MrBeast Isn’t Looking for Controversy

0:00This episode was recorded at the 2025 DealBook Summit. This year's DealBook Summit sponsors include Premier Sponsor Accenture, Associate Sponsors U.S. Bank, Vanguard, Invesco QQQ, and University of Michigan, Supporting Sponsor Capital One, and Contributing Sponsor Invest Puerto Rico.

0:26Our mission is to be the most impactful entertainment brand in the world. that we're creating content that entertains, inspires, and educates, and that we're helping to make kindness viral, and that we're using Jimmy's fandom to make the world a better place. This is Andrew Ross Sorkin with The New York Times, and you're listening to interviews from our annual Dealbook Summit, recorded on December 3rd in New York City.

0:57Good afternoon, everybody. I am here with Jimmy Donaldson. He is the most followed person in the world, literally. He's got billions, billions of viewers. His empire spans Mr. Beast YouTube channel, Beast Games on Amazon Prime, consumer goods including his chocolate brand, Feastables, Philanthropy, and so much more. And in just a moment, we are going to bring out the CEO of his company, who's going to be joining us in a little bit as we discuss the business of all this. But I wanted to start with Mr. By the way, do people say to you Jimmy or do they call you Mr. Beast? Usually if they're over the age of 10, I prefer to go by Jimmy.

1:41So, yeah. For this room, you can just call me Jimmy. Okay, but there's a lot of people here, by the way, who wanted to bring their kids, just so you know. I mean, I don't know if they'd find the rest interesting, but... Especially maybe the last few ones.

1:57Thank you. Let me ask you this, though. And maybe we just start with how this all happened. And I want to say happened to you because this is something that you did on your own. All of this started your first video. You were 11 years old. Yeah. And I just want to understand sort of what your childhood was like, what led you to want to actually play on YouTube, and where you thought it could even go. Well, when I was younger, I had a weird obsession. It ended up working out, but I was really curious why certain pieces of content would get 100 million views and other would get 100. And from a young age, I really just studied what virality was, and I found that I really enjoyed making videos and I really enjoyed telling stories.

2:43But when I was 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, you know, I'd work on a video for days and two people would watch it. and obviously that was very frustrating and so I spent my entire teenage years just basically studying right right now two percent of all humanity's time is spent on YouTube most people don't even realize that it's pretty crazy uh and that time is basically dictated by what the algorithm puts on your home page you know and so why does it serve certain videos over others and that was kind of my obsession for like eight or nine years because I was just tired of making these videos what did your mother think of all of this time you were spending she thought That was crazy.

3:22And I was going to get kidnapped because in her world is obviously go to college or you're homeless. So but eventually she came around once it worked out. We'll talk about it working out. I want to show a video of you because this really struck me. And I think it speaks to what happened in your life and where you are today. Can we can we roll this? This is something that you posted very recently. Oh, I'm going to schedule upload this video 10 years in the future. so you're gonna see this in 2025 i better have a million subscribers when you guys see this but by the time you see this i'll have finished high school gone to college probably be doing youtube as a job hopefully maybe maybe maybe maybe um yeah uh as of right now i'm enjoying youtube hopefully i still future me still enjoys it and i don't know i'd be crazy if I had some ridiculous amount of subscribers.

4:20At the time I'm recording this video, I have 8 ,000 subscribers and 1.8 million views. It's crazy. That's crazy to see that. So honestly, though, what... I mean, when you re-watched this... Yeah. Because you just posted it. Yeah, so I filmed that when I was a teenager and scheduled to upload it. YouTube has a feature where you can set views to go public in the future. So I was supposed to be studying for a history test and I got bored, so I just grabbed a phone and started scheduling videos. Like, I still have one that goes up 10 years from now, 60 years from now, like random dates. Okay, so how ambitious do they get, though?

