MRBEAST CASH STUNTS

 

The content is similar to that of reality competition shows such as Fear Factor or Survivor, but it's tailored to the short attention spans of the internet. Donaldson begins each video by shouting the premise to hook the viewer and dangling a huge reward or twist, typically a large cash prize, to keep people watching. A recent example: "I just bought this luxurious private jet, and if this pilot can spend 100 days trapped inside, he keeps it!" A clock at headquarters gives a live update of the subscriber count, which grows by the minute. Donaldson's channels across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and X reach more than 1 billion unique viewers every 90 days, the company says.

So far he's leveraged his fame to sell chocolate bars, snack kits and digital tools to help other content creators go viral; in the next few years, he plans to build an animation studio, create a video game platform and write a thriller with author James Patterson. (The novel, which prompted a bidding war among publishers, will center on "an extreme global contest," according to the New York Times.)

Donaldson is operating at a greater scale than his peers. Beast Industries employs about 450 people, more than 300 of whom make videos. Another 100 work on the chocolate business, Feastables, and dozens work on the snack company, Lunchly LLC, and the software company, Viewstats. Beast generated about $450 million in sales last year, evenly split between the video operation and Feastables. Yes, Donaldson pulls in more than $200 million a year in dark chocolate sea salt bars and peanut butter cups, a business projected to double in size in the next few years, according to pitch documents sent to investors. Feastables vending machines are scattered around the offices, and posters remind employees to incorporate product placements in videos. "We are able to generate the demand," he says.

Right now, however, Beast Industries is hemorrhaging money. It's had three years of losses, including more than $110 million in 2024. The viral videos account for all of it, overwhelming the profits from Feastables. Donaldson has been spending between $3 million and $4 million on every video he produces for the main YouTube channel, most of which lose money.

The chronic loss of money notwithstanding, much of the MrBeast strategy boils down to "Less is more." Rather than produce 100 videos and hope one hits, he makes one video that he expects will get as many views as possible. In 2018 he decided to buy a $12,000 car for his stepdad—with coins. He intended to withdraw 1.2 million pennies from the bank, but after realizing there might not be that many pennies in all of North Carolina, he included nickels, dimes and quarters, which he and his friends hauled to a local dealership in wheelbarrows. Donaldson grabs the viewer by injecting doubt about the mission: Surely, the dealership wouldn't accept $12,000 in coins, right? But it did, and Donaldson settled on a 2014 Jeep Patriot with 98,000 miles. If a video works—this one got 26 million views, which was a lot seven years ago—Donaldson re-creates it with a twist, such as buying a $17,500 Chevy Camaro with $1 bills.

In one, he tipped pizza delivery guys hundreds of dollars when they dropped off pies, ultimately giving out about $10,000. He repeated the stunt with Uber drivers. In another video, he took $30,000 from a sponsor and gave it to a random Twitch streamer. He gave 3 million pennies to his 3 millionth subscriber.

In a conference room on the second floor of Beast Industries, Shrek plays on a TV in the background. A security guard sits along the wall, watching a dozen young adults around a table flatten out $1 bills. Donaldson gives away such large sums of money in his videos that he withdraws millions of dollars in singles from the bank. His team then crumples the bills to create a mountain that looks more impressive on camera than would a neatly stacked pile. The crumpling is so time-consuming that an employee eventually created a machine to automate the process. "I never thought when I went to Harvard Business School I would have to figure out how to crumple money," says Housenbold, standing next to a black tub filled with bills that look more crumpled than not. (Beast doesn't use the singles to pay rewards—it wires money to winners—so employees flatten and reband the bills to return to the bank.)

Donaldson has learned, though, that he doesn't always need to spend more money to drive viewership. There isn't a huge difference between giving away $1 million and $100,000; an average viewer sees both numbers as big and will tune in for the results. In fact, giving away $1 million sometimes suppresses viewership. "We definitely found the point where more money doesn't equal more views," Donaldson says. "If I were to give a random person on the street a million dollars, a lot of people who see that video, especially because we have a very international audience—they just don't think it's real."

To read the complete article, see:
MrBeast on His Quest to Turn YouTube Fame Into an Entertainment Empire (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-09-22/youtube-star-mrbeast-is-building-an-entertainment-empire/)

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