MrBeast Scales 2 Businesses on Shopify at 24

Shopify has placed its bet on creator economy and on the man leading it from the front — Jimmy Donaldson, who operates the highly popular MrBeast YouTube channel. At the age of 24, Donaldson has scaled not one but two businesses apart from his YouTube business, using Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify.

On Friday, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke heaped praise on the American YouTuber after Shopify published a blog post documenting his journey. “Hard to overstate the cultural impact MrBeast will have on the next generation of creators and entrepreneurs,” Lutke tweeted.

Hard to overstate the cultural impact @MrBeast will have on the next generation of creators and entrepreneurs. https://t.co/vjvQ5jENZn

— tobi lutke (@tobi) November 17, 2022

Shopify President Harley Finkelstein quoted Lutke’s tweet to praise MrBeast. Calling him an inspiration for a new gen of entrepreneurs, Finkelstein tweeted: “The fastest-growing category of small businesses: content creators. MrBeast is the blueprint for a new gen of entrepreneurs: build an audience, then launch a business. He’s the biggest YouTuber in the world with +100M subs, and has scaled 2 businesses on Shopify. He’s 24.”

The fastest-growing category of small businesses: content creators.@MrBeast is the blueprint for a new gen of entrepreneurs: build an audience, then launch a business. He's the biggest YouTuber in the 🌎 with +100M subs, and has scaled 2 businesses on @Shopify. He's 24. https://t.co/zC4gpwhSSg

— Harley Finkelstein (@harleyf) November 17, 2022

This is not the first time when Finkelstein has spoken in praise of MrBeast. In August when Donaldson completed 100 million subscribers under his brand name ‘MrBeast‘, the Shopify President had praised MrBeast’s journey recalling that he had only three million YouTube subscriber when he joined the Canada-based e-commerce platform.

“Shopify is obsessed with entrepreneurs – Jimmy is one of the world’s biggest creators and one of the most epic entrepreneurs. MrBeast has been on Shopify since he had 3M subs on YouTube – and he just hit 100M. Congrats on 100M Shopify!!!” Finkelstein posted on LinkedIn.

In October, Donaldson released 200 limited edition Beast socks on his Shopify store. Surprisingly, the stock went sold out inside of three minutes. Announcing the Beast socks arrival on October 5, MrBeast had tweeted: “I just released 200 limited edition Beast socks! Get them before they sell out at my @Shopify store”.

Soon after the release, Beast socks started selling like hot cakes. Many users reported that the stock went sold out even before they could make any transaction on MrBeast’s Shopify store. Shopify replied to MrBeast’s tweet saying: “blink and you’ll miss it fr,” with a shocking face emoji.

Finkelstein also joined in the twitter thread by sharing his observation that the stock went “sold out in… 3 minutes”.

How MrBeast Uses Shopify?

YouTuber by profession, MrBeast uses Shopify to sell his merchandise. His online store is shopmrbeast.com. In the blog post, Shopify revealed that Donaldson was a teenager when he started his first business. Initially, he was selling digital offerings for the video game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO).

“My mom probably doesn’t like this story, but I used to play a lot of CSGO back in the day…so I would buy Counter-Strike knives and then just resell them,” he told Shopify in an interview.

MrBeast knew how to multiply money since the beginning. He invested around $10 in the digital products for CSGO video game and sold them for $20. The sales volume was less but it motivated him to do more. However, when his mother found out what he was doing, she asked him to shut down business immediately. That entrepreneurial stint was short but it helped it the most in his career ahead.

MrBeast’s Businesses

MrBast now has 109 million subscribers on YouTube and operates three businesses, out of which are completely based on Shopify. His current three businesses apart from YouTubing include:

1. ShopMrBeast: This is the Shopify store, which MrBeast uses to sell his merchandise. Remember, the socks we mentioned above? Yes, they were sold through the same Shopify store.
2. Feastables: It is another Shopify store operated by MrBeast. He offers healthy snacks on this online store. He introduced a new range of chocolates after crossing 100 million YouTube subscribers. “I have personally been using Shopify to sell merch since we had three million subscribers, which is crazy because we are on a 100 million. Now, we also use it to sell our chocolate bars and so much more,” he was heard saying in the video posted by Finkelstein.
3. MrBeast Burger: It is a brick-and-mortar restaurant in in New Jersey. Earlier, the brand was used to deliver burgers to more than 1600 delivery locations.

Creator Economy

MrBeast’s success on Shopify is a testament to the platform’s potential to boost creator economy. For the unversed, creator economy is a type of economic structure that allows content creators and social media influencers to make additional money using their product of creativity. Apart from making entertaining content for their viewers, they can also sell them their merchandise or promote someone else’s products on e-commerce platforms like Shopify.

Samir Chaudry, who co-hosts a YouTube channel called Colin&Samir, believes that creators like MrBeast have the advantage to sell online. “I think that everyone is going to be very surprised at what creators like MrBeast can build, because of the mindset that we’ve developed around putting out our product ,” he said.

“Wherever we release something, we get an immense amount of feedback and data that we can take into consideration in the next launch of our product, which, for some creators, happens every day,” Chaudry added.

MrBeast’s Entrepreneurial Journey

After wrapping up his video game content business in his bedroom, MrBeast resumed his entrepreneurial journey by selling hoodies on ShopMrBeast. With the help of Shopify, he was now running his first official business.

In the meantime, MrBeast was growing his YouTube channel manifold. An avid video gamer in his early days, MrBeast rose to prominence after he uploaded a screen recording of a hack in the battleship game Battle Pirates. He got 20,000 views on that YouTube video with a handful of subscribers.

Initially, MrBeast was filming his YouTube videos on his phone. As he started earning money out of YouTube, he invested each penny to buy the best recording equipment. Even now, he doesn’t hesitate to invest $3 million to create a single video. By 2016, MrBeast had 30,000 YouTube subscribers, thanks to his 70-video series called Worst Intros.

“I don’t think we’ve seen anyone study a platform or a distribution mechanism the way that Jimmy did. What he actually studied beyond how YouTube works was viewer and audience satisfaction. He put an emphasis on that,” Chaudry said.