4:56So do you have one that you've done recently? Well, no, I made them all when I was a teenager. You should do one now. But it's funnier because back then I was a little kid, and so just throughout my life, random videos will just go live. I don't even remember what I said, so hopefully it wasn't too bad. But honestly, what was it? I mean, I think we're all trying to deal and understand what we're calling the attention economy, right? And you somehow have figured this out in a way that I don't think anybody else has. I mean, at a level that nobody, at a scale that nobody else has. And so I'm trying to understand what you think it is that you did figure out.

5:31Oh boy. Well, yeah, basically how do you get your videos served? How do you get it where people watch your content? I mean, what's interesting is obviously, like I mentioned a stat before, 2 % of all of humans' time is spent on YouTube. And obviously, it wouldn't be that way if it wasn't constantly serving you videos you like. And so the more you study social media algorithms, the more you just realize it's just a reflection of what people want to watch, what they want to consume. And it does a very good job of figuring out what you're interested in and serving you it. And so, you know, in our case, if we want to make a video that people all around the world would watch.

6:08And I mean, I'm giving you like 10 hours of speak down to like two minutes. But if you want to make a piece of content that someone in India and someone in America and someone in South America could enjoy, you know, obviously it probably can't be culturally relevant or things like that. It needs to be things that are more intrinsic to humans. Like no matter where you are in the world, you, you know, you understand love, right? So I mean, this might sound weird to people in this room, but one of our more recent videos is, as a joke, we found a couple that broke up four years ago, and then we offered them$300 ,000 if they spend 30 days chained together.

6:43So with handcuffs on, ex-boyfriend and girlfriend, if they spent a month together, they'd win$300 ,000. And so that's, you know, obviously seems silly, but that's something that no matter where you are in the world, you understand that. But do you think you appreciated this when you were 15 years old? No, that's why no one watched the videos back then when you saw that. But what changed? And also, because you also tapped into something else, which I'm actually somewhat concerned about, actually, longer term, which is almost a global attention deficit disorder that we all have. And this requirement that we're captured by this sort of hook.

7:16And then we can only really watch for a certain amount of time. And a couple of things have to happen quickly in a way that is so different than the way I grew up, where I would watch a two-hour movie and be happy to do it. Yeah. I don't know if the next generation is. Well, that's what it felt like for a while. But what's pretty interesting is obviously it just depends on what app. If you're on TikTok, of course, it's just crack cocaine. But on YouTube as a whole, especially in America, the average video links that do well are actually getting longer because over 50 % of watch time is on television.

7:48And so right now, if you want to do really well for a U.S. audience, you actually have to make longer content. Like our videos used to be 12, 15 minutes. Now they're closer to 25, 30. So, I mean, it obviously depends on parts of the world and stuff. But agreed. In general, yes, people's intentions are, you know, a lot more. So when did you know this could be a business? Well, I mean, I guess it doesn't, just like anything, it doesn't just hit you one day. You just are, I've been doing it for 16 years now. So you just, you know, slowly grow. And we've grown every year since I was 11. It was much easier back then.

8:21But it just, you know, kind of happens in stages. We're going to get into the business, and Jeff's going to join us in just a little bit. But tell me just about your life now, because you literally, as I said, are one of the most famous people in the world. And by the way, we should talk about fame, too. Because there's something interesting that's happening right now, generationally, in terms of what I call fragmented fame. So, I don't know, Tom Cruise, to me, is a big deal. To me, he is as well, yes. Tom Cruise is still a big deal to you. Yes, he is. But to help you articulate it, yes, because social media algorithms do such a good job of finding what people are interested in.

8:57There's a lot more niches, and content isn't as mainstream, whereas before, theoretically, there'd be 30 television stations. So who is famous to you right now? And are the people that are famous to you? I imagine a lot of the people who are famous to you are not famous to me. Probably not. You've heard of iShowSpeed or Kaisenad? A little bit. Okay, well, younger people, that's who's, you know, relevant to this. And so then the question, but this is an interesting question. Generationally, are those people that you just mentioned, the next Tom Cruises and whatever's 20 and 30 years from now? Or is there something fundamentally different happening, do you think?

