MrBeast's Content-Market-Fit & Media Empire
On July 28 2022, MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) has become the 2nd individual creator after Pewdiepie (Felix Kjellberg) to reach 100 million subscribers on Youtube.
"I appreciate every single one of you that watches the videos. This is literally all I've ever done with my life….All I do is wake up every day and obsess over how to make the best videos possible. It's all I care about. It's the only thing that's ever really made me happy."
Jimmy Donaldson, MrBeast
Today we’ll cover
MrBeast’s route to content market fit
MrBeast’s media empire built on his youtube channel
The a common trait among all successful YouTubers.
MrBeast’s Route to Content Market Fit
Content-market-fit refers to a self-sustaining value proposition a creator needs to achieve before they scale, like product-market-fit for startups. Whatever content you are planning to create has to be
Something you want to make, because you will be doing this for a long time
Something people want to see, identifying a niche of people who will enjoy
Something the algorithm favours, i.e. Shorts, trending topics, non-explicit
Early Viral Attempts
The early days for MrBeast were scrappy and directionless. Jimmy uploaded his first YouTube in February 2012 under the name of MrBeast6000, when he was just 13 years old. They ranged from funny compilations of Minecraft and Call of Duty highlights, to videos of him estimating YouTubers' wealth, and offering tips to aspiring creators.
The initial traction MrBeast gained was in 2015 when he put up a series of "worst intros" reaction videos, where he poked fun at YouTuber introductions. By mid-2016, MrBeast hit 30,000 subscribers.
After then MrBeast started doing “absurd” videos where he spent 44 hours counting 1 to 100,000 on camera. The video went viral and he continued to the momentum by working on videos like “saying Logan Paul 100,000 times”, “Watching Its Everyday Bro for 10 Hours Straight”, “Watching Dance Till You're Dead for 10 Hours”,
Around the same time, MrBeast was contacted to sponsor $10,000 for an ad integration for his video, and he decided to give all of them to a stranger on the street (Video: Giving A Random Stranger $10,000, June 2017). Afterwards, MrBeast realized the video was not only effective in reaching millions of people, it was the type of video he enjoyed making as it recognizes and inspires good deeds. He founded this content market fit - making videos about giving money to strangers.
Rise to Fame
Over the course of the next few years from 2017 onwards, MrBeast continued giving strangers and his subscribers money, for example, he has tipped a pizza deliveryman a house, and donated $30,000 to a random twitch streamer and gave away millions of dollars through challenges such as “Anything You Can Fit In The Circle I’ll Pay For”, “Last To Leave Roller Coaster Wins $20,000 - Challenge”, “$456,000 Squid Game In Real Life!”, as a result, MrBeast has been recognized as one of the most generous people in the world, where he started to cultivate a community of supporters. In October 2019, MrBeast started #teamtree with Mark Rober, where he raised $20 million to plant 20 million trees to celebrate his 20 million subscriber milestone. Recently, subsequently, MrBeast worked with Mark Rober again with #teamseas, where they raised $30 million to clean 30 million pounds of ocean waste.
Throughout the past five years, MrBeast is constantly innovating by experimenting with different methods, i.e. organizing influencer tournaments, framing his giveaways into challenge videos, exploring creative ways to help the environment, social hacking (i.e. Squid Game), testing human limit videos (I Buried Myself Live). Strategically, MrBeast launched a Spanish channel, gaming channel, and react channel with the goal to repurpose his content to make his content available to a broader audience.
Looking Inside MrBeast’s Media Empire
First and foremost, it is important to recognize that MrBeast’s media empire relies on his Youtube channel as its lifeblood, from a brand distribution perspective. However, the situation is reversed from a capital perspective. Why? Because MrBeast loses money for almost every video he made since 2017.
MrBeast runs a capital flywheel where he is willing to invest millions into a youtube video (i.e. Squid Game cost $4 million), it highly differentiates MrBeast from any other Youtubers and MrBeast reinvests all the money from these videos into more real estate and larger production budgets.
Therefore, to supplement the funding aside from AdSense and brand deals, MrBeast created 5 affiliated channels (Spanish, Gaming, Shorts, Reacts, MrBeast2) to release lower-budget videos in order to supply capital for the main channel.
MrBeast’s creator stack is surprisingly limited, MrBeast communicates through Twitter, publishes through Youtube, cultivates a community through discord and monetizes through his own D2C channels (merch, CPG, fast food). Outside of Youtube, MrBeast manages three key business businesses: MrBeast Burger (2020), MrBeast Philanthropy (2021) and MrBeast owns Feastables (2022).
Feastables and MrBeast Burger were born because:
MrBeast can have additional sources of capital to support and re-invest the money back to the main Youtube channel
MrBeast can build self-sustaining businesses with the intention that they will continue to do well despite channel uncertainties in the future
CPG brands especially fast food and chocolate catered to his viewer demographics (children, teenagers, grassroots, and working populations)
(P.S Reed Duchscher pitched MrBeast a gamified chocolate brand concept in 2020)
Common Trait Among Successful Youtubers
The number one trait would definitely have to be patience.
That includes consistency, reiterations and passion. No macro influencers were made overnight. Pewdiepie and MKPHD attributed his success to being one of the first YouTubers of its niche, and it compounded decades to get to where they are today.
Productivity Youtuber Ali Abdaal spoke about the average number of videos you need to achieve a certain milestone on Youtube. People make an average of 3,873 videos to reach 1 million subscribers, 1,171 to reach 100,000 and 152 videos to reach 1,000.
Despite more people want to become YouTubers (30% of children today want to become full-time vloggers when they grow up), most people undermined the grit and persistence it takes to succeed in a career on social platforms.
Being a Youtuber is a years-long commitment, and most weren’t aware of it when they get into it. Only the ones who enjoy what they do and have the patience to work through it will be rewarded.
Takeaway
Achieving content market fit does not come overnight, and content market fit changes over the span of the creator’s lifecycle. MrBeast has gone from game compilations to reaction videos to giveaways to largest-scale challenges is a perfect testimony of how creators keep evolving as they grow.
💡 This Week's News In the Creator Economy
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Meta announced new privacy features on Whatsapp (i.e. Silent Group Exit)
Bytedance (TikTok’s parent) invested $1.5B in healthcare acquisition
Youtube Streamer Valkyrae signed with Range Media Partners
✌️ That’s it until next time!
If you want to learn more about MrBeast’s full story from dropping out to working on his first brand deal, arriving at content market fit, retiring his mum, recruiting a team, scaling his channels and building Beast philanthropy, check out this 2-hour interview between Jimmy and Colin & Samir.
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