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How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

• Firerouge 2y ago
  Any ideas what is being referenced with this quote? > Do not leave consteatants waiting in the sun (ideally waiting in general) for more than 3 hours. Squid game it cost us $500,000 and boys vs girls it got a lot of people out. Ask James to know more
  • jsheard 2y ago
    Willing to Die for MrBeast (and $5 Million) https://archive.is/lDVoz https://archive.is/lDVoz
    • walthamstow 2y ago
      He blames Crowdstrike for his org treating humans like shit for money. Nice.
      • Pedro_Ribeiro 2y ago
        Is that all you got from the quote? "was unfortunately complicated by the CrowdStrike incident, extreme weather and other unexpected logistical and communications issues" "extreme weather" "communications issues" Are you doing this on purpose? I'm not even a fan of the guy but this type of out-of-context taking just hurts discourse. It's the type of thing I came to HN to avoid.
        • walthamstow 2y ago
          I notice you don't correct anything I've said, because none of it is false. He did blame CrowdStrike, right at the top of the list of blame. He did not take any responsibility for what he and his org did.
• al_borland 2y ago
  > “I Spent 50 Hours In Ketchup” Mr Beast throwing out viral video ideas sounds like the Family Guy joke generator from South Park[0]. Doing a quick web search, it seems several people have made idea generators based off his formula. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTC9j0QpCBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTC9j0QpCBM
• rootsudo 2y ago
  This is a great "leaked" pdf and honestly, shows the evolution (or degradtion) in media. Typical phrases, e.g. sign of the times, if it makes money of course it exists, etc etc but really it's great insight. I personally don't/wouldn't do this, but I can't ignore the money making machine youtube has become / the producers of said videos.
• hypeatei 2y ago
  So basically: Come up with contrived BS that caters to younger audiences, micromanage anyone who is holding you up, and attempt to game a blackbox algorithm on a site you don't pay for (YouTube) The whole modern social media / influencer sphere seems like a huge bubble that will pop eventually. Google has already started wiping inactive accounts[0] presumably because storage isn't truly infinite or cheap. I imagine YT will also take the same path eventually. 0: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290?hl=en
  • userbinator 2y ago
    These influencers' accounts are certainly not inactive.
    • hypeatei 2y ago
      No, but the cracks are starting to show. My point is that YT may go down the same path and get stingy with video storage.
      • j_maffe 2y ago
        You're really overestimating the cost of video storage and streaming compared to the kind of revenue they're able to get.
  • j_maffe 2y ago
    How does it fall under the definition of a bubble? Sure, view counts contribute to more views. But that's not the main retention mechanism of these videos.
    • hypeatei 2y ago
      I see it as a bubble because they don't have to pay anything to host or publish content even though there is a cost there (storage, streaming, etc..) so they're essentially hoping that YT can keep providing a free service with ads even if they're running at a loss. It's not clear if YouTube is specifically profitable, because Alphabet only separates revenue, not profit. But, I would imagine they're not running huge margins or even at a loss given their recent crackdown on ad-blockers and Google's overall fight against them with things like manifest V3.
• renewiltord 2y ago
  On one side, an army of HN commenters: “Repeat after me. Don’t build on someone else’s platform.” On the other side, Mr Beast: > Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. That’s the number one goal of this production company. It’s not to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest quality videos.. It’s to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. Everything we want will come if we strive for that. Sounds obvious but after 6 months in the weeds a lot of people tend to forget what we are actually trying to achieve here.
  • sirspacey 2y ago
    Yeah this hit hard for me as well. I’ve studiously avoided building on platforms, but very different mindset to decided to be the best player on that platform. Lesson learned: don’t make it about something else. Win the algo.
    • mistrial9 2y ago
      Fine Arts would like a word with you
  • kelnos 2y ago
    For every MrBeast there are tens (hundreds?) of thousands (millions?) you've never heard of. And for some of them, it's because the platform pulled the plug on them. If someday YT decides to pull the plug on MrBeast, he might start singing a different tune. Or not, I mean, his millions and millions of dollars will probably make him feel better.
  • codexon 2y ago
    Building on someone's platform is a gamble. It paid off for Mr. Beast. Maybe it will pay off for you, or maybe you will get banned before you make enough to retire or create another company. This is prime example of survivorship bias.
  • tpmoney 2y ago
    I read that as less about "building on someone else's platform" (though that's still a risk they're taking) and more a youtube / media content producer version of "perfect software doesn't pay the bills, shipping software does". I've known plenty of good developers that if they didn't have hard deadlines and people reminding them about what the real goal of the company is, would spend 6 months developing a perfect, provably correct PDF to JSON converter for reading any possible design of tables in all PDFs. Missing the fact that they only need to parse the tables in the CSV files that the vendors are sending us so we can invoice the customers. That quote reads like its reminding people that youtube and a youtube production company job is not where you go to make art house silent films.
• jack_riminton 2y ago
  I was fully expecting to read a load of nonsense, but it chimes quite a lot with military training, which shouldn't actually be that surprising. e.g. if someone is your bottleneck make them aware, give them a due date, check in regularly, in person comms is better than written etc.
• smsm42 2y ago
  > “I Spent 50 Hours In Ketchup” > In general the more extreme the better. I may be sounding like "get off my lawn" guy right now but should there be some realization that these people are a cultural analogue of if not heroin than at least cigarettes? They are making a good living from making things objectively worse in a society by tickling the base instincts of the addicts. I am not calling for government intervention or any of such BS but is it too much for me to expect at least some cultural pushback here?
  • smcl 2y ago
    Maybe more "old man yells at cloud" but I am kinda with you in thinking it's trash. The thing is that every generation has had its own equivalent swill for kids, this one is no different. His channel won't last, there's too much baggage around it, but it'll get replaced with something equally trashy.
    • smsm42 2y ago
      I have a lot of memories in my childhood, but I can't remember anything on this level. Sure, I grew up in a very different environment than the US, but even in the US - say, was there a constant stream of content aimed at kids that is optimized to be maximally extreme and maximally attention-grabbing? All I can remember was cartoons - but were kids spending hours glued to the screen watching cartoons? I surely wasn't.
      • dymax78 2y ago
        Having been a young kid in the 80s, what I recently discovered was the primary concern with parents at the time (because, I genuinely don’t remember) was using those afternoon and Saturday morning cartoons as a vehicle to sell products to kids - a barrage of advertisements. Seems pale in comparison to extreme behavior that potentially endangers others, e.g. deliberately crashing your airplane for views/hits.
      • ThrowawayR2 2y ago
        Don't afterschool cartoons every weekday and several hours of Saturday morning cartoons qualify? IIRC that was the usual habit of children a few decades ago.
• tmoertel 2y ago
  From the referenced doc: > CTR is basically how many people see our thumbnail in their feeds divided by how many that click it. That's actually 1/CTR. Another example of math fluency not being required for success at the top.
  • KPGv2 2y ago
    whether you're looking for CTR on one end of the continuum or 1/CTR on the other end of the spectrum, you're looking at the same thing, just without understanding what one word means
  • smsm42 2y ago
    I think it's a good example of understanding how people think is good for the success at the top. Out of 1000 people asking "Wtf is CTR now?" maybe one needs a precise definition usable for immediate conversion to the programming code. That's the person for whom CTR and 1/CTR difference is important. The other 999 need to understand what's this term is used to measure and where it comes from - and for them this explanation is just fine. They are not people who make decisions or calculations based on it - those already know what CTR is. They are random people that need to fit a new thing into their mental model - and they won't even notice the difference, especially given the followup explanation.
  • ajkjk 2y ago
    ... Sounds like a person with plenty of fluency made a typo.
• mrkramer 2y ago
  I respect his dedication and grind....I prefer more YouTube pop culture and YouTubers than TikTok and TikTokers. YouTube is so much better.
  • j_maffe 2y ago
    The grind to do what? Make an endless stream of shit content? Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • Pedro_Ribeiro 2y ago
      [flagged]
  • talldayo 2y ago
    Trying to discern whether YouTube or TikTok influencers are better than the other is like picking which tooth you want pulled. Both are so gratingly painful even compared to normal cable television. I have really no respect for the people that abuse a broken status quo to only improve their own personal standing. The fact that a lot of HNers seem to look up to Mr. Beast is almost as tellingly acerbic as the reliance on Steve Jobs for intelligent business quotes.
    • mrkramer 2y ago
      >Both are so gratingly painful even compared to normal cable television. This is the new type of cable television and it's free. Yea sure I pay it with my data but at least I don't need to spit out money every month to watch it. >I have really no respect for the people that abuse a broken status quo to only improve their own personal standing. Again, entertainment on YouTube is free....even YouTube stopped bothering me to disable my ad-blocker so MrBeast is not getting a penny from me. I might buy YouTube Premium at some point in the future tho.
• hasGT 2y ago
  [flagged]
• refibrillator 2y ago
  Direct link to the PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YaG9xpu-WQKBPUi8yQ4HaDYQLUSa7Y3J/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YaG9xpu-WQKBPUi8yQ4HaDYQLUS...
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • jesprenj 2y ago
    Or the actual PDF file instead of Google docs: http://splet.4a.si/dir/How-To-Succeed-At-MrBeast-Production.pdf http://splet.4a.si/dir/How-To-Succeed-At-MrBeast-Production....
