Nearly 15 years ago, Jimmy Donaldson uploaded his first video under the moniker MrBeast—a three-minute Minecraft walkthrough. The YouTuber, who made his only debut at just 13 years old, has since garnered 522 million subscribers on the platform and grown his net worth to an estimated $2.6 billion thanks to not just his competition-style videos, but also a multimillion-dollar chocolate brand, fast-food burger chain, an Amazon deal, and production company MrBeast LLC.
Donaldson’s astronomical rise to success has become the blueprint for the future of the creator economy, according to Steven Bartlett, an investor and host of The Diary of a CEO podcast. Speaking with Fortune Daily host Ellie Austin, Bartlett explained that Donaldson has transformed his business from monetizing YouTube videos to effectively being a massive conglomerate overseeing a swath of subsidiaries. It’s part of a larger evolution of online celebrities becoming entrepreneurs in their own right.
“I’m an investor in Jimmy’s company, and when you look at how that company is built, it resembles a Fortune 500 holding company,” Bartlett said. “This is, for me, the last era that we’re heading towards within this creator economy, where you’re no longer an influencer, you’re no longer an equity partner, a creative director. You are an owner or cofounder.”
Beast Industries, the North Carolina-based company under which Donaldson manages his ventures, was founded in 2012 and now has more than 1,000 employees, according to Pitchbook, and is valued at $5 billion. In the last few years, Beast Industries has begun to resemble a more traditional corporation, installing former Shutterfly CEO Jeffrey Housenbold as president and chief operating officer in May 2024, before promoting him to chief executive in September of that year. Donaldson remains the majority owner and creative head of Beast Industries.
Other creators have followed similar paths of using YouTube as a launching point to becoming a larger corporate entity. Tech YouTuber Linus Sebastian became the founder and CEO of Linus Media Group, the company behind several technology-oriented YouTube channels. In 2022, merchandise like plushies and hoodies generated nearly one-third of the company’s revenue. Brothers Jake and Logan Paul similarly took the leap from vloggers to launching brands like hydration drink Prime and personal care brand W, respectively.
The pipeline from influencer to entrepreneur didn’t exist when Bartlett was first building his own businesses, including Social Chain, an influencer and social media marketing agency, in 2014.
“In my early career, I was building a business where we were booking hundreds and sometimes thousands of influencers—we used to call them back then—per month,” he said. “And the deals were that the industry used to look at creators like me as kind of billboards where you pay them to post something.”
That was the first era of the creator economy, Bartlett explained. The second era began when influencers began becoming “creating directors” of brands as part of a deal, which evolved into a third era of creators being given equity in a pre-existing company, in addition to some creative influence. Today, creators are transitioning to becoming business cofounders, according to Bartlett, marking the fourth era of the creator economy.
Donaldson, however, is among the few YouTubers entering the most recent maturation of creators-turned-entrepreneurs because of the maintenance of multiple different corporate entities. The MrBeast founder appears to be interested in expanding his reach even beyond retail and entertainment. In February, Beast Industries acquired fintech app Step, a money-management tool built for young people.
“I think the fifth era is when and we’re starting to see this with people like MrBeast is when actually their companies—the creator—engages in M&A and acts more like a Fortune 500 company,” Bartlett said. “It has a C-suite that often comes from publicly listed companies. They just bought a bank.”