Stars of social networks or YouTube, their influence has gone beyond the first circle of their community of fans. Notoriety and media exposure have enabled them to build veritable small empires and sign marvelous contracts with major brands.
“$1 hotel room vs. $100,000”. The title of the video is enough to make you click. In fifteen minutes, thanks to a hyperdynamic editing, the sequence connects hotel tests around the world, each crazier than the next. Surrounded by his team, the American youtubeur MrBeast multiplies jokes, crazy sequences and drone shots at a frantic pace.
Behind this nickname, Jimmy Donaldson, 25 years old. With 167 million subscribers on YouTube, he has been the platform’s most followed personality since last November. According to the economic magazine Forbes, the American would have pocketed no less than 54 million dollars in 2021, around 50 million euros, including 32 million in advertising revenue. A record. Never has a YouTuber amassed such a fortune, estimated at $500 million.
His miracle recipe: grandiose challenges, often with other well-known influencers. “Once you know how to make a video viral, the goal is to get as much out of it as possible, he told Bloomberg in December 2021. There is almost no limit to the money you can make. » Latest success to date, a challenge where the youtuber earns a subscriber $500,000 if he manages to survive 100 days in a circle drawn on the ground. The video alone gets 226 million views and almost 5 million blue thumbs. Always on the lookout for new audiences, the YouTuber has all his videos dubbed into 13 different languages. It also has several channels in foreign languages, including one in French and three in Spanish. Here again, the investment is working: its French channel, launched in January 2022, now has more than 1 million subscribers and competes with content creators in France. Enough to make the thousands of euros invested in his videos profitable.
Because MrBeast’s entrepreneurial spirit is never far away. He began by launching his ready-to-wear site where socks at 15 euros rub shoulders with sweatshirts at 70 euros and water bottles at 23 euros. In short, a host of derivative products whose sale should allow the American to add an additional line of income to his jackpot. On the strength of this success, three years ago he launched burgers in his name in around a hundred partner restaurants. And it’s a hit: the content creator has sold 5 million sandwiches, offered at around $10 each. He repeated the experience, but this time with his own chocolate bar factory, a carbon copy of Willy Wonka’s factory, in January 2022. In less than a year, the company had close to 10 million dollars in sale.
An undeniable success… far from satisfying the insatiable appetite of the young American. His investments in restoration were just a test. A tweet sums up the character’s philosophy well: “I want to be Elon Musk one day.” Posted in 2020, the message passed between the drops. However, MrBeast has been placing his pawns for three years to get closer to his idol. The web, he masters. He decides to rely on his knowledge to set foot in the technology sector. It starts with a mobile game application in 2020… and ends up taking a stake in several start-ups. He invests in Backbone, a company that produces controllers for smartphones, and in Current, which specializes in financial technology. Last March, he partnered with finance company Creative Juice to launch Juice Funds, a $2 million investment fund to help up-and-coming content creators. According to the American media Axios, the American is trying to raise $150 million for a company bringing together his entire empire, which he hopes will be valued at $1.5 billion.
Famous for his colossal fortune, his brilliant successes and his crazy concepts, MrBeast has nevertheless experienced a few escapades that are reminiscent of the behavior of the whimsical billionaire. In August 2021, the New York Times pinned MrBeast in an investigation for harassment of some of its employees. A few months ago, Jimmy Donaldson drew the ire of his community by promoting a cryptocurrency scam. Some subscribers said they lost “significant sums” by following the youtuber’s advice. Coincidence: at the same time, Elon Musk was praising the merits of dogecoin on Twitter. Subject to a complaint, the South African businessman has since been accused of having deliberately manipulated the price of virtual currency.