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
• jonathanyc 2y ago
  > I want you to look them in the eyes and tell them they are the bottleneck and take it a step further and explain why they are the bottleneck so you both are on the same page. “Tyler, you are my bottleneck. I have 45 days to make this video happen and I can not begin to work on it until I know what the contents of the video is. I need you to confirm you understand this is important and we need to set a date on when the creative will be done.” […] Every single day you must check in on Tyler and make sure he is still on track to hit the target date. This sounds to me a lot like the idea in software engineering of being “blocked on” something. I wonder what jargon other fields use for the same concept. Could be cool to have a table cross-referencing jargon across fields, haha.
• baxtr 2y ago
  Are we sure this got “leaked”? Or is this merely part of the not leaked production PDF? It will generate a ton of attention. Who cares if it’s bad?
  • simonw 2y ago
    As far as I can tell this was leaked to a person who’s been having a high profile disagreement with MrBeast, by either a current or former staff member. Maybe it’s a fake or a deliberate release, but it doesn’t read like the at to me. There is a ton of commercially sensitive information in here. Not to mention that note about the expensive squid game incident which I doubt they would have included in a document for public consumption. I don’t think MrBeast needs to farm for attention outside of his current very successful video tactics.
    • ants_everywhere 2y ago
      > I don’t think MrBeast needs to farm for attention outside of his current very successful video tactics. Well he is in the middle of a PR push responding to the claims from former employees that he fakes his videos and is generally fraudulent
  • latexr 2y ago
    Mr Beast’s company has been getting a ton of negative attention for how it works and how it treats employees and contestants. It seems plausible it was leaked as another example of toxic culture.
  • mewse-hn 2y ago
    It was leaked with a lot of attention being paid to the "no doesn't necessarily mean no" section in the context of abuse at the MrBeast org
• egorfine 2y ago
  > Since we are on the topic of communication, written communication also does not constitute communication unless they confirm they read it. Excellent.
• jellicle 2y ago
  The bulk of content on Youtube today is some stock video footage, an AI-generated script read by a computer voice. Maybe a human spends a few minutes cutting together the video footage? But almost entirely automated spam designed to feed Youtube some pink slime and rake in the $. Compared to that, Mr. Beast is fine art, worthy of the Louvre.
• Zanni 2y ago
  Surprising reference to The Goal [1], which Mr. Beast "used to make everyone read ..." and still recommends. The Goal is a business novel about optimizing manufacturing processes for throughput and responsiveness rather than "efficiency" and is filled with counter-intuitive insights. Presenting it as a novel means you get to see characters grapple with these insights and fail to commit before truly understanding them. Excellent stuff, along the lines of The Phoenix Project [2], with which I assume many here are already familiar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel) [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-project https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-pro...
  • llamaimperative 2y ago
    Theory of Constraints is fascinating because, as MrBeast points out here, it seems extremely obvious. I've had numerous interactions on this site where a person dismisses an insight from ToC as "obvious" and then 2 sentences later promulgates the exact type of intuition that ToC disproves.
    • Zanni 2y ago
      Yeah, this is the brilliance of the novel format. Someone presents an insight, and it can see obvious in isolation but then seems obviously wrong in context. "Of course we should favor throughput over efficiency" is obvious until you realize it means, for example, allowing idle time on incredibly expensive machines to favor responsiveness, which just seems wasteful. In the novel, you get to see the characters bang their heads against these "paradoxes" again and again until it sinks in.
      • llamaimperative 2y ago
        Interesting -- I'll have to read The Goal! I've only read the reference material around ToC, so this sounds additive :)
      • tpmoney 2y ago
        >is obvious until you realize it means, for example, allowing idle time on incredibly expensive machines to favor responsiveness, which just seems wasteful. Weird how things that seem to make sense in one context seem to make no sense in another context. If you told me a factory runs their widget making machine at 70% capacity in case someone comes along with an order for a different widget or twice as many widgets, at first glance think that's a bad idea. If your customers can keep your widget machine 100% full, using only part of the machine for the chance that something new will come along seems wasteful. And through cultural osmosis the idea of not letting your hardware sit idle is exactly the sort of thing that feels right. And yet, we do this all the time in IT. If you instead of a widget machine told me that you run your web server at 100% capacity all the time, I'd tell you that's also a terrible idea. If you're running at 100% capacity and have no spare headroom, you can't serve more users if one of them sends more requests than normal. Even though intuitively we know that a machine sitting idle is a "waste" of compute power, we also know that we need capacity in reserve because demand isn't constant. No one sizes (or should size) their servers for 100% utilization. Even when you have something like a container cluster, you don't target your containers to 100% utilization, if for no other reason than you need headroom while the extra containers spin up. Odd that without thinking that through, I wouldn't have applied the same idea to manufacturing machinery.
• potatoman22 2y ago
  Reading through the document, this company seems hellish for its employees. I wonder how the pay and perks are
  • qwertytyyuu 2y ago
    Spoken like a “c-player” haha. I’m with you though. It’s only for people who really very much enjoy working on the things he does.
  • TrackerFF 2y ago
    Seems like your average creative industry company, to be honest. Underpaid, overworked, expectations of “total dedication”, for the off-chance that you can rise to the top or branching out.
• joshdavham 2y ago
  I really liked his distinction between A, B and C-team players. This could be a really good framework for recruiting in an ambitious startup.
  • RandomThoughts3 2y ago
    I personally deeply disliked the semi-cult like explanation that anyone moving out was basically not good enough to be there in the first place. Apart from that, it's the good old Netflix playbook: empower managers to remove adequate team members with good severance to give space to good team members. The danger is letting it deteriorate into stack ranking if you are not careful with the deleterious effect on team work associated.
  • ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • dang 2y ago
      You can't post flamebait like this to HN, regardless of which country you have a problem with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it looks like we've been having to ask you to stop breaking the site guidelines for years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39281820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39281820 (Feb 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656288 (April 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34844518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34844518 (Feb 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18585046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18585046 (Dec 2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18575831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18575831 (Dec 2018) Continuing like this is eventually going to get your account banned. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review the rules and stick to them, that would be good.
      • ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
        Sorry this was uncalled for.
• rasengan 2y ago
  Obligatory dogpack404 link [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/@DogPack404 https://www.youtube.com/@DogPack404
  • kurisufag 2y ago
    who is dogpack404, and why is posting their links obligatory?
    • mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago
      Dogpack404 is a former mrbeast employee currently exposing mrbeast for varying misconduct, such as faking his videos, running illegal lotteries through his videos, doing a crypto pump n dump, making fraudulent claims about his merch, inhumane treatment of contestants and harbouring multiple sex offenders at his company. The list goes on and Dogpack404 is not the only one currently exposing things like this, but is maybe the most prominent.
  • spixy 2y ago
    [flagged]
• pockybum522 2y ago
  This reminds me of how every corporation I've ever seen operates. Why is this strange or interesting?
  • simonw 2y ago
    Other corporations seriously have employee handbooks with sentences like this in? “… instead of starting with his house in the circle that he would live in, we bring it in on a crane 30 seconds into the video. Why? Because who the fuck else on Youtube can do that lol.”
    • wongarsu 2y ago
      They identified something their customers (viewers) like and the competition can't provide, and play to that unique strength. That's pretty standard, they just give an example instead of obfuscating the principle in management speak. With some rewording this would be perfect for the USP slide of an investor deck
    • tpmoney 2y ago
      They do, but usually you'll find it worded something like "Deliver high value, seamless and synerginized entertainment that frontalizes our strengths and inspires diverse modalities of consumer satisfaction"
      • jjkaczor 2y ago
        This guy "corporates"... today you win at "buzzword bingo"! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzword_bingo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzword_bingo
    • saylisteins 2y ago
      The valve handbook is an interesting read as well, it's very different, but in a way very similar. Link: https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmplo...
• GaggiX 2y ago
  Mr.Beast is in some big controversies right now, and it's honestly much more interesting than this PDF, I expected to see the "no does not mean no" section in this PDF.
  • _cenw 2y ago
    It's there, on page 19.
    • simonw 2y ago
      I think this document predates the current scandal - the page 19 reference is to https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/style/mrbeast-beast-games-competition-show.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/style/mrbeast-beast-games... where the more recent scandal is https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna164777 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna164777 (Sorry, my mistake: the page 19 bit is indeed “no does not mean no” which is unfortunate wording given a current scandal! The scandal I referred to is the one about leaving contestants in the sun for three+ hours)
    • GaggiX 2y ago
      I wonder why it wasn't mentioned in the article.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • albrewer 2y ago
    If you read the content of the PDF instead of focusing on the problematic wording of the section title, you'll see that he doesn't mean it in a personal boundary context, but in a problem solving / sales context. Most people's default answer to ideas that are totally new to them is "no" and accepting that first no on its face means you don't get to achieve your goal.
• ttepasse 2y ago
  The unwavering fixation on metrics like Click Thru Rate, Average View Duration and Average View Percentage explains why so many of my previous channels get formulaic over time. It sounds like a small thing, but for some reason the thumbnails/titles with the Youtube face enrage me the most. Thankfully there are still enough channels which are not that optimized. But I wonder: How would the scene of Youtubers cope, if Youtube suddenly changes its algorithm to something completely different? I remember the tears in SEO-land, when Google did it.
  • throw10920 2y ago
    There's a disincentive for YouTube to change because it'd make both creators (to a greater extent) and users (to a lesser extent) unhappy. It's almost like the situation of buggy hardware implementations of networking protocols being so prevalent that software has to adapt to it, and vice versa, leading to lots of silly non-compliant (or non-optimal) behavior because it's disadvantageous to fix your behavior before upstream/downstream fixes theirs. I think the better ways to fix this would be either gradual change, carefully-crafted regulation, or a new platform entirely that's not owned by an ad company.
