The stunt took him 40 hours, with some parts sped up to "keep it under 24 hours".
In January 2017, Donaldson published an almost day-long video of himself counting to 100,000. As a result, his mother made him move out of his family home. In fall 2016, Donaldson dropped out of East Carolina University without telling (which Donaldson said occurred after only two weeks of being there) to pursue a full-time career as a YouTuber. By mid-2016, Donaldson had around 30,000 subscribers.
In 20, Donaldson began to gain popularity on the platform due to his "worst intros" series of videos, which rounded up and poked fun at YouTuber introductions he discovered on the site. Īs of July 2013, the subscriber count of his channel, then named "That-dude", was around 240. During this early period of his channel, Donaldson himself made few appearances in his videos. ĭonaldson uploaded his first-ever YouTube video in February 2012, at the age of 13, under the handle "MrBeast6000" his early content ranged from Let's Plays (mainly focused on Minecraft and Call of Duty:Black Ops 2), videos estimating the wealth of other YouTubers, videos that offered tips to upcoming YouTube creators, and commentary on YouTube drama. He was also one of the top 10 highest-paid YouTubers of 2020, alongside other personalities such as Markiplier, Ryan's World and Blippi. At the 12th Annual Shorty Awards in 2020, he won YouTuber of the Year. In 2019, Donaldson won the Breakout Creator by Streamy Awards. Across his eleven channels, Donaldson has 165.7 million combined subscribers, and 21.3 billion combined total views across eleven of these channels. Aside from his main channel, Donaldson has ten other YouTube channels, including MrBeast Shorts and MrBeast Gaming, the latter reaching over 10 million subscribers in less than one year.
It is the 6th most-subscribed channel on YouTube, as well as the second most subscribed channel owned by a YouTuber, and the most subscribed owned by a YouTuber from the United States. Īs of December 17, 2021, Donaldson's main YouTube channel "MrBeast" has 85.1 million subscribers and 13.9 billion total views. As of 2020, the MrBeast team was made up of 30 people. Once his channel took off, Donaldson hired several of his childhood friends to help him run the growing brand. Over time, his style of content diversified to include challenge and donation videos that reward thousands of dollars, videos either with arduous tasks or survival, and original vlogging videos. He went viral in 2017 after his "counting to 100,000" video earned tens of thousands of views in just a few days, and he has become increasingly popular ever since, with most of his videos gaining tens of millions of views. He is also the founder of MrBeast Burger and the co-creator of Team Trees, a fundraiser for the Arbor Day Foundation, which has raised over $23 million, and Team Seas, a fundraiser for Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup, which aims to raise $30 million by January 1, 2022.ĭonaldson began posting videos to YouTube in early 2012 at the age of 13, under the handle "MrBeast6000" his early content ranged from Let's Plays to "videos estimating the wealth of other YouTubers". He has been credited with pioneering a genre of YouTube videos that center on expensive stunts. Jimmy Donaldson (born May 7, 1998), better known by his online alias MrBeast, is an American YouTuber, internet personality, businessman, and philanthropist.