9:36I mean, we're a little bit of an N of one because we are so big. But for the most part, it's just, it's allowed people to find more specific content they want. so we're one of the like our videos average 200 million views a pop but no one else gets anywhere 200 million views yeah but for most people it's like a couple million and so no instead of one tom cruise you'd have like 20 different ones that because people you know you can watch a video on on uh you know roblox you can watch a video minecraft you can watch a video for now it's so much more fragmented it's not like i said before like uh 30 or 40 television stations and So it's very rare people get as big now where everyone are, you know.

10:16Well, that was my question. Do you think if you started today, you're an N of one right now. If you started today, could you be as big? Well, it would just take time because part of it is one of the big things is you just grow trust with people that as they watch content, they know that it's going to be good because the last 50 times they experienced your content, it was a positive interaction. So it just would take a while to build the trust. And I also have a 300-person production team, so do I get to keep that or no? If I had to start with just myself, that would be pretty brutal again. So now you have a team.

10:49What's your life like now? Because my understanding is out of 30 days in a month, you are literally working in front of a camera. 28 days. 28 days. Yeah. And you're getting married. Yeah, whenever my CEO, whenever you call him up, whenever he gives me time off. What does your fiancé say? She knew what she signed up for. It's done. But so you're working 27 to 28 days a month? Well, no, we work every day, but that was just filming. But just right now, obviously, I can hire hundreds of people to help make the videos and help pull off these, you know, giant spectacles. But, you know, in terms especially on the Mystery Channel, obviously, if I'm not filming, then we're not posting.

11:30So ideally, that is the most optimal use of my time at the moment. You took to Twitter recently, or I should say X, and you said something that struck me. You said, after some reflection, I want to say, I think some of our newer YouTube videos haven't been as good as I wanted. I apologize. Your boy is going into ultra grind mode and making the greatest content of my life in 2026. I don't know if this is the intended audience for that tweet. No, but I wanted to understand it. I wanted to understand the video, or rather the tweet, because you're working. You said you were going to go grind. I'm thinking, if this guy's not already in grind mode, what are we talking about here?

12:13Well, just more because we have a lot going on, just refocusing on the content. And, yeah, the context with that is, you know, we've been big for quite a while. So I think for just really right now, especially, you know, you've talked about it a lot today with AI and stuff, what hits people more and more is just great stories and really just focusing the team on telling even more impactful stories and really getting people where they feel things like we spend millions of dollars a video and we do these big spectacles but you know after you know we've been big for six seven years now after a while you do get a little numb to money being giveaway or numb to spectacles but hearing a great story is something you never get numb to so just really focusing the team on you know the thing that's what the other thing i was going to ask is it feels like and i don't know how many people here have watched mr b's videos each one is almost amped up more than the next.

13:00I appreciate that. But oftentimes that means doing things that either have bigger prizes in terms of money or more extravagant or more dangerous or more something. And how much do you worry that like at some point you just can't clear the bar? It's just there's not you keep raising it that you get at some point it is either going to get too dangerous or too expensive or too something. Yeah. Well, obviously, we'd never do anything that would hurt people. And that's what people said that seven years ago, six years ago, five years ago. But the thing is, if you obviously break it down, the first principles, there's a million levers that go into a video from the quality to even the cameras you use to how you edit it to, yes, the more obvious stuff like the prize pool or the set design or this or that.

13:42So it's not as simple. Like, yeah, you could go from$500 ,000 to a million dollars to$5 million if this person runs a mile or whatever it is. But there's a bunch of other less obvious stuff that you can pool that elevate a video that people wouldn't really be able to articulate, but they would tell if they watched the content. So it's just focusing on all those granular things and just constantly improving them every time. And that's where if you watch a video year apart, you won't really be able to say why it's better, but you just can tell it's better. You started on YouTube. I'm curious how you think about the other platforms.