  • db48x 2y ago
    There are various browser extensions that you might like. Clickbait Remover for Youtube, DeArrow, etc. They remove the thumbnail images and replace them with a frame from a random time within the video, and replace or modify the video title to make it less sensational. I also recommend Sponsorblock.
    • ttepasse 2y ago
      I'm using an even more nerdier variant: Subscribing via RSS feeds, then downloading as MP4s. Having a small backlog of video files in the file system shows how great file systems are compared to a subscription feed on a web site: You can pick and choose your next video, you can sort by different criteria, you can tag then and/or put them into folders and you can do that all one the fly.
      • 2y ago
• ocean_moist 2y ago
  Lot of people critiquing this, but you can't deny the success. I think a lot of the advice is applicable to startups. 1. KPIs, for Beast they are CTR, AVD, AVP, will look different if you are a startup. I am willing to bet he knows his metrics better than >95% of startup founders. Because he is literally hacking/being judged by an algorithm, his KPIs will matter more and can be closely dissected. Startups aren't that easy in that sense, but KPIs still matter. 2. Hiring only A-players. Bloated teams kill startups. 3. Building value > making money 4. Rewarding employees who make value for the business and think like founders/equity owners, not employees. 5. Understanding that some videos only his team can do, and actively exploiting and widening that gap. The management/communication stuff is mostly about working on set/dealing with physical scale. You need a lot more hands dealing with logistics, which requires hardline communication and management. In startups, the team is usually really lean and technical, so management becomes more straightforward. I am also getting some bad culture vibes from the PDF and really dislike the writing style. I think it's important not to micromanage to the extent he is--it's necessary, maybe, for his business. Not for startups. Interesting perspective, reminds me of a chef de cuisine in a cutthroat 90s kitchen. The dishes (videos) have to be perfect, they require a lot of prep and a lot of hands, and you have to consistently pump them out.
  • simonw 2y ago
    I’m with you on the management vibes - it doesn’t sound like a culture that I’d enjoy. That’s one of the things I find so interesting about this document: it does feel very honest and unfiltered, and as such it appears to be quite an accurate insight into their culture. And that’s a culture that works if you want to create massive successful viral YouTube videos targeting their audience. How much has that specific chosen culture contributed to their enormous success in that market? There’s no way to know that, but my hunch is it contributed quite a bit.
    • j45 2y ago
      First time entrepreneurs are also learning how to build culture. No excuse, but still.
    • next_xibalba 2y ago
• dayvid 2y ago
  This is actually a really good document for someone who is a junior or assistant. I've worked a variety of jobs and didn't get much documents on training like this, mostly compliance stuff. You could take a lot of it out and get good points on managing people and taking ownership for tasks. It seems redundant or basic, but a lot of these things aren't explicitly mentioned, usually informally only.
  • paulryanrogers 2y ago
    It is nice to see the red flags in writing ahead of time. After all "boys will be boys"
    • dayvid 2y ago
      That’s there, but the parts about taking responsibility for your work, keeping people you delegate work to accountable and negotiating with vendors and being persistent is stuff you usually get informally. I also find those signs that it’s a more honest document. Most things publicly available are so neutered there’s not much useful grey info
      • paulryanrogers 2y ago
        It's hypocritical, those closest to Jimmy have get-out-of-jail-free cards and others get fired. And the "no doesn't mean no" stuff reeks of toxic hustle culture. Most handbooks are boring and legalese because they can be evidence in court.
  • TrackerFF 2y ago
    You are correct. There are way too many assistant roles in the creative industry that come with little to none real job training, just “watch what I do, or do as I tell, and never make a mistake twice or you’re toast”. I think it’s due to the sheer amount of candidates, and the total power some superiors have over you. It’s a sink or swim strategy, but you’re also swimming with sharks.
• xrd 2y ago
  I have kids and I'm really bothered by MrBeast. I had to buy goddamn chocolate bars at Walmart because of him. I acknowledge he is creative and driven but the content is such crap, with a few exceptions that my kids point out. But, what's the alternative? For example, I love 3brown1blue videos. But, it is too advanced even for my eleven year old. Mark Rober videos are great, and my kids love them, but he's even inside MrBeast's orbit. And, he's not putting out as much content. What are the good channels that create creative and stimulating videos that are a benefit to humanity. Does YouTube kill those channels?
  • debacle 2y ago
    > I had to buy goddamn chocolate bars at Walmart because of him. Nah, you didn't. You're the parent, if you don't like the content, don't let your kids watch it.
    • throwaway984393 2y ago
      [dead]
  • np_tedious 2y ago
    Idk much about him but stacking school busses on top of each other with a crane or driving a train into a sinkhole seem like pretty interesting things to do. Better than geeking out over the bloodiest Mortal Kombat fatality or whatever I was doing at that age. What's an example of the more "crap" content?
  • bondarchuk 2y ago
    Why watch youtube at all? It's not obligatory.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • maltalex 2y ago
    > But, what's the alternative? Good question. I'm also on the lookout for quality content for my kids. I recently learned that YouTube Kids can be put into whitelist-only mode, and that specific channels, videos, or collections of channels can be picked individually. Google aren't making it easy, but the option is there. > Does YouTube kill those channels? I don't think it's about YouTube. Mr Beast is good at what he does, and manages to produce very marketable content. It's fast-food entertainment. It's a newer take on what's been on our TV screens for decades in the form of reality TV and game shows.
• m3kw9 2y ago
  I see a lot of hating on mr beast for being so mechanical in driving views but blame the game, not the player
  • paulryanrogers 2y ago
    Doesn't excuse knowingly encouraging kids to gamble and covering for SA, or selling unhealthy chocolate bars to kids under the guise of health food.
• oulipo 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • IAmNotACellist 2y ago
    That's the thing. You have to love that, and that's probably something only people who grew up watching YouTube can feel at a deep level. Generational divides happen like that often.
    • Loughla 2y ago
      Bingo. I do not understand the attraction of nearly all YouTube creators and celebrities. I don't get the appeal. All the videos sound the same and have the same stupid looking tag lines to get you to watch them. Outrageous actions for attention are deeply troubling to me. And I'm also SUPER aware that it's because it's not for me. I'm not the target demographic at all, and never will be. At some point you have to realize that the world moves on, and that's just part of getting older. It feels awesome when you're 18-24 and everything is relevant to you. It feels way less awesome when you're over 40 and everything seems to be out of control.
      • sixothree 2y ago
        Honestly it sounds like a deficiency on your part and that you need to explore some. Because I follow a lot of smart, talented, nerdy, and interesting creators. And my feed is nothing like what you described.
        • pests 2y ago
          When ever someone describes me what their feed is full of or taken over with, they are secretly telling me what type of bubble they are in and what type of content they actually consume.
        • brokenmachine 2y ago
          I'm also ruthless with the "not interested" and "don't recommend channel".
• mhh__ 2y ago
  MrBeast's videos are total slop that I would put serious effort towards preventing my children watching if I had some but reading this it's immediately obvious why he's successful.
• shalmanese 2y ago
  This, fr, is a better explication of "founder mode" than anything pg & co have put out about it so far.
• bondarchuk 2y ago
  Some dramatic takes in this thread. Is watching a mr Beast video really that much worse than watching Friends or Spongebob or Game of Thrones?
  • kurisufag 2y ago
    never saw GoT, but I wouldn't think so. you put an episode on and all of a sudden half an hour has passed. all these things are just convenient timeskip tools.
  • dcchambers 2y ago
    At least your two examples try to tell a story. They have some artistic integrity. Mr. Beast has one goal: Eyes on content. For a long as possible. There is no artistic vision - every decision is made in the name of profit, attention, and addiction.
    • shombaboor 2y ago
      yeah i thought that was interesting, as if to say, if we made a pet torture video that has the most views ever, that's what's important. Also how wedded it is to youtube. understanding how youtube works is more important that making funny or engaging content. it's a reverse of 'if you build it they will come' when it comes to excellence.
    • yunwal 2y ago
      I barely know who Mr. Beast is but isn't his whole channel about, like, the joy of doing nice things for people? Like yes, it's for profit, and yes, it's schlocky and distasteful to us wise adults or whatever, but there's seriously nothing you find redeeming about kids enjoying seeing people getting their vision restored?
      • simonw 2y ago
        That’s some of his channel. Other bits of his channel are about putting people through extreme conditions to try and win money. The Rolling Stone profile has a good breakdown of his content cerca 2022: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/mrbeast-youtube-cover-story-interview-1334604/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/mrbeas...
• alphazard 2y ago
  The bit about A, B, and C players is good. I had been thinking about this as learning ability (fluid intelligence) and institutional knowledge both following a power law distribution. Mr. Beast refers to A and B players as being sufficiently high in learning ability and only differing in their position in the institutional knowledge distribution. Packaging this effect into a 3 category model definitely makes it easier to operationalize. The severance part is important too, since there would be hesitancy to terminate even obvious "C players".
• trhway 2y ago
  Dependencies and critical components - so much of software development fails because these aren’t understood and managed accordingly.
• dcchambers 2y ago
  The poor grammar drives me crazy. I get that I am not the target employee, but if I walked in to a job and was handed that on my first day I'd walk right out based on presentation alone.
  • simonw 2y ago
    It is at least self-aware on that front: the first page says “Sorry in advance for all the run on sentences and grammar issues, I’m a youtuber not an author haha.”
    • dcchambers 2y ago
      That shows a total lack of self respect in my opinion. You don't have to be an author to put even the tiniest effort into your writing in a professional letter like that.
      • tpmoney 2y ago
        Modern culture is very big on self deprecation and not having respect for the tiny details. If you don't hold yourself to standards, you can avoid people dragging you when you fail to live up to them. Better to say "I'm not an author ha ha" and have writing full of flaws, knowing the only people that are going to give you grief about it are people that "take it too seriously", then to try and present a well edited and highly professional piece of text and have a mistake missed in editing become the focal point of a bunch of pedants who want to tear you down for being high and mighty. It's a balancing act to be sure, but that's the current side of the spectrum the culture trends are on.
      • bawolff 2y ago
        Know your audience. This seems an intentional affectation. Like a dude who puts in an hour of work to nail the "just rolled out of bed" look. Whether its a good or bad idea is debatable, but either way its not due to lack of effort.
      • cruffle_duffle 2y ago
        > professional letter Define "professional letter". "Chicago manual of style" professional letter or some other, less professional styleguide? Because if it isn't written using the proper styleguide... I'm walking out that door before the first hour on the clock.
• guywithahat 2y ago
  One thing I find interesting is that y combinator content (like Michael and Dalton videos) don’t talk much about team intensity and culture aside from cliche terms, but successful teams obsess over it. I mean he’s literally saying he’ll give you $1000 to study the handbook, and the handbook says average employees should be fired immediately (in all caps). I’ve never heard something like that come from y combinatory, but I’ve seen other successful teams do similar things
• victor106 2y ago
  this is interesting. what are some resources that you can learn on how to create viral titles on existing content?
• TheAceOfHearts 2y ago
  One of the key details missing from the analysis being done in this thread is that Jimmy was iterating and figuring out how to optimize every part of his content for years before he really blew up in popularity. Having a loop where you keep publishing content and analyzing all aspects of it is the ultimate key to success, given enough time and resources. As I understand it, MrBeast helped fund the creation of ViewStats [0] in order to gather more data on thumbnails and channel / video performance over time. Then this knowledge is applied to their own content in order to make it even more successful. At this point there's probably multiple people who specialize just in thumbnail optimization. Another key detail about MrBeast production is that they target a global audience, so they hire famous voice actors of every major language to do their voice-overs. A few years before YouTube supported multiple audio tracks, they had different channels for various languages and regions. Now it's just a drop-down in the video settings. Many products fail to take internationalization and localization seriously, so their products are unable to penetrate non-western markets. Speaking of international reach, I saw in an interview a few years back that MrBeast was trying to expand to the Chinese market, but none of his public interviews since then have discussed how he's doing there. This goes a bit against the extreme focus on YouTube as his primary platform. A quick search on bilibili (which I believe is the Chinese equivalent of YouTube), shows his latest video hitting 1.6 million views and 8k comments, which isn't bad but it doesn't really compare to the amount of attention that he gets on YouTube. It seems like even the most skilled content creators in the West still struggle to break into the Chinese market. [0] https://www.viewstats.com/ https://www.viewstats.com/
  • trogdor 2y ago
    I didn’t know that YouTube supports multiple audio tracks for the same video. Can alternate tracks be uploaded at a later point in time? Can the feature be used to replace the original audio in a video?
    • fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
      It's only available for certain channels. You can see more info here.[0] [0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/13338784 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/13338784
• latexr 2y ago
  > Lot of people critiquing this, but you can't deny the success. You could say that about literally any shady business. Imagine seeing a PDF proving tobacco leaders knew for decades that it caused cancer and saying what you did. Being monetarily successful does not mean you’re good or shouldn’t be criticised.
  • t_mann 2y ago
    Can you point to the parts of the document, or other resources about Mr. Beast, that warrant a comparison with tobacco companies?
    • TibbityFlanders 2y ago
      [dead]
    • ipsento606 2y ago
      > Can you point to the parts of the document, or other resources about Mr. Beast, > that warrant a comparison with tobacco companies? The part where the GP says "Lot of people critiquing this, but you can't deny the success." invites counterexamples of companies that are successful but still deserving of critique.
    • wesselbindt 2y ago
      They make money in ways that others would find morally reprehensible. The tobacco industry makes its money off of addictive substances that kill millions per year, and Donaldson makes content for entertainment that literally tortures people in the sense of being a violation of the geneva convention. In both cases they're highly efficient operations that make a lot of money, but whether or not you would call it a success story depends on your definition of success. If your definition of successful is "makes money", then the tobacco industry, Donaldson, fentanyl dealers, etc are indeed successful. If your definition is "the world is a better place for its existence", then not so much. Regarding sources: if you're genuinely interested and not just being argumentative for argument's sake, you're capable of googling "MrBeast geneva convention" and following the sources from there.
• jesprenj 2y ago
  How do they get $1 million+ from a single video? AdSense or sponsors?
• shalmanese 2y ago
  One distressing trend I've noticed becoming ubiquitous on HN is that any writing that is confronting to a consensus worldview becomes flooded with highly upvoted comments that are, in essence, excuses for why it's not necessary in this instance to re-examine your priors. He's making low value content/the culture of the company is horrible/he's a fraud/it's more luck than skill. The actual critiques are personalized to the content and, to one extent or another, valid, but the social purpose of the critiques is universal which is that I felt uncomfortable that reading this might mean I have to re-evaluate my worldview and I'm going to dive into the comment section and upvote all the people telling me actually, I don't have to do that. I actually spent over an hour writing 750+ words of my takeaways reading this document and shared it privately with a few founder friends of mine and I briefly considered also posting to share with the community but I took a look at the comments and took a look at what I wrote and decided I didn't have the energy to face the endless onslaught of nitpicks and misunderstandings that are driven, at the end of the day, not by a genuine intellectual desire to reach an understanding, but by the need to prove emotionally that others are not taking this seriously so I don't have to either. All I can do is be vague and say I think this was an enormously valuable piece of writing that is worth engaging seriously for what it is as it might change your worldview in several important ways. But also my larger meta-point is that there's a now near ubiquitous "sour grapes" attitude that's pervaded HN that makes it an extremely unpleasant place to hold a conversation and people reading should be aware of this systematic bias when reading comments here.
  • wetpaws 2y ago
    [dead]
  • Karrot_Kream 2y ago
    The "sour grapes" attitude has IMO really started crowding out other content. Pretty much any popular content here just has a flood of social signaling content all about how morally wrong, bad, evil, etc the content is. And if you don't want to pile on the commentary, which is all pretty much the same thing regurgitated in different ways, then your content just kinda languishes at the bottom of the page. I don't really know why this kind of content is so engaging but I guess it is. Kinda like a sports match where everyone just shouts at how bad the other team is or something. EDIT: My pet theory is that it has to do with the general aging of the users here. There's a kind of well-to-do, Western, mid-40s (usually male) social opinion I see upvoted a lot here that I feel like hits the sweet spot of the folks who still read this site regularly. But it's just a theory really.
• mannyv 2y ago
  [flagged]
• yapyap 2y ago
  [dead]
• greenthrow 2y ago
  The amount of bootlicking content in here is ridiculous. Nothing in this is special or has much to do with MrBeast's success. In fact, it has a lot more to do with damaging the brand which has happened recently. Thinking you will find success even remotely like MrBeast's by following the contents of this document is hilariously naive.
• sweeter 2y ago
  I think the authors intention was to pull any positives from this document that they could, but it seems almost negligent to not even mention the "no doesn't mean no" section of this document. As well as the context of the current ongoing gigantic mess, where Mr Beast tortured a guy while doing a "I spent X Hours in Solitary Confinement" video, and had to scrap it after the contestant was harmed. They refused to shut the lights off for days on end and then coerced the contestant to run a literal marathon on a treadmill... and then there's the sexual abuse allegations high up in his team, hiring a convicted child predator and someone else with a long sexual abuse criminal history, among other things. I'm not sure I would talk his business practices up without directly making some kind of distinction or acknowledgement here.
  • simonw 2y ago
    I didn’t try to extract positives, I extracted what I personally found most interesting. I skipped the “no doesn’t mean no” section because it felt like pure hustle culture to me, not to mention something which wouldn’t work outside of MrBeast because they can lean so heavily on their brand - “find an employee who has a kid who is a fan” etc. I didn’t actually spot the relationship between the “no means no” section and the sexual abuse scandals (I’m apparently not completely up to date on MrBeast scandals) - I caught the bit about squid game and though that would be a useful thing to highlight to remind people that MrBeast’s history isn’t without its nasty incidents.
    • elliotec 2y ago
      You didn’t spot the relationship with the “no doesn’t mean no” stuff because as you said in the next sentence, you skipped it. Nice one.
      • simonw 2y ago
        > You didn’t spot the relationship with the “no doesn’t mean no” stuff because as you said in the next sentence, you skipped it. No, it was because I had not read the news about MrBeast having a sexual predator on his team. My interpretation of the earlier comment here was that this should have been a flag that the heading “no doesn’t mean no” should have been called out. Without that knowledge of the current predator scandal, I don’t think I was wrong to skip that section when writing up my summary. I read that section and it didn’t make my “highlights” list for when I wrote about the document. I’m being defensive here because it sounds like you are calling me out for something, but I’m not sure what that something is.
• gonzo41 2y ago
  Mr best is many things. And one of them is a very good project/programme manager. This guide highlights that.
