MrBeast

Jimmy Donaldson aka MrBeast is the most subscribed American YouTuber and the second most followed in the world.

About MrBeast

Introduction

Jimmy Donaldson aka MrBeast is the most subscribed American YouTuber and the second most followed in the world. He is also a successful businessman and philanthropist. The famed internet personality started his YouTube channel in 2012 at 13, and 11 years later, boasts of 164 million subscribers. MrBeast is known for his extravagant, attention and cash-grabbing challenges, and stunt videos. He is also a master of other genres, including gaming and entertainment. MrBeast has amassed over 320 million followers across social media platforms.

Early life and family background

Jimmy aka MrBeast was born on May 7, 1998 to Stephen Donaldson and Mrs Donaldson (mother’s name not known) in Wichita, Kansas. According to reports, MrBeast has 2 siblings - an elder brother and a sister (whose name is unknown). His older brother, CJ Donaldson is also a social media content creator and owns a YouTube channel called “CjTheseDays”. He has 4.34 million subscribers on the channel. The other channel that he owns is called “CJTheseGames”. While MrBeast’s mother is a homemaker, his father is a businessman. Currently, MrBeast resides in Greenville, North Carolina. MrBeast is believed to be a private person, hence he has not disclosed much about his early life and family members. Although, in the past, he had admitted to be suffering from Crohn’s Disease.

Education

In 2016, MrBeast completed his schooling from Greenville Christian Academy, a private school. He became a YouTuber when he was in school. He later went to East Carolina University but quit college in first year to pursue content creation as a full-time career. His decision wasn’t welcomed by his mother, after which MrBeast left his house. MrBeast took a leap of faith and turned his dream into reality in just 2 years of moving out of his home.

Net worth 2023

MrBeast reported net worth in 2023 is $120 million. His primary income comes from his YouTube channel ‘MrBeast’, where he’s got maximum number of subscribers. His yearly salary is $32 million and monthly income is nearly $3 million.

MrBeast’s Assets (2023)

The filthy rich YouTuber is said to own quite a number of properties. He has massive houses and mansions in Kansas, Georgia, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and New York. MrBeast keeps moving places to find better content for his YouTube channels.

Car collection

MrBeast owns a luxurious collection of cars, including Lamborghini Huracan Spyder, Lamborghini Gallardo, Tesla Model 3,Nissan Armada, BMW 3 series, Mercedes, Audi, Porsche, Ford, and a few more.

YouTube Stardom

In February 2012, a 13-year-old Jimmy, also known as "MrBeast6000," posted his inaugural YouTube video. Initially, his content focused on ‘Let's Play’ videos, primarily featuring games like Minecraft and Call of Duty: Black Ops II. He also created videos where he estimated the wealth of fellow YouTubers, offered advice to aspiring creators, and provided commentary on YouTube drama. However, Jimmy himself rarely appeared in these early videos. By July 2013, his channel, originally named "That-dude," had approximately 240 subscribers.

Between 2015 and 2016, YouTubers popularity skyrocketed due to his "Worst Intros on YouTube" series, which playfully ridiculed video introductions. By mid-2016, he had accumulated around 30,000 subscribers. As his channel continued to flourish, MrBeast enlisted the help of four childhood friends, Chris Tyson, Chandler Hallow, Garrett Ronalds, and Jake Franklin, to contribute to his content. Franklin departed from the group in 2020, and Karl Jacobs, previously serving as a cameraman, took his place.

In January 2017, MrBeast gained significant attention by uploading a nearly day-long video in which he counted 100,000. The endeavor spanned 40 hours, with certain sections sped up to keep the video within 24 hours. During this time, his popularity surged further with daring stunts, such as using a hundred megaphones in an attempt to break glass, observing paint dry for an hour, and endeavoring to remain underwater for 24 hours (although he had to end the challenge due to health issues). Another notable, albeit unsuccessful, attempt involved spinning a fidget spinner for an entire day. By 2018, Donaldson had given away $1 million through his extravagant stunts, making him "YouTube's biggest philanthropist."