14:15I know there was a time when Elon Musk was tweeting at you to make his videos on his platform. I'm curious how you think about Instagram. There was a moment at which you were going to actually buy a stake potentially or be part of a group that would buy TikTok. How do you think about the different platforms today and who ultimately wins? Or has YouTube already just run away with it? Well, if you're trying to reach as many people as possible, you should definitely be on all of them because there's a certain fragmented audience on them. It just depends what your goal is. At the end of the day, if you're trying to actually build, I guess for lack of better words, a community or get it where a lot of people care about you, YouTube is 100 % it because, you know, if you spend an hour on the toilet flipping through TikTok, you'll watch 200 TikToks and you, you know, then you quiz someone what they saw, they can't even remember.

15:02Like people with ridiculous views with millions of followers, you know, will do a meet and greet and can't even get five people to show up because there's a big difference between someone, you know, consuming a five second clip of you versus sitting down and watching a 20 minute video and hearing you speak and getting to know you. So YouTube is infinitely more dominant in terms of if you actually want to build a business or build a fan base. Like, it's not even comparable, the audience depth you get. But what is interesting is there just is a subset of people, like, that will only use TikTok versus Instagram or only use Instagram versus TikTok.

15:34So if you don't make content on that platform, you essentially don't really exist in their world. So it's important you're on all of them. Like, I think right now we're the third most followed TikTok account in the world. So we try very hard on TikTok. we try very hard on Instagram because like obviously Instagram, a lot of women use that, that might not use TikTok or use YouTube. And so again, in their world, if you're not on that platform, you just don't exist. So they're all important. But if you were to say which one, if you wanted to sell a hundred million dollars in a product would be the most important, it'd be YouTube by mile.

16:04Okay. I want to get into the business of it. I'm going to bring Jeff out in just a second, but I do have two other sort of more philosophical questions. One is, are you as addicted to these services as I am? I mean, I doom scroll like everybody else maybe in this room. Hopefully you don't. They're probably too productive, too. But how much time do you spend on it? Do you do anything to prevent yourself from this? Do you ever take the apps off your phone? Well, no, because I need to be consuming it so I can see, obviously, what other people see. But I think the bigger thing for me is I just try to be very intentional.

16:38When you're on TikTok, if you see something you don't want to see more of, you can tell it not to recommend it. So I try to trick my algorithms into, like my YouTube homepage is just a bunch of educational content. Like this morning I watched a video on how trees grow and, you know, the different layers of it. So you can curate your feed where it actually is beneficial, but it takes a lot of effort. But I think you have curated your feed, and most of the things that you do try to be positive. Am I right? Yes, on our channel, exactly, because obviously we're getting a lot of attention and viewership.

17:08So, you know, obviously we should do it to inspire people to do good. Well, let me ask you just one other thing then about kids and my kids. I don't know if my kids are here. I think they are somewhere. Jonathan Haidt, I don't know if you know Jonathan, has written a book. He says that kids shouldn't have smartphones until high school and has been warning around the country about the impact of social media on kids' brain. So given what you do for a living now, the success you had touching social media at a very early age, but also I think recognizing many of these issues, you don't have kids of your own.

17:41How do you think about that? That's actually a good question. Thank you. Yeah, I haven't put too much thought into it. I think, again, I think it does depend what platform because YouTube is a lot, I mean, for lack of better words, a lot less brain rot than theoretically TikTok. and there is a lot more educational content on it. So, yeah, I wouldn't just say blanket social media bad because, like I said, there's actually a plethora of really entertaining YouTube content or very educational YouTube content. Even in our case, we did Team Water and we raised money to clean the oceans and we did Team Trees and raised money to plant trees.

18:19And, you know, there are a lot of parents who are reaching out to us because they're like, why does my kid want to go to a tree planting event? Are you brainwashing them? And so there are instances where it could be positive. It's just, yeah, it just really depends what they're watching and stuff like in which platform. Let's talk about the business. Let's bring Jeff out. Jeff Hasenbald is here. He is the CEO of Beast Industries. Jeff, come on out here. Come hang out. This company, and we have not really talked about the business of this company yet, currently has a valuation of$5.2 billion. Is that correct?