• geerlingguy 2y ago
  It's interesting to see the discussion from two different angles—there's a lot of support for the type of A/B/C delineation in parts of this thread, and some people who decry it in other parts. I was on the set for one of the productions, and I'll just say at the time I thought the experience was a one-off for one of the bigger productions they've put on. Since reading other people's stories, it seems more a case where the pressure to push, push, push for the next big video is a ginormous machine that grinds people pretty hard. An early stage startup, with a few employees, pushing to hit some milestone, could survive like that a while. But you can only burn through so many creative minds driving them at 110% all day like that. IMO, you have to find a sustainable burn rate that might be too much for some, but isn't going to drive away everyone desiring normal family / outside work life balance, especially 5-10 years into an org's lifetime. MrBeast (the org) has hundreds of employees and probably 5-10 major active productions (in pre-prod, prod, and post-prod). They've achieved a lot of impressive results, but they also get to cut a lot of corners traditional media (Hollywood, TV production) can't due to labor laws and unions. Edit: Not to mention, the 'No does not mean no' section was a bit alarming. There are plenty of times when no most certainly means no, and you can really damage business and personal relationships if you can't figure those out.
  • slt2021 2y ago
    MrBeast has given up his life for his youtube channel (he writes exactly this in the doc) - and he is looking for other people willing to give up theirs for his channel
    • sanderjd 2y ago
      People should not do that, though. There are better things to dedicate lives to.
      • slt2021 2y ago
        who are you to dictate what people do with their lives and deny them their free will?
• cynicalpeace 2y ago
  Great article. Its lesson is basically: go 110% in everything you do. Buck conventional laziness even when everyone else is doing it and be the ultimate "try-hard" Not to detract from it in any way.
  • veunes 2y ago
    I think successful anything it is "go 110% in everything you do".
• Havoc 2y ago
  Questionable as his techniques and friends may be, hard to argue with the results
• kumarvvr 2y ago
  Imagine the countless millions of hours people, especially young ones, have wasted on this content. Sure, the argument may go, its entertainment and those would have gotten the same from alternative sources, but in this particular case, viral ready addictive video content is ultimately a bane for society. This guy has studied 20000 to 30000 of videos, done data analysis on them, and then finetuned his videos to make them popular and earn a lot of money on it. As a business, this is genius, he is talented, he is profitable, his investors are circling around banks. But society has suffered for it. My kid watches similar pointless videos, and he is on the verge of addiction (any and all free time he has, he jumps to the videos of colorful activity videos on you tube, from chinese or russian channels. He is 10 years old) I am weaning him off youtube altogether, and involving him in books and other activities, but it is damn hard.
• tkgally 2y ago
  It might be interesting to contrast MrBeast’s management approach with that of Marques Brownlee (MKBHD). He is also a successful YouTuber who leads a team that puts out videos on several channels. While his videos don’t have the huge production scale of MrBeast’s, they seem to be produced on short deadlines and must require close coordination among his team. If I were young and wanted to work in online media production, I would much rather work for Marques Brownlee than for MrBeast.
  • rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 2y ago
    MKBHD is not even in Top 500 of the most subscribed Youtube channels, first give me the details of what those other 500 channels are doing then maybe MKBHD... (and I'm saying this as a long time subscriber)
    • Etheryte 2y ago
      Would you say the same about companies, that the only interesting ones worth talking about are the ones in the Fortune 500? If anything, I would say many of them are rather boring examples, we all know roughly how they're managed and run.
      • infecto 2y ago
        That’s a bit naive. I’m willing to bet that most of them have interesting details, with each one doing things in their own unique way.
  • tinco 2y ago
    MKBHD intentionally has a small team that makes relatively low budget videos. I think MKBHD mainly has a relatively large audience because he was very early to the high quality videos game on YouTube. I wouldn't be surprised if his edge is lost now and his viewership does not grow faster than would be expected of an active channel of his size. Not to hate on him, but just saying that's in sharp contrast with what MrBeast and LTT are trying to achieve.
• lazzlazzlazz 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • alt227 2y ago
    why?
    • CaptainFever 2y ago
      Comments here are more about ranting about their negative opinions on Mr Beast and YouTube, instead of actually analysing this extremely interesting document and seeing what we can learn from it.
• m3kw9 2y ago
  I’m telling you, nobody getting rich from this leak.
• j_timberlake 2y ago
  How to Succeed in a Torment Nexus: Make the best TORMENT NEXUS videos possible
• gleventhal 2y ago
  I don't have the energy for an intellectual debate, but personally, I have the sense that Youtube is net bad for the world and the monetization of Youtube has incentivized and amplified mediocrity, stupidity, and social decay. I don't follow or watch Mr Beast videos, but from what I've seen, they are largely driven by a money fetish and as far as "creativity", it feels on par with the more boring "What would you rather" conversations I had in middle school. Maybe he has unlocked the key to virality by vigorously analyzing data, but looking at his videos, at a glance, it seems to more be formulaic, predictable, and simply having an actual budget that sets it apart (if it is actually set apart, as I find it hard to tell how much of it is others copying his work versus hius work being unoriginal).
  • TheAceOfHearts 2y ago
    For as much slop as gets produced on YouTube, I think the high quality educational content more than makes up for it. You can literally look up any subject and find a full blown series on the topic. His huge budgets and willingness to reinvest all the profits into future videos have allowed MrBeast to produce a lot of unique videos which are effectively unmatched by anyone else. Right now they're really the undisputed kings of the platform, by a massive margin.
    • Andrex 2y ago
      Agreed, YouTube is the PBS of the internet. It's free and fast.
      • intalentive 2y ago
        It’s a wonder of the modern world
        • hackernewds 2y ago
          and it just works. I'm glad there's a monopoly of UGC video
      • 2y ago
• joe_g_young 2y ago
  The A,B and C teams seem to line up with the Sociopath, clueless, and losers in Gervais Principle.. or at least from this url(https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...)
• gzer0 2y ago
  This point caught my attention, as my experience has been quite different, though in completely different industries. How does one go about finding genuinely good consultants, in any industry? > "Use Consultants Consultants are literally cheat codes. Need to make the world's largest slice of cake? Start off by calling the person who made the previous world's largest slice of cake lol. He's already done countless tests and can save you weeks worth of work. I really want to drill this point home because I'm a massive believer in consultants. Because I've spent almost a decade of my life hyper obsessing over YouTube, I can show a brand new creator how to go from 100 subscribers to 10,000 in a month. On their own it would take them years to do it. Consults are a gift from god, please take advantage of them. In every single freakin task assigned to you, always always always ask yourself first if you can find a consultant to help you. This is so important that I am demanding you repeat this three times in your head "I will always check for consultants when I'm assigned a task""
  • SonOfLilit 2y ago
    Disclaimer: I'm a software consultant, so obviously biased. MrBeast enters a new domain every week so consultants are way more important to him than to a software business. He has enough budget and fame to, as he says, use the Guinness Word Records book as a phonebook. Or any other resource that records world-famous achievements. So that's one way. Another is to have friends in the business that can recommend people they worked with. I'm not sure a third consistent way exists. Edit: very good technical people can recognize very good people in very different technical fields by their thinking and communication habits. Same for business people I believe. So if you have a wonderful devops employee/consultant and need an ML consultant but have zero idea how to evaluate them, have your devops guy talk to a few candidates and ask him whether they're good technical people.
  • pocketarc 2y ago
    I think the key thing here is he's talking about "the person who made the previous world's largest slice of cake". In other words, if I were working on a new programming language (just as an example), and could go hire Anders Hejlsberg as a consultant, well, that -is- going to be a mega cheat code. The amount of experience he'd bring to bear to even a 30 minute call would be insane. He would save me months or even years in mistakes and bad directions, and lead me straight to the core of whatever I wanted to do. That's the thing - he's not talking about hiring a generic "cake consultant". With that in mind, it'd be much easier to find those people - you'd know them by their achievements.
• MailleQuiMaille 2y ago
  He is sick. This is the work of a sick person. He even knows that he is sick but does not care, because of the sickness. I pray for his audience, really. What's this about the Squid Game video and the half a mil lost because of the "waiting in the sun" ? Did someone die ???
  • simonw 2y ago
    Here’s the squid game story. Thankfully nobody died but it was not a safely run set: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/style/mrbeast-beast-games-competition-show.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/style/mrbeast-beast-games...
• h4ny 2y ago
  For anyone who isn't aware of the problematic issues currently surrounding MrBeast (see sweeeter's comment here for some context https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41549649#41551656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41549649#41551656), I encourage you to read the linked Rolling Stone document and actually find a working link of the original leaked document and read it (link in post doesn't work). The blog post happens to miss a few of the points in the original document that would raise a lot of eyebrows and I'm not sure that it's a fair take on "what it takes to run a massive scale viral YouTube operation" if it lands you in all sorts of management trouble and potentially criminal allegations.
• jordanmorgan10 2y ago
  I just couldn’t with this, until the very last page. I feel like so many founders write and expect performance like this, and they miss what he said at the very, very end. So, I’ll give him credit for that.
• foundart 2y ago
  I know virtually nothing about Mr Beast other than that he's massively successful due to dumb videos that apparently raise lots of ethical questions. That's not an endeavor I'd be interested in participating in, but I did find the PDF fascinating and read all of it. A good bit of his guide is about 1. taking responsibility for delivering what you are expected to 2. keeping the big picture in mind Plenty of folks could benefit from that advice and the examples he provides to make it more concrete.
