- MrBeast, a.k.a. Jimmy Donaldson, sought his mother’s reaction before appointing Silicon Valley veteran Jeff Housenbold as CEO of his business empire. The move allows Donaldson to focus on content creation, though he has cautioned fans not to view his success as typical, warning most aspiring creators won’t achieve the same outcome.
YouTube star MrBeast makes no attempt to hide the fact that his mom is one of the most important people to have on board when it comes to his business and financial decisions.
The billionaire social media titan, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, previously said his mother, Susan Parisher, is the person with access to his business’s master bank account. Indeed, because he keeps relatively low funds in his own accounts, he had to ask his mom for a loan to pay for his wedding.
And when it was time for Donaldson to appoint a CEO to help him run his sprawling empire—covering everything from his multimillion-dollar video productions to his snack company and philanthropic work—sign-off from his mom was key.
Previously Donaldson, 27, had been the final point of call on all major decisions about his empire. While also being the face of his channel, which has 439 million subscribers, Donaldson was responsible for overseeing his snack and chocolate company, Feastables; production of shows like Amazon’s Beast Games; and virtual restaurant business MrBeast Burger.
Enter Jeff Housenbold, who spent three decades working in Silicon Valley before being parachuted in to help run the North Carolina–based empire.
You might think Housenbold, 55, had all the credentials needed: He’s a Harvard Business School graduate, has worked at eBay and Shutterfly, sat on the board of directors for Groupon, Opendoor, and DoorDash—and has invested in these businesses and droves more. But he had yet to meet MrBeast’s mom.
Housenbold and Donaldson were introduced in 2024, and later that year spent a day together discussing how to expand MrBeast’s business into Australia. Speaking to Bloomberg, Housenbold recalled he spent 20 hours with the YouTuber before getting in his car to drive to the airport.
“[Donaldson] calls me and goes, ‘I was thinking, can you come back and meet my mom?’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ He’s like, ‘You should just come meet my mom.’ So I spent a couple hours with Sue. I miss my flight,” the now–president and CEO of Beast Industries recalls.
Donaldson added previously he had resisted bringing on experienced outsiders with more traditional business résumés. He told Bloomberg: “I was very much bringing in younger people who thought different. The problem there is then you don’t have the experience, and you make a lot of mistakes that everyone’s made before, and it wastes time and money.”
A social media career
The hiring of Housenbold frees Donaldson up to focus on what he does best: viral content which reaches hundreds of millions of people. But while MrBeast may often be cited as an example of a career in social media gone right, he has cautioned fans that he is an exception to the rule.
A recent report from social commerce platform Whop found that more than 30% of 12- to 15-year-olds want to have a career as a YouTuber, followed by 21% of the respondents aiming to become TikTok creators—another highly lucrative platform for those who can get the traction.
But Donaldson said it was “painful” watching the next generation hang their hopes on a career like his. He wrote on X last year: “It’s painful to see people quit their job/drop out of school to make content full-time before they’re ready. For every person like me that makes it, thousands don’t. Keep that in mind and be smart plz.”
