• A leaked internal MrBeast guide is making the rounds in the tech world.
• Tech workers and investors delve into the YouTuber’s views on hiring, management and more.
• Is MrBeast the best leader in “founder mode”?

MrBeast is the most popular YouTuber in the world. He’s also the hottest new thought leader in Silicon Valley.

A leaked workplace guide from the 26-year-old creator, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, has been making the rounds in the tech world over the past few weeks, circulating on X, LinkedIn and other social media platforms. At one point, it was featured as the most popular post on startup accelerator Y Combinator’s Hacker News website, with founders, tech workers and investors drawing conclusions from the 36-page document.

In a guide titled “How to Succeed in MrBeast,” which Business Insider reviewed with two former MrBeast employees, Donaldson delved into the topics that matter most to business people. He wrote about how he identifies high-productivity employees in his company and why being “obsessed” with getting things done is important. He also presented his views on effective management. (You can read the full guide here.)

The YouTuber’s approach to leadership immediately sparked comparisons on social media to “founder mode” – a trendy concept that recommends that managers be more hands-on in their companies. The idea came from an interview with Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky and was popularized in a September blog post by Y Combinator’s Paul Graham.

“The MