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Comment by zik | Hacker News Reader

I'm also uncomfortable with it. There's nothing inherently wrong with philanthropy but what I'm seeing is a very successful business with an enormous and very expensive campus. MrBeast himself is very rich. So what I'm seeing is a corporation claiming to do everything for the benefit of others while actually taking a lot of the money very visibly for themselves.

His channel made $54m from youtube in 2021, and probably a lot more from corporate sponsors. Make no mistake, this is big business - not charity.

And some of his side businesses are downright shady. His burger chain is run out of ghost kitchens which make food for multiple virtual chains like MrBeast's. The burgers are apparently a crapshoot - it depends on which ghost kitchen made your burger as to what you get. Quality control is zero. Yet they charge top dollar for the MrBeast name.

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Not attempting to be an apologist, however it sounds to me like there just needs to be some quality control over the licensing of the brand, perhaps?

Not sure how that's shady, sounds like it might be a bit egregious but its not like he isn't honest about this being a business based around his brand of philanthropy either.

It’s shady because he puts his name on crap and doesn’t care because everything is BS.

Would you start a burger business without quality control? Would you let random companies put your name on crap? That’s shady.

Licensing deals aren’t the same as starting a burger business. Clearly the partnering institutions aren’t living up to par but he’s just licensing and marketing which is a pretty common arrangement for these sorts of things.

Not sure I agree it’s shady, egregious maybe.

Certainly not shady. Many brands put their label on crap merchandise.

Just because something is widespread doesn't mean it's not shady.

I believe he is supplying the food. So if the ghost kitchen is a burger chain, they have their own burgers and then separately cook his as well. All of the quality control issues should be from preparation.

How is this any different from Kirkland brand stuff from Costco? They just happen to have a reasonably high bar because they're playing the long game. It's not the practice that you likely have an issue with, it's the individual.

Good example. Kirkland stuff is good. It would be shady if Costco put their name on anything and didn’t care about their product.

So if you see something with the kirkland brand, you have some expectation of quality. And if you have a problem Costco will fix it (or drop the product).

The MrBeast brand doesn’t really stand for anything. And he doesn’t correct quality problems.

What are the quality problems? He seemed to me to put a lot of pride into his chocolate bars and the opening of his burger joint in a mall.

Kirkland Brand isn't Ghost Kitchens, it's usually reputable brands who slap a label on their product to build additional sales channels.

The most common example is that Kirkland Vodka is widely reported to be Grey Goose, and it's speculated that Kirkland Mac & Cheese is just repackaged Kraft.

No Brand or Quality Control needed; mostly contract and supply chain control since you're dealing with brands that already do good QC.

It’s actually a quite interesting and experimental business model. The man is a business genius. You’re seeing the early buggy days of an insanely profitable food chain business model

Business genius lmao, he got lucky and made a huge chunk of money on crypto. After that, the money makes itself.

When they say it takes money to make money, that's pretty much it. Reach a certain threshold and the interest on it will pay off any failures you make.

& because the general masses adore and love to watch rich people dance around screen, ofc his YT does well, he's got the money to do some crazy stuff. Everyone watches "who wants to be a millionaire", nobody watches "who wants to win 10 bucks".

I’m not talking about the reality show friend.

He has a fast food restaurant chain that has grown insanely quickly by partnering with local restaurants. He has no kitchens yet dozens of these fast food restaurants operating solely on Uber/DoorDash.

I thought he was providing the packaging and the ingredients. Just using an already open kitchen.

Check out Virtual Dining Concepts https://joinvdc.com/brands/mrbeast-burger/

And this Eddy Burback Video https://youtu.be/KkIkymh5Ayg on that rabbit hole. Also, seems like his Chocolate Brand is going to be in a ton of places now after seeing him announce the locations in his latest video (the cruise ship one)

My extraordinarily poor experience with the burger project was enough to validate, my up until that point just gut-level, uncomfortableness.

Making philanthropy profitable is kinda genius.

The Susan G Komen foundation figured that out years ago.

Charities like Komen, and the American Cancer Society, and all those charitable Foundations and Societies that fund research on incurable diseases: they are exactly the reason why breast cancer and all the other diseases will never, ever be cured. They must never be cured. Billions of dollars in revenue depend on their incurability. Scientists and researchers have an amazing cash cow, a goose that lays golden eggs, and to identify a cure for breast cancer would strangle that goose where it sits. EDIT: I think I like the cow metaphor much better in this case.

Therefore, mark my words: donate to the "X For A Cure" charities at your own peril, because the perverse incentives mean that they will move Heaven and Earth to avoid finding a cure for anything at all.

I don’t fundamentally disagree with you, but I think people’s conception of curing cancers is just out of touch with reality. Cancer is a group of diseases, and we have come a very long way in successfully treating many members of that - there are many many millions who would have gotten a death sentence just a decade ago, being completely cured nowadays.

I don’t know about these foundations, maybe it is mostly funded by governments/EU funds, whatever instead, but there is good research out there.

It also makes the philanthropy sustainable.

It can be and is both a business and philanthropic.

That was my takeaway as well. As a parent, I vet everything my kids watch and will for a few more years. I have no idea how you don't.

Isn't every philanthropic foundation also a "business"? The Gates Foundation had $150 million of income from their investments in 2022. The CEO of the Gates Foundation was paid $1.176 million last year. Their net assets went up by $13 billion in 2022 and up $20 billion since the beginning of 2021.

The difference is that Gates is an industrialist who does acts of philanthropy. MrBeast does acts of philanthropy to be an industrialist.

> Isn't every philanthropic foundation also a "business"?

No, only the corrupted ones.

MrBeast claims he is not rich, that he puts all the money back into his videos. Of course that means he has a huge production. That doesn't mean it makes a lot of profit. Unless there is factual evidence to the contrary I'm inclined to believe MrBeast. He has never been caught lying, which is virtually impossible given his presence and reach.

Just like Holiday Inn, Marriott, or any hotel chain. So weird that you take issue, he makes it exceptionally clear his burger brand is all ghost kitchens.

There's a mr beast product display at my corner 7-11, something like usb cables or some other random plastic junk. Guy must be all over.

> There's nothing inherently wrong with philanthropy

Why not? To be able to "give" you first need to accumulate way beyond what you need to attend to your material needs. Accumulating such wealth means taking more resources than you need in the first place.

It's still fully within the scarcity and separation mindset of capitalism.

Everyone can give. You can give.

Giving time, care, an ear to listen is really valuable.

These things make big differences because it’s often what people pay money for too

Giving is not just for after earning lots of money.

I believe you misunderstood me. I was specially referring to philanthropists' "giving"? I'm fully aligned with what you say.

> you first need to accumulate way beyond what you need

Or... Produce way beyond...

The kleptocapitalism narrative as well as the neocapitalist narrative depend on using a myopic perspective. There is a fair debate about the negotiation over what to do with the excess between all parties involved and that can be a useful conversation. If you didn't mean to agitate in that way I apologize for being too sensitive.

His channel made $54m from youtube in 2021, and probably a lot more from corporate sponsors. Make no mistake, this is big business - not charity.

that is is? that is a rounding error for almost any decent-sized tech company. We're talking a household name, and one of the most popular channels ever, which is on the front page of youtube by default. I would have thought it would be more.

yes, he made $54 million, but surely a lot of expenses too?

$54m was just a forbes estimate and that was 2 years ago in 2021. He reached 50M subscribers sometime in 2021, 100M subscribers in July 2022, in June 2023 he has 163M. Then if you look at video views, he was doing about 500M/month all of 2021-2022 but in only 2023 he is doing 1000M baseline with spikes to 1500M-1800M for some of the big hitters. See: https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/mrbeast6000 Also: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2022/11/30/could-m...

That's just his main channel, he has many other large channels (Beast Gaming, Beast Reacts) plus the other social platforms (TikTok, etc).

Then in the last 2 years he launched Beast Burger and Feastables (mostly chocolate bars currently). There are some public numbers about $10m revenue on feastables in the first few months and over $100m of revenue on beast burger orders sometime last year.

He spends a lot, talks about it a lot, $2-4 million per video on each main channel video. He has also talked a lot about re-investing everything back into the channel to grow and grow. Which seems evident by the growth rate if nothing else.

That's just snippets of info and I'm not remotely experienced enough in any of these spaces to make any attempt at a real number but between the increased views, feastables and beast burger I don't see how it's any less than 100s of millions of revenue at this point. My main point, though, is that he has grown a lot from 2021-2023 where that $54m number came from :)

But having said that.. he was still very popular and long on the front page of YouTube back in 2021 perhaps with those much more modest numbers.

Something like this is worth a watch. While I'm sure there is plenty he doesn't talk about, he talks about a lot publicly including money spent, strategies, statistics, etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGrk7Mzm4uo

The thing I love about MrBeast is that he's YouTube "Playing to Win" [0].

Google's YT algorithm is whatever it thinks makes Google the most money. "Doing YT right" is an oxymoronic statement, because YT doesn't care in the least about ethics.

MrBeast found a way to optimize algorithmic ranking, in a fairly altruistic and ethical way.

On the scale of "{Politician} hates {group}, see what to be outraged about" to "See what the drug companies don't want you to know, via this simple trick" YT optimization... MrBeast is comparatively saint-like.

[0] https://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introduction

> and over $100m of revenue on beast burger orders sometime last year.

Gross revenue is almost meaningless. Restaurants are known to have very low margins, so how much of that money was paid to the local restaurant, to the delivery service, _in taxes_?

Even once it reaches Mr Beast's company, the company has to pay for a lot of things before it ever reaches him.

I'm sure he's doing well, but he didn't personally pull in $54M in 2021; it's actively counter productive to discuss gross revenue without also discussing expenses, because it conflates "Mr Beast" the business with "Mr Beast" the nom de plume of an individual and likely misleads folks on how much money the individual actually earned.

Right, almost any decent sized tech company has much larger profits - just with a negative sign.

YouTube ads are never the biggest income stream for a top YouTuber. It's much more than $54m.

I saw an interview with a (admittedly much smaller) full time YouTuber and he said that YouTube ads where between a quarter and a third of his total income.

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