• vagab0nd 2y ago
  "How to be lucky"
• Animats 2y ago
  Actual PDF, 2 links away from the original article.[1] Has a lot in common with Roger Corman's "How I made a hundred movies in Hollywood and never lost a dime." [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YaG9xpu-WQKBPUi8yQ4HaDYQLUSa7Y3J/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YaG9xpu-WQKBPUi8yQ4HaDYQLUS...
• steve1977 2y ago
  Will have to read this (the PDF) in a free minute. Almost sounds a bit like the Manual by KLF (which was for dance music production) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual
• thrdbndndn 2y ago
  > Here’s a darker note from the section “Random things you should know”: >> Do not leave consteatants waiting in the sun (ideally waiting in general) for more than 3 hours. Squid game it cost us $500,000 and boys vs girls it got a lot of people out. Ask James to know more Can someone explain this to me? I don't quite get what the original quote means.
  • simonw 2y ago
    The conditions when filming their Squid Game episode weren't great for contestants: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/netflix-squid-game-reality-show-cruel-rigged-inhumane-contestants-say-1234672474/ https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/net... I don't know what "cost us $500,000" refers to though.
    • philipwhiuk 2y ago
      medical expenses and lawyers I imagine.
  • csomar 2y ago
    s/consteatants/contestants. My guess is that they left the players in Squid game is the sun and someone got hurt?
• gorgoiler 2y ago
  If I can turn a C player into a B player, can I eventually get them to A player status? Is there an effective strategy to getting someone to open their eyes, participate actively, and ramp up their performance to the highest levels? I worry that C player status is something fundamentally broken about a person. Maybe it’s as simple as their intellectual capacity?
  • lofenfew 2y ago
    >If I can turn a C player into a B player, can I eventually get them to A player status? By definition yes, because a B player by definition can be turned into an A player. But by that token, anyone that can be turned into a B player, is by definition a B player already. Hence, a C player, who is by definition not a B player, cannot be turned into a B player. >I worry that C player status is something fundamentally broken about a person. Maybe it’s as simple as their intellectual capacity? It would be motivation. Intellectual capacity can in principle be fixed, but motivation cannot because you would need to motivate them to fix it.
• CalRobert 2y ago
  "Since we are on the topic of communication, written communication also does not constitute communication unless they confirm they read it." Gonna keep that one handy.
  • popinman322 2y ago
    Huge +1. If I'd understood this mantra earlier in my career it would have saved me a large amount of hassle. For juniors: any time you send something important to your manager, confirm they read the document. Don't ask "did you read it?" Don't rely on reactions in chat. Ask a specific question that would require them to read the contents of the document. For example, if you're sending over a quote from a vendor, and you'd already sent another quote before, you could ask "how does this quote compare to the previous one? [link to previous one]" Always get confirmation at least 24-48 hours in advance of the point-of-no-return (e.g. launch, meeting, changing dates, company-wide emails), very preferably in writing. And for _very_ important meetings, ensure all parties have either acknowledged understanding of the required information, or schedule pre-meeting briefings with individuals. There's nothing quite like getting thrown under the bus because someone showed up and couldn't figure out the subtleties & context on the fly. Unfortunately you can't just say "it's a 12 page document for a reason." when your manager is confused in front of their manager.
• jameskraus 2y ago
  This has one of the best sections I've read on why communication lines are important: >It’s very important as a company we maintain proper communication lines. ... If you skip and just go below you prizemust then call and let the people in charge know. Let’s say you’re a production coordinator and you call a writer and tell him you need some bits about a sandwich being cooked with lava, seems harmless... and then tyler askes her why she is making lava and she has no idea and everyone is confused. This is what happens when you don’t follow proper communication lines. Skipping over all the typos, it's just such a great visual of the communication breakdowns that can happen when a lot of things are going on. Also this section on tracking contractors: > [Y]ou can’t just dump and forget your projects... Ask him to send videos everyday to spot problems early, hell maybe talk to him twice a day. I don’t care just don’t leave room for error. No excuses, stop leaving room for error. Check in daily, receive videos, and know weeks in advance if you’re fucked. Not days. This is more extreme than I encounter in my day to day, very on brand to MrBeast, but it's interesting to see this constant accountability and ownership are so critical in their production. I see similar behavior in some of the more effective people I've worked with.
• seydor 2y ago
  He already has a huge audience so whatever he puts in that PDF is not really useful to anyone else. Surprised that he says he studied youtube virality. It seemed that he got his ideas from 80s prank TV but over time his titles became increasingly audacious. Also surprised that his videos are being watched to the end. The clickbait generates curiosity for watching , but his vids are so predictable it s totally boring Everybody's riding the "MrBeast" train because he s so successful , even though they truly don't like him. 3 years down the line he will be in court defending his abuses
  • throw16180339 2y ago
    I think many readers would benefit from the sections on communication, ownership, and responsibility. I've seen way too many projects fail because of poor communication.
• pests 2y ago
  It's odd as this was leaked and big on YouTube at least a week ago. I guess not much overlap of this community and YT drama.
• pinkmuffinere 2y ago
  Despite whatever we think of Mr Beast, these instructions have helped build something impressive. The principles are interesting, and could be applied to build other impressive things. I like that. Elements that particularly stand out to me: 1. Taking direct ownership 2. Doing things that are effective, even though they're socially uncomfortable 3. Working towards the goal, to the detriment of other things which sound good but are not the goal 4. The way they fight to keep retention to incremental checkpoints. I don't know if this has any applications for Engineering, but certainly for marketing and communication it does. 5. The claimed method of constantly evaluating his employees _really_ appeals to me
• BrenBarn 2y ago
  Some people have alluded to this, but I find it sad that so much energy in our modern society goes towards trying to exploit arbitrary particularities of arbitrary platforms. Even if we set aside the stuff like "you're taking a risk building on YouTube because they could ban you", there's the more practical stuff about how the plan is all about the title and thumbnail. Like if YouTube somehow switched to letting you have two thumbnails, or some other UI element that you could customize, suddenly everyone playing this game would have to scramble to figure out how to maximize in that environment. It just seems to me like following a rich person around hoping some coins will fall out of their pocket. It's a parasitic ecosystem that encourages content to focus more and more on "what works" in the self-perpetuating context of that ecosystem, and less and less on making contact with any kind of external reality.
  • laserbeam 2y ago
    > suddenly everyone playing this game would have to scramble to figure out how to maximize in that environment These people are the best positioned to figure this out. They've been experimenting with youtube changes for years and they already know how to experiment out the particularities.
    • BrenBarn 2y ago
      Of course they're best positioned to figure it out. The question is whether it's a good use of anyone's time to figure out such things, or whether we have a good society if it's one where people think that is a good use of their time. I am best positioned to pick my own nose but I don't think that means there needs to be a manual on how to do so.
  • sigmoid10 2y ago
    It's clear by now that youtube is just a platform designed to produce the Infinite Jest video. Mr. Beast accordingly just appears to be a step on the way there.
  • nobrains 2y ago
    What is the alternative? Don't do the above, and hence not get the views, and hence not be able to sustain what you wanted to build.
• rldjbpin 2y ago
  interesting to see this leaked a few weeks after the valve one (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41329274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41329274), albeit unrelated. if an actual one, to me it is another interesting perspective inside the minds of a privately-owned, internet-based party that hold a significant mind-share in its domain.
  • sd9 2y ago
    The Valve one has been floating around for years
• meindnoch 2y ago
  [flagged]
• trustno2 2y ago
  I hate the actual content he produces - the first time I watched it, I kept thinking it's a trailer because of all the cuts and I wondered, where is the actual video, when I realized no, I am watching the actual video - but I have to commend the grind. He is trully obsessive about getting the most views, almost soullessly designing the perfect viral content, caring about every second. He literally starts with the thumbnail and title and only then works out the rest of the video! I also like this 2 years old video of visiting his studio. This guy literally sleeps in his giant studio, everything is super optimized. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUzpK0tGFcE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUzpK0tGFcE Of course the end result is entirely pointless. But still. I respect the grind. (I also love when he "builds 1000 houses in Africa" or whatever, and he usually never even mentions the country or the place name. It's not that important. But at least he does some good, I guess.)
  • phito 2y ago
    It's just fast food content.
    • trustno2 2y ago
      Yeah and I respect fast food chains in this regard. So, that makes sense.
    • seydor 2y ago
      except it doesnt even feed you
      • lionkor 2y ago
        Arguably neither does fast food - it gives you energy, but it's also quite bad for your health and your wallet. So, it feeds you, sure, but the negatives likely far outweigh the positives. If you've ever cooked meals for multiple days with just some ground beef, cabbage and some lettuce and friends for ~10 bucks per day, you'll see how crazy expensive a $20 fast food ""meal"" is. So this is fast food content, because it does entertain, but you could do many things to get good entertainment and also not consume absolute slop.
• deleted 2y ago
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• veunes 2y ago
  MrBeast has a deep understanding of his audience. He often tailors his content based on what resonates with viewers, and he uses feedback to continuously improve. But still there are some problems with approach
• saltserv 2y ago
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• deleted 2y ago
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• mda 2y ago
  Yikes, I am glad I never watch that channel, probably instinctively sensed its rotten smell from distance.
  • baggachipz 2y ago
    Never watched one video either, but it seems to just be "Ow, my balls!" Just useless brain rot.
• snickmy 2y ago
  Just wanted to add, completely unrelated to the line of business and the moral judgement on what Mr Beast Production does, that I really cherish seeing such a well written onboarding material. The sharpness in articulation, the consistency in the leadership vision, and the cultural undertone is of very high level. For comparison, any tech company I've worked for, doesn't get even closer, drawing in acronyms, micro-cultures and personal interest.
