million trees has been far surpassed, with over 24.3 million trees in the ground.

Beast Philanthropy

Greenville received Thanksgiving meals as part of an initiative by Beast Philanthropy and Jennie-O.
On September 17, 2020, the YouTube channel Beast Philanthropy was created. On the channel's first video, Donaldson announced the charity and food bank and named Darren Margolias, who had appeared in previous videos, as executive director. According to the channel description, 100% of its advertising revenue, brand deals, and merchandise sales are donated to charity.

Notable initiatives by Beast Philanthropy include giving away 10,000 turkeys to his hometown Greenville, donating 20,000 shoes to children in Africa,[125] and gifting $300,000 worth of technology to various schools.

Team Seas

On October 29, 2021, Donaldson and Rober organized another collaborative challenge event on YouTube titled #TeamSeas. The goal of this project was to raise $30 million for the Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup by January 1, 2022. The $30 million goal would fund the removal of 30 million pounds of plastic and other waste from oceans, rivers, and beaches. Donaldson and Rober enlisted thousands of content creators, including AzzyLand, DanTDM, TommyInnit, LinusTechTips, TierZoo, LEMMiNO, The Infographics Show, Hannah Stocking, Dhar Mann, and Marques Brownlee, and partnered with BEN and TubeBuddy's initiative of 8 million global creators, to promote the fundraiser.

Cataract surgery

In January 2023, Donaldson paid for cataract surgery for a thousand people who had severely limited vision and had been unable to afford the procedure.[130] Responses to his video on the subject ranged from praise at its intention to spread awareness to criticism that he was creating "charity porn" motivated solely by profit. Other comments criticized the American medical system for failing to provide the necessary healthcare to the patients in the video, questioning why patients had to rely on a YouTuber for the procedure.

Personal life

Donaldson describes himself as an introvert. Donaldson admits to having difficulty maintaining a social life due to his obsession with YouTube and his intense work ethic. Donaldson's mother, Sue, attributes his withdrawn lifestyle to their frequent relocations and his struggles with Crohn's disease.

Donaldson dated Maddy Spidell, a YouTuber, from 2019 to 2022. He has dated Thea Booysen, a gaming streamer, since 2022.

In June 2023, Donaldson stated that he was invited to go on a tourist expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic in the OceanGate submersible Titan, but declined the offer. The submersible imploded in the Atlantic Ocean, killing all five aboard.

Personal views

In an April 2022 interview with The Daily Beast, Donaldson announced that he was no longer an evangelical Christian and identified himself as an agnostic. He also stated that he had long disagreed with the church's position on homosexuality. He states that during the time he grew up in "the heart of the Bible Belt", he had religion "beat into [his] head every day", and was taught that "gay people are the reason God's going to come and burn this Earth". Although he considered anti-LGBT rhetoric to be normal growing up, he has disavowed it since then, stating: “I realized, 'Oh, this isn't normal. This is just a weird place I grew up in.' So, that type of thing, I [wish I could] go back in time and be like, 'Hey, stop'.”

Donaldson considers himself strictly apolitical, saying that “I don't want to alienate Republicans and Democrats. ... I like having it where everyone can support charity. My goal is to feed hundreds of millions of people ... it would be very silly of me to alienate basically half of America.” On a podcast in September 2022, Donaldson has commented he would consider a run for president of the United States "in like 20 years", adding that the U.S. is "due for younger presidents".

Public image

Donaldson won the Favorite Male Creator award at the 2022 and 2023 Kids' Choice Awards.
Opinion polls have shown that Donaldson is one of the most well-liked YouTubers on the platform. A 2021 SurveyMonkey poll showed that 70% of respondents have a favorable view of him, compared to 12% who had an unfavorable view. In 2023, Time magazine listed him on their Time 100 list; fellow YouTuber and former NASA engineer Mark Rober wrote on his entry, “He's constantly raising the bar for creators whether it's through re-creating Squid Game in real life or paying for the eye surgeries of 1,000 blind people. He doesn't really understand small thinking or complacency. I don't know what he'll do 10 years down the road, but I know it won't be status quo.” In 2023, CBC News noted that MrBeast's “viral videos have stoked a wide range of reaction, from acclaim for their altruism to controversy for perceived exploitation.”

In October 2018, The Atlantic published an article on Donaldson's history of using homophobic slurs. The article alleged that Donaldson, while still a teenager, had had a habit of referring to people as "fags" on Twitter and regularly treated being homosexual as a punchline in jokes and "gay" as an insult. He later clarified in an interview, “I'm not offensive toward anyone.” In 2021, a spokesperson for Donaldson stated in reference to the slurs that he had "grown up and matured into someone that doesn't speak like that".

During a Clubhouse room in February 2021, Donaldson booted entrepreneur Farokh Sarmad after he said he could not pronounce his name, a move that Sarmad later said was racist. Sarmad's claims were questioned and denied by other Clubhouse users, who were present at the call who argued against Sarmad's claims, claiming that Donaldson removed him along with others to make room for women to be more inclusive.

Some former employees alleged that Donaldson nurtured a difficult work environment. In a May 2021 New York Times article, Matt Turner, an editor for Donaldson from February 2018 to September 2019, claimed that Donaldson berated him almost daily, including calling him a "retard". Turner reported that he was regularly not credited for his work. Reporting by Insider showed that Turner previously posted a video in 2018 explaining his allegations, and in October 2019 released a deleted Twitter thread which stated that he was "yelled at, bullied, called mentally retarded and replaceable by Donaldson every single day."[149] Nate Anderson, another editor, quit after working for Donaldson for a week in 2018 over what he said were unreasonable demands, and called Donaldson a perfectionist. After releasing a video describing his experience, Anderson reportedly received death threats from Donaldson's fans. Nine other employees who worked for Donaldson also stated that while he was sometimes generous, his demeanor would change when cameras were off.

In April 2023, Kris Tyson (formerly Chris Tyson) came out as gender non-conforming and revealed her struggles with gender dysphoria. In response to claims that she would become a "nightmare" and distraction for the channel, Donaldson defended Tyson and said that Tyson “isn't my 'nightmare' [she's] my fucken [sic] friend and things are fine. All this transphobia is starting to piss me off.”

Filmography

Awards and nominations

World records