Jimmy's videos began featuring more ambitious challenges and substantial prizes as time progressed. Once his channel became successful, he hired four of his childhood friends namely, Chris Tyson, Chandler Hallow, Garrett Ronalds, and Jake Franklin. With the expansion of his content and channels (including gaming videos in 2020, reaction videos in 2021, and philanthropic videos also in 2021), MrBeast transformed from an independent YouTuber with a small group of friends into a fully-fledged production company known as MrBeast LLC. The company employed approximately 50 on-camera employees and an estimated 50 more off-camera, all receiving generous compensation for their work on MrBeast's videos. Jimmy himself assumed the role of CEO, overseeing various positions such as cameramen, editors, ADR techs, logistic techs, producers, accountants, lawyers, administrative staff, a personal bodyguard, a business manager, a talent manager, medical professionals for challenges, and construction workers responsible for building sets.

On July 28, 2022, MrBeast achieved a significant milestone by surpassing 100 million subscribers on his main channel, making him the fifth channel and second individual YouTuber to accomplish this feat. On November 17, 2022, he set the Guinness World Record for "Most Subscribers for an Individual Male on YouTube" with his MrBeast channel, boasting 112,193,139 subscribers. PewDiePie had previously held this record for nearly a decade. In November 2022, his main YouTube channel garnered an astounding 1 billion video views within 30 days.
As of 2023, MrBeast has achieved the significant milestone of surpassing 150 million subscribers on his main channel, currently standing at an impressive 164 million subscribers.

Apart from the main MrBeast channel, Donaldson operates the following six YouTube channels, with a total of over 260 million subscribers. These channels are Beast Philanthropy (14.5 million subscribers), MrBeast Gaming (35.4 million subscribers), Beast Reacts (26.4 million subscribers), and MrBeast 2 (27.1 million subscribers).

Other social media accounts

Known as “Content King”, MrBeast has 84 million followers on TikTok, 38.5 million followers on Instagram, 21.3 million followers on Twitter, 13 million followers on Facebook and 5,29,000 followers on Twitch, and counting.

Sponsors

Quidd, a digital marketplace, makes money by offering sponsorships to YouTubers and social media influencers.The company mostly sponsors MrBeast’s videos involving big amounts and cash prices. MrBeast pushed Quidd’s app through his giveaway videos, including a $10K cash prize to homeless people, tipping $10K to pizza delivery workers, donating $10K to random Twitch streamers and longest Uber ride. These collaborations have benefited both MrBeast and Quidd alike.

MrBeast’s brands, ventures and YouTube channels

Along with his multiple YouTube channels, MrBeast has successfully established two ventures in the food industry. Later on, he became the cofounder of Team Trees and The Team Seas.

MrBeast’s Burger - Established in November 2020, MrBeast’ burger was a virtual restaurant founded and developed in partnership with Virtual Dining Concepts. The menus of the establishments included a variety of burgers, french fries, desserts, and canned drinks. Its first store was opened in December 2020. The venture had a total of 300 stores across the United States. MrBeast’s burgers were also available on apps like Doordash, UberEats, Grubhub and Postmates. MrBeast’s Burger, however, has been closed now due to quality issues with ghost kitchens. 

MrBeast Feastables - In Jan 2022, MrBeast established a chocolate bar company in collaboration with Night Media. The company aims to develop chocolate bars with organic ingredients , without using artificial flavors. The company offers a wide selection of gluten-free chocolate bars that are made with plant-based ingredients including sugar cane, cocoa, cocoa butter, and sunflower lecithin. These chocolate bars come in a variety of flavors for customers to pick from. Feastables now offers the following decadent chocolate bar flavors to satiate your sweet tooth -- original chocolate, almond chocolate, and quinoa crunch, along with milk chocolate and sea salt chocolate alternatives. can be purchased online. 

MrBeast’s Shop - The online merchandise store that sells clothes and other MrBeast-related stuff is widely known as ShopMrBeast. The clothing in the offerings include, shirts, hoodies and more.The brand is often advertised in the YouTuber’s extravagant videos.  

MrBeast Gaming - MrBeast has a  YouTube channel that shows him stream his own game playing videos. He also has a game application called “Finger on the App”, which he launched in 2020 in a partnership with MSCHF, Brooklyn-based art collective. The participants of the game were supposed to hold their phone screens with their fingers for as long as they could. The winner of the game was to receive $25K in cash. The game went on for 70 hours with four players remaining at the end. When its second version was launched in December of the same year, the app crashed owing to the popularity of the game and numbers of downloads that exceeded the limit. The servers were later updated and the winner of the game won a $100,000 cash price. 

