How do you get to be the second most subscribed YouTube channel of all time with a viewer count larger than some countries? By being bad at it for a long time. Marc Hustvedt is the President of MrBeast, a YouTube channel created by Jimmy Donaldson – who Hustvedt calls the “Kobe Bryant of YouTube.” But before the MrBeast team was racking up over 220 million subscribers, it was a lot of shooting free throws and hoping for the best. Hustvedt took his Michigan Ross education to Hollywood when the YouTube craze was just starting to bubble up. He’s watched an industry take shape over the years and has disrupted and revolutionized how content is created. He joins Breaking Schemas hosts Marcus Collins and John Branch to chat about the early years of YouTube and digital first content, MrBeast’s meteoric rise to superstardom, and why the secret to success may be failing a lot first. *Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*
How do you get to be the second most subscribed YouTube channel of all time with a viewer count larger than some countries? By being bad at it for a long time.
Marc Hustvedt is the President of MrBeast, a YouTube channel created by Jimmy Donaldson – who Hustvedt calls the “Kobe Bryant of YouTube.” But before the MrBeast team was racking up over 220 million subscribers, it was a lot of shooting free throws and hoping for the best.
Hustvedt took his Michigan Ross education to Hollywood when the YouTube craze was just starting to bubble up. He’s watched an industry take shape over the years and has disrupted and revolutionized how content is created.
He joins Breaking Schemas hosts Marcus Collins and John Branch to chat about the early years of YouTube and digital first content, MrBeast’s meteoric rise to superstardom, and why the secret to success may be failing a lot first.
*Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*
Content is a fundamental building block of business
29:56: If you press me, I could find ways in which content is going to impact every single industry. Don't look at it as something to dismiss and say, "Oh, that's just what the kids do." Or, "that's just what YouTubers do or influencers do." It's a fundamental building block of business.
Marc's advice for industry disruptors
28:56: Study content, how it's made, how it's distributed, and obsess over what's the best content that is on the internet, and I mean that not because everybody has to work on YouTube. I think it's disrupting way more than the media now. We've seen it.
Why start creating content now?
25:42: This wasn't a linear journey in this industry. In fact, I'd argue the time is actually really good for anybody now to jump in because a lot of the hard work has been to get advertisers more comfortable to creatively partner on content and allow creative control of the creators in ways they would have never been comfortable before. The entire streaming and TV industry is desperate to figure out how we can tap into some of that magic because they don't have that monopoly over attention due to fixed distribution channels. It's easier in some ways now.