  • phonon 2y ago
    He has annual revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. "lol"
    • brrrrrm 2y ago
      goes to show formal language isn't a necessary component of high communication. might even be antagonistic
• qwertox 2y ago
  > Prelude (idk what this means) 10 second lookup for an "important" document...
• deskr 2y ago
  Excellent write up. Intolerable videos.
• throwpoaster 2y ago
  See dogpack404 on YouTube for counterpoints on Mr Beast.
• sharpshadow 2y ago
  The pdf is fine nothing really sensational. Some good advise for video creators and how to commit to succeed at their company. Written in what you need to invest not what you need to sacrifice. The bar is high which is fine tho. For example he wants one to work on 3 different projects on a workday instead of 1 project for 3 workdays. I watched one video of MrBeast in the past and the pdf explains well why I actually watched it to the end. I do dislike these kind of videos and don’t watch them but success is success and he does things right. One of his rules which is kind of neat is that the clickbait title and thumbnail needs to deliver on the promise - which is a great concept considering over 97% clickbait isn’t.
  • newaccount74 2y ago
    I think following through on the crazy thumbnail is the most defining part of the MrBeast brand. Lots of Yt videos have crazy thumbnails; only MrBeast follows through!
• j7ake 2y ago
  His section on monitoring your information diet is generally applicable to many fields. If you want to be expert in X, consume content in X (in addition to the deliberate practice and focus on the craft of X).
• doix 2y ago
  There are lot of comments here disliking MrBeast and what not, but some of the advice can definitely apply to all organizations. > Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. That’s the number one goal of this production company. It’s not to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest quality videos.. It’s to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. Replace "youtube videos" with whatever the company is trying to achieve. I see it all the time in large organizations, where different teams forget what the goal of the company is and instead get hyperfocused on their teams KPI's to the detriment of the company as a whole. Lawyers finding problems and trying to stop things from happening instead of finding solutions. Security blocking things and not suggesting alternatives. IT blocking this or that instead of trying solve problems, etc.
  • duxup 2y ago
    Your comment reminded me of the old content vs process Steve Jobs commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4dCJJFuMsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4dCJJFuMsE But I agree, it's so tempting to get internally focused, or focused on "improvement" that really shifts the focus to something else entirely (hollywood style movies, tv shows, whatever). Personally I'm no fan of the youtube-ism and youtube generally, but it's clear that game is it's own game. It's not making a movie, it's not a TV show, it's not even tiktok. It's its own thing and it is pretty clear that generally you have to play that platform's game. My kids play a lot of roblox, and while there's a lot of copy cat games based on traditional gaming, there's almost a system on roblox as far as what games are popular as far as ease of jumping in goes and so on. And there's a lot of weird creativity you find nowhere else as far as the topics of the games (want to be a bug? you can do that). That's it's own space too.
  • kspacewalk2 2y ago
    >Lawyers finding problems and trying to stop things from happening instead of finding solutions. Sounds like they're doing their jobs, which is to protect your future selves from your current selves. Sure, finding solutions is great, but faulting them from finding problems and slowing things down until solutions are found is odd. Yes, security or IT does sometime have to act as a reality check in an organization that has over-hired over-zealous but under-experienced go-getters who want to "move fast and break things". They are a vital counterweight that makes ambition productive, instead of allowing it to wreck the organization's reputation.
• zer0c00ler 2y ago
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• whatjadat2 2y ago
  [flagged]
• Arch-TK 2y ago
  I appreciate this is how a startup must run, but must every small tech company be a startup? Where do you find jobs for small companies which are just happy to exist and grow sustainably. Where you can come in at 9:00am, have an uninterrupted hour long lunch break at 12:00pm and stop working at 5:30pm? While also not being paid pennies? I can care about your company and be passionate about my work without having to sacrifice all semblance of any aspect of the rest of my life. If that makes me a "B" or "C" player then that's fine.
  • Centigonal 2y ago
    They exist, but they are rare. Large tech companies have the benefit of economies of scale. For what you're looking for, you really need to find a niche player, and those folks don't hire very often. OpenDental, Rogue Amoeba, Impexium, and Cronometer are a few.
  • dbbk 2y ago
    I've seen these be referred to as "calm companies" which is nice.
• codedokode 2y ago
  Interesting, I only learned about this Youtuber recently, maybe 2 months ago or so despite him having so many views. Youtube seems to be good at not showing you what you don't search for. What his videos are lacking in my opinion is the quality of scenario and planning. They build an expensive set, give away a large prize but the challenges are either too simple or not very creative. Too little challenges, too little competition, too little motivation, too little expressing of personality like mutual help, sacrificing or betrayal, too little unexpected scenario twists. In this aspect they are not as good as TV shows. As an extreme example, take "give away money to random people" series. What fun is in getting money for nothing? And watching that is probably 100x more boring.
  • whiterknight 2y ago
    Billions of views and total YouTube dominance disagree with you.
    • anamexis 2y ago
      No, they're not exclusive at all. As the guide itself says: > Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. That’s the number one goal of this production company. It’s not to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest quality videos.. It’s to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. You can get billions of views and total YouTube dominance without making particularly engaging content, and I think that's the interesting point here.
      • philipwhiuk 2y ago
        It does not define best. Best revenue? Best profit margin? Best viewed?
        • anamexis 2y ago
          They spell it out pretty clearly in the PDF. > The three metrics you guys need to care about is Click Thru Rate (CTR), Average View Duration (AVD), and Average View Percentage (AVP). > How to measure the success of content > Like I said at the start of this the metrics you care about in regards to virality are CTR, AVD, and AVP. If you want to know if the contents of a video are good, just look at the AVD and AVP of a video after we upload it.
• corry 2y ago
  MrBeast - an OG Founder Mode guy? I'll leave it to you all to debate the ethics of MrBeast's videos, YouTube, and the questionable value of these videos. Meanwhile, the most fascinating part of this is a glimpse into a new kind of media company, where he instituted a particular process and approach and scaled it up outside of the initial set of producers. You get the sense he's flying by the seat of his pants into a whole new world, and he's creating the org and the processes on the fly based on what's been successful so far. The energy, drive and enthusiasm required to create a new model of not only "product" (even one that solely exists to please the algorithm) and company is fascinating. There are more parallels to startup founders than one might admit.
  • KeplerBoy 2y ago
    > There are more parallels to startup founders than one might admit. It is a startup and he is a founder. There are no parallels, he is simply an example. His video production company is very similar to other entertainment companies catering to the same audience like roblox (studios) or mobile gaming startups in general.
    • corry 2y ago
      Fair, I should have said "tech founders" I suppose. I think it's reasonable to draw distinctions between tech, media, clothing, retail, etc startups. Like, MrBeast seems like a media startup which is different than, say, a SaaS startup or an AI assistant startup. Fair enough?
• harha_ 2y ago
  [flagged]
• vitorbaptistaa 2y ago
  Would anyone be kind enough to download the PDF and upload it somewhere for us, Brazilians without VPNs? :)
  • bandedetrappes 2y ago
    There you go ! https://we.tl/t-Vn9dG1qWRU https://we.tl/t-Vn9dG1qWRU
  • sunaookami 2y ago
    Here is the link to the PDF from the tweet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YaG9xpu-WQKBPUi8yQ4HaDYQLUSa7Y3J/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YaG9xpu-WQKBPUi8yQ4HaDYQLUS...
  • jonplackett 2y ago
    Not really sure why it's linked to X anyway. The X post is just a link to google docs. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YaG9xpu-WQKBPUi8yQ4HaDYQLUSa7Y3J/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YaG9xpu-WQKBPUi8yQ4HaDYQLUS...
• m1ck 2y ago
  https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/d964dd8c-047e-4b02-bbf1-3b423ccfa98a?_gl=1*645ra5*_ga*NDY5MzY5OTg2LjE3MjY0OTQ5MjM.*_ga_W0LDH41ZCB*MTcyNjQ5NDkyMi4xLjAuMTcyNjQ5NDkyMi42MC4wLjA https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/d964dd8c-047e-4b02-bb....
• darby_nine 2y ago
  I can't be the only person disturbed by the penetration of terms like "obsession" into nominally professional culture. You should not be asking your employees to qualify for DSM symptoms just to not get fired (with severance, lol, that is genuinely a step up from nothing even if it's clearly meant to soften the psychological shock of reading about A- B- and C- employees).
  • mdgrech23 2y ago
    this is why we need unions.
    • quailfarmer 2y ago
      in order to disallow obsessive work?
      • darby_nine 2y ago
        Yes, this is a large part of the concept of liberation. Why are you trying to sell people shit nobody asked for? We could be making technology that enables expression of the individual and of society rather than commodification of it.
  • chucksmash 2y ago
    "Obsession" predates the DSM and psychiatry as a profession.
    • darby_nine 2y ago
      You'll find that most undesirable human behavior and perception does. This is just "product obsession" marketing bullshit forced onto real-life relationships. If you want to engage in this type of culture because it helps you fit in with founders; fine, that's your own brain you're messing with. Don't force it on others.
      • chucksmash 2y ago
• andyish 2y ago
  This sounds like it's all been paraphrased from the old Netflix HR document that compared itself to a professional sports team.
• mritchie712 2y ago
  congrats to Simon here. This post is ranking well for a lot of terms people will be searching for.
• Pr0ject217 2y ago
  https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/e524204e4b97c7eb607eea67c5dcf9015d821020b14269955283daba4b3e0f74/behavior https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/e524204e4b97c7eb607eea67...
• hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  So what really turned me off to this guy was his smarmy ~2019 campaign that also damaged my view of otherwise sensible Youtubers who shilled for him without thinking carefully. As such, pretending to save the planet while failing at math, logic, and physics because getting rich and being a internet->real celebrity are oh so much more important™ than emotionally and financially exploiting your audience or doing what you say you're going to do. sigh "#TeamTrees vs. REALITY" (2019, Phil Mason) https://youtu.be/gqht2bIQXIY https://youtu.be/gqht2bIQXIY
  • meindnoch 2y ago
    Why did you think he was supposed to save the planet? He clearly wrote in the document that the goal is to make the best YOUTUBE videos. Not saving the planet or any other bullshit that he puts in the videos. If the numbers showed that the best YOUTUBE videos could be made by torturing third-world infants to death, then he would torture third-world infants to death. Because that would be how you get the best YOUTUBE videos.
• jhwhite 2y ago
  > I want you to look them in the eyes and tell them they are the bottleneck and take it a step further and explain why they are the bottleneck so you both are on the same page. I've always wanted to be able to tell people they're the bottleneck. I've had talks with management about this. "We need to tell people bluntly so they understand the impact they're having." Nope, it could hurt a relationship and relationship is more important than delivering. I don't want to be an ass, but I do love this approach by Mr. Beast.
  • MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
    I feel the same, but I realized I don't want to be the blunt person; I just want some other blunt person to do my dirty work. This is not really a fair expectation for me to have. That said I feel like having people who are constructively blunt in your organization can make all the difference. If you listen to stories about successful managers and CEOs it often comes down to bluntness. It can also go the other way though. Being blunt while lacking in other areas (technical knowledge, judgment, vision, ethics) will just add toxicity.
• JohnMakin 2y ago
  It seems like the last several months have seen a trickle of information being leaked since the recent scandals involving Chris Tyson and some video series from former employees "exposing" the channel as basically scripted reality TV (I thought that was already well known, it's pretty obvious if you spend more than a few minutes watching it). What Donaldson has done is effectively hack the Youtube algorithm, and as a hobby content creator for the last 10 years or so, I find it has been absolutely destructive to the "content" world. He's absolutely right - you're not trying to make the best content, or the best video, or whatever - you're trying to make the best YOUTUBE video, implicitly admitting what youtube floats to the top of recommendation algorithms is NOT any of those things. It's hyper optimized to be as addictive and as least satiating mentally as possible, it's entertainment junk food. At least old-school reality TV had semi interesting people on it. It's just very saddening for me to watch the "beastification" of youtube and the overall creator space. I make content because I like making it. I make the content I would like to watch. It's secondary to me whether anyone else enjoys it, and that kind of creative spirit is absolutely gone on the web, and I completely believe content quality has suffered from it. To some degree the audience is the problem for demanding it, as sibling comments have pointed out, but I think this is blaming the victim a bit. Youtube also pushes these addicting videos out to people and highly incentivizes it. It'd be like handing out cigarettes at the hospital and blaming the subset of people that get addicted. Sure, it's their fault, but the hospital probably shouldn't be doing that in the first place.
  • yeukhon 2y ago
    The abuse and toxic workplace had been exposed a few years back but nobody took those allegations seriously
• vermaat 2y ago
  Nice! Looks similarly written like a LLM prompt to carefully instruct people. It even includes the tipping haha
• qzx_pierri 2y ago
  It seems impossible to reach great success without someone trying to tear you down.
• kart23 2y ago
  > and of course, more money then you could ever dream of making at any other company. I didn't really find anything in the pdf outrageous except this line.
• methods21 2y ago
  Reads like a "How to PM" and "Extreme Ownership" rolled into 1 doc. The one area that I'm wondering a bit on is the statement that you need to be working on multiple 'videos' aka projects at 1 time and if your not then your a FAILURE... so whose priority list is "prio" when, lets say, you are working on 5-10 projects? And they all have prios/emergencies etc.... Interesting expectation setting here. And concludes with a rather harsh statement too with the "failed as a MrBeast employee that day"... For reference: Work on multiple videos EVERYDAY Please do not come in and only work on one video during a workday. That’s how you fall behind on future videos and create a nasty cycle that i’m trying to stop. If you drop everything and go all in on a video for 3 days then that’s 3 days your other videos will fall behind and eventually you’ll have to drop other videos to focus on those videos and it will snowball into you can’t do anything but focus on what’s right in front of you because you murdered any lead time you had. If you ever only work on one video during a day, you failed as a MrBeast employee that day
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • paulryanrogers 2y ago
    Seems incompatible with a 40h work week.
• deleted 2y ago
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• eezing 2y ago
  Never really occurred to me why Mr. Beast content doesn’t appeal to me (nor have I thought about it much)… their sole purpose is CTR. Makes sense. Lame.
• ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
  Saved you four clicks: https://drive.usercontent.google.com/download?id=1YaG9xpu-WQKBPUi8yQ4HaDYQLUSa7Y3J&export=download https://drive.usercontent.google.com/download?id=1YaG9xpu-WQ...
• anonu 2y ago
  This is no different than the high performance culture that comes at top-notch firms or startups. The main difference between working for MrBeast and working at a startup is that at least what "high performance" means is codified in this 40-page manual. There's a lot of value in this document regardless of what you think of Youtube, MrBeast videos and the general place these videos have in our cultural zeitgeist.
• sylviangth 2y ago
  How do you guys find employees/founding team members who actually value results over hours worked just like MrBeast? At this point I’m convinced any great company follows this same principle. I also strongly believe in this in my startup. But I’ve been finding it super hard to find employees or founding team members with this kind of mindset. How do you spot these people?
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• topherPedersen 2y ago
  While I don't like his content (obviously as a 37 year old man), he's a really interesting person and has certainly built something people want (people being children for the most part).
• lz400 2y ago
  This document makes me want to study it so I understand what Mr Beast thinks it's the best viral video and then de-program myself so I never ever click in those. I'm halfway there, if I see a thumbnail of a guy in a ketchup bathtub I will tell youtube to never recommend that channel again.
• motbus3 2y ago
  Let's work hard to make the rich man rich. It is poisonous to only do your work. You need to sacrifice everything for the well being of the man This mentality should be banned from everyone's lives
• jasonwcfan 2y ago
  A close friend of mine was an associate of Mr Beast, even living in his house in Greenville for several months. He confirmed a lot of the negative press about him in the media, and was himself ultimately screwed over by Jimmy and has been trying to get recompense for years. MrBeast has always been clear that his goal is to make the best videos in the world. Not to be the most nurturing place to work, or the most philanthropically minded. This document makes that clear. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that in becoming the best in the world at youtube, he's had to become an extremely toxic individual.
• brteller 2y ago
  Great guide for a founder, not a great guide for founders employees. Understand the difference and why it was a mistake. Personally, I apply most of what he’s saying to my daily life but I’ve learned very quickly you’ll have employees that hate you if you expect this from them. This should be an executive handbook, maybe some trickled to employees knowing if they go above and beyond they’ll get further but there’s a very good reasons founders shouldn’t doodle their personal feelings into a handbook and it’s cost him big. What we are seeing here is the result of a person that stayed as a startup mentality when it was time to grow into a corporate one. He will survive this I’m sure, but it’s going to cost him a billion dollars and we will start to see a much more grown up version. I hope founders are paying attention to how and why this happened.
• negativeonehalf 2y ago
  The informal tone of the document is powerful. Makes you feel like Mr Beast is being real with you, that he really does care about this, and that he wants you to be in this thing together with him.
• big-chungus4 2y ago
  Common Mr Beast W
• jviotti 2y ago
  I Googled a bit (I'm not a consumer of these types of YouTube videos) and apparently this guy is pretty rich by now. He identified a path to wealth that clearly works and exploited it well, so he is definitely smart. Well deserved from that point of view. However, it makes me sad that we as a society even let what he does (a zero-net as many pointed out) be a path to wealth on the first place. The fact that we reward so much something that is so void of value is our fault and IMHO what needs to be corrected somehow. It's sad to think we throw so much money at people covered by ketchup, but many PhD's barely make any money and we cannot figure out how to make open-source sustainable. If our reward schemes were more aligned with actually providing value to society, this guy might have applied his intelligence and amassed his wealth doing something more worthwhile for everybody.
  • ViktorRay 2y ago
    I disagree with you. Mr Beasts YouTube videos make significant amounts of ad revenue. Some of that money goes to YouTube. But there is nothing wrong with having most of that money go to the creator of the videos. You can apply this logic to other forms of entertainment too. You can say LeBron James or Michael Jordan just play basketball. But their basketball games generated enormous ad revenue. Shouldn’t a sizable chunk of that go to them and other NBA players that play the game? Same logic for late night show comedians, all other big entertainment YouTube channels, tv stars, movie stars, movie directors, podcasters like Joe Rogan and so on. All of these have a thing in common. They release content in some media like traditional tv or newer media like YouTube and they are primarily supported by advertising in their content and through merchandise sales. I think it’s actually more moral for these people to be making lots of money than otherwise. Because otherwise the money generated by their content just goes to YouTube executives or tv executives or Spotify executives or some other corporate big wigs. If ANY entertainment makes a ton of money shouldn’t the money go to the ones who create it? In tv and movies, the Writer’s Guild and the Directors Guild routinely go on strikes for this issue. Also I think it’s great George Lucas made billions of dollars on Star Wars. Many adults in the 1970’s thought Star Wars was junk for the mind…