Team Trees - In order to raise and donate $20 million to the Arbor Day Foundation, in October 2019, Jimmy and ex NASA engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober organized a challenge called “Team Trees''. The goal was to plant 20 million trees before December 2022. Famed social media influencers like Rhett & Link, Marshmello, iJustine, Marques Brownlee, The Slow Mo Guys, Ninja, Simone Giertz, Jacksepticeye, and Smarter Every Day, also promoted the challenge on their YouTube channels. Influential entrepreneurs including Jack Dorsey, Susan Wojcicki, Elon Musk, and Tobias Lütke donated for the cause. Discovery, Verizon, and Plants vs. Zombies also came forward and made contributions. 

TeamSeas - As a follow up of Team Trees, Jimmy and Rober organized another challenge in October 2021, which they named ‘TeamSeas’. It entailed working to improve The Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup, and raising $30 million from its promotional activities by January 1 2022. The mission was to remove 30 million pounds of plastic and other waste from oceans, seas, beaches and rivers.  AzzyLand, DanTDM, TommyInnit, LinusTechTips, TierZoo, LEMMiNO, The Infographics Show, Hannah Stocking, Dhar Mann, and Marques Brownlee are among the collaborators and promoters of the challenge.

Beast Philanthropy - In a bid to make the world a better place, MrBeast took on the responsibility of feeding the hungry, housing the homeless and lessening the sufferings of needy people. The organization “operates a food pantry with a mobile food distribution network, established to address the food insecurity needs of remote and under-served food deserts”. This “innovative mobile food distribution model allows us to service a number of communities, transporting meals to the people who need it most.” In 2018, Jimmy was dubbed “YouTube’s biggest philanthropist” . This came after he donated $1 million to a charity and distributed over 1.1 million pounds of food to hungry people, which fed nearly 1000 households on a weekly basis, in the area he grew up in. During Hurricane Ida also, MrBeast delivered 9,000 hot meals to the victims. YouTube King’s popular ‘Be Like MrBeast’ campaign encourages people to do good deeds.

MrBeast investment

In 2020, MrBeast invested in Backbone One, a company that manufactures smartphones. Their smartphones look like Nintendo Switch controllers. Its Backbone app create content tools for the users

In March 2021, the financial network of Creative Juice partnered with MrBeast to raise money with an investment of $2 million on his YouTube channel by providing up to $250,000 in return for ownership

In 2021, he became a long-term investor and partner in a financial technology firm ‘Current’. He bought a cryptocurrency at the same time and advertised it on his YouTube channel. Later, the company's investors suffered a large loss, and he received harsh criticism for the same.

Awards and Achievements

In 2019, Jimmy Donaldson won 9th Streamy Awards for Breakout Creator, Ensemble Cast and Creator of the Year

In 2020, he won multiple awards -- YouTuber of the Year, the 10th Streamy Awards for Creator of the Year, Live Special, Social Good: Creator, and Social Good: Nonprofit or NGO at the 12th Annual Shorty Awards and Webby Award for Best social media influencer

In 2020, Forbes recognized him as one of the highest-paid YouTubers in the world

In 2021, MrBeast won Kids’ Choice Awards for Favorite Male Social Star and the 11th Streamy Awards for Creator of the Year

In 2023, Jimmy was included in the list of top 10 Richest YouTubers

MrBeast’s girlfriend and past relationships

As of 2023, MrBeast is dating a South African content creator Thea Booysen. She also has a Twitch account with the name ‘TheaBeasty’ and 27.4K followers. She has a YouTube channel with the same name and 24.9K subscribers. Last year, the couple went on a lavish trip to Las vegas. The duo met in South Africa during Covid-19 pandemic through WWE superstar Logan Paul, who apparently played cupid. It was Paul who forced MrBeast to go out to dinner, where the latter met Booysen. "So the whole camp was deserted right before we were about to go. So, I just got f****d, and we’re stuck in South Africa. I don’t collab much, but obviously, I’m with Logan [Paul]. He drags me out, and I am with this person at dinner. Then her friend just stopped by, who ended up becoming my girlfriend,” MrBeast said. Booysen is also known for playing games in distinct genres and has degrees in both law and psychology. It is unclear if Booysen would relocate to the US eventually or be part of MrBeast’s YouTube videos.