18:53That's right. Okay. You want to have an IPO at some point, I imagine? At some point, we want to be able to give the 1.4 billion unique people around the world who has watched Jimmy's content in the last 90 days a chance to be owners of the company. Okay, so before we get into it, how did you guys meet? How does this relationship work? You said he basically gives you vacation time. Yeah, I give him tons of time off, right? You give him tons of time off or he gives you tons of time off? We've been together 18 months, and I've taken three days off, and he's taken three days off. Yeah. That's not bad.

19:29Not bad. It was better than that. We have a philosophy. If it ends in why, it's a work day. But we met one of the investors, introduced us, and I did a 60-minute Zoom with Jimmy, and he had just landed from doing a charitable project in Kenya, and he was in a Walmart. And you would think that's kind of normal. and he's being flash mobbed in a Walmart while he's restocking our chocolate feast bowls because he has such a high bar for customers that he didn't like how it was displayed in the Walmart. So after 60 minutes, he says to me, bro, for 55, you're not so cringe. You want to hang out? And here we are.

20:06Here we are. Do you feel like you have a whole new lexicon now? He calls me cringe daddy sometimes. Cringe daddy. I don't. So walk through. Did we have to mind him up? He's much better at business than jokes, I promise.

20:26So this business, as we said, has this$5.2 billion valuation. Walk through the various businesses and to the extent you can tell us where the money lies, if you will. Sure. So we have three divisions. Our media division, which obviously, as Jimmy talked about YouTube is the anchor but our shorts on TikTok and Instagram. Beast Games which season two is airing in January. We just dropped animation. We also are working on other channels so all of the content is one division and that today is about half the revenue. And then we have a second division which is our consumer products and services. Feastables being the anchor, our chocolate brand, the largest ethically sourced chocolate brand in the world.

21:09Our Mr. Beast Labs toy, where our toy is now the number one action figure in America, and our Lunchly, which is our snack product, in addition to our joint venture with Jack Links for beef jerky. We're also launching a phone company, Beast Mobile, and a financial services platform in there, wrapped in financial literacy and access to the world's information in making sure we're doing good while doing well. And then the last one, which we're really excited about, is building a two-sided marketplace and a global creator platform, matching creators with Fortune 1000 marketers who want to be able to access the creator-influencer economy in an efficient way to be able to build demand for their products and services.

21:55So how much right now, for example, the chocolate business, is that the biggest business or you're saying the content business is the biggest. So we haven't launched a global creator platform yet. So half is in the consumer products division. Half is in the media division. Half is in the media division. And how much of this is going to be a U.S. business, you think, long term versus a global business, international business? So what's fascinating, I love watching that video of Jimmy, right? Ten years ago, he was praying for a million followers. And last month, we hit one billion followers. Across everything.

22:27Across the world and 70 % of our viewers are outside of North America. So from day one, we're a global media company. And now we're working on monetizing that viewership, that fandom, and that trust that we built through our products and services. And Feastables is a global product and so is outdoor. And how much does it depend on you being the face of this whole thing? And do you ever say to yourself, at some point, we need to diversify. We need to get a cast of characters around Mr. Beast. Or clone him. Yeah. You may be able to do that with AI. Yeah. But when you think about that, do you think it's just you in the end?

23:08Well, right now, that's why we're working on building out other channels and stuff. So it's over-indexed at the moment. But a lot of the, you know, we track, like we were talking about before, a lot of trends. And the skill set, whether it's me in the videos or not, it's, you know, I hope people like me. But it's not fundamentally why, you know, we get 200 million views every video. A lot of times it's because we do these crazy concepts and all these other things that are more replicatable. So that's why we're working on building out other channels and other IP. Okay. I noticed, by the way, and we've now talked to each other a bunch of times over the past year.

23:40Yeah. You don't say necessarily the craziest things. I mean, we had Alex Karp here earlier who had some very provocative views. Really? I thought he was honestly tame. Tame? Yeah. But I was going to say. Nothing crazy. Do you think that you, given this large audience that you have and that you want to be attracted to you, that you don't go into politics, for example. It seems like there are lanes that you just do not touch. Yeah. Is that strategic? What do you think about it? Are there things you wish you could say that you can't? No, not really. It's the thing is, you ask some of the best questions.