Before dating Booysen, MrBeast was in a serious relationship with Maddy Spidell. The former couple is believed to have met through Twitter. Spidell is an Instagram model with 259k followers. She is a dancer, digital marketing executive and dog lover. Spidell had previously made multiple appearances in MrBeast’s popular videos. How they broke up still remains a mystery.

MrBeast’s weight loss journey

MrBeast had always been chubby as a kid. In 2022, he realized he was unfit and embarked on a fitness journey. In June 2023, after transforming physically, he shared his weight loss journey with his fans from all over the world. In 10 months, he made remarkable progress, losing 20% of body fat. MrBeast walked 12,000 steps daily, ate clean and worked out on a daily basis and changed his lifestyle. He incorporated weightlifting in his gym routine. MrBeast said, "I’ve been lifting religiously for 10 months (with a trainer, 12k steps a day, good sleep, good diet) and I’ve gone from obese to just lean." "I have a newfound respect for jacked people, this takes forever lol," he added.

MrBeast Controversies

MrBeast’s philanthropy

In 2018, MrBeast’s video of 'Giving $100,000 To A Homeless Person' that gave $100,000 to a person in need, was criticized by many. Questions concerning the long-term viability of individual financial donations were raised during the discussion. In March 2023, MrBeast was slammed for giving 20,000 pairs of shoes to the Barefoot No More initiative in South Africa, which aims to provide school shoes for the country's young people. Critics claimed that Jimmy was making money off people’s sufferings. In January 2023, MrBeast funded 1,000 people's cataract surgeries, which critics dubbed 'charity porn'. Recently, he also helped 1,000 hearing impaired people in listening ‘for the first time’, but many were quick to take a dig at MrBeast’s philanthropic effort.

Faking giveaway amount

In 2018, FlyyDoesYT, a YouTuber claimed the MrBeast was faking his giveaway videos. The 25-minute long accusation video was taken seriously by many. But, in response to his allegations, MrBeast asked him to approach people who have received the money for verification.

‘Bullying’ employees and ‘toxic’ work environment

MrBeast’s ex-editor Matt Turner, posted a video on social media in 2018 about MrBeast’s misbehavior. To The New York Times, Turner told, he was “yelled at, bullied, called mentally retarded and replaceable by MrBeast every single day”. He also alleged that MrBeast also deleted a project file for a video he was editing since the clip compilation of his philanthropic act didn’t equal the figure he had mentioned in the video title. The tweet thread was soon deleted. In May 2021 again, calling the work environment at MrBeast’s venture “toxic”, Turner alleged that when he was working for the YouTuber, he used to call him “mentally retarded”. Additionally, Turner said, he was never appreciated or credited for his hard work and effort. The same year, 11 people who worked for YouTube star told The New York Times, his "demeanor changed when the cameras weren’t around”.

Criticized for Using Homophobic Slurs

MrBeast faced backlash for the content of his early videos and posts. The YouTuber was criticized for using homophobic slurs and offensive jokes. His representative said MrBeast “has grown up and matured into someone that doesn’t speak like that”. According to an article published by ‘The Atlantic’ in 2018, MrBeast’s tweets showed offensive slurs and gay punchlines he used as jokes. When the article was published, his Twitter bio read, “Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I’m gay.”

Accused of Racial Comment

In February 2021, a Clubhouse user, Farokh Sarmad accused Jimmy of kicking him off the stage for not being able to pronounce his name properly and to accommodate more female members.He also claimed that MrBeast misbehaved with him. The fact that MrBeast couldn’t pronounce his name right was taken as a racist comment by Sarmad. Although Sarmad was slammed by various YouTubers and fellow Clubhouse members on social media, he said, “To be kicked off because of my name is not right. And to not be given a chance to speak when other people who came on after me were given speaking time”. He also stated that before this incident in the US, he suffered racism in Paris, where he grew up and Canada.

Received flak for buying entire neighborhood for staff

MrBeast was under fire for covertly purchasing a community for himself, his family members and staff on a modest street just outside of Greenville, North Carolina, where he grew up. He bought five homes, all grouped together in a cul-de-sac. Three of the houses were purchased off-market since they weren't on the market for sale. When he received flak for this philanthropic endeavor, MrBeast hit back at critics stating, “Only I could get canceled for giving people a place to live with no strings attached.. All these company town tweets make no sense, I was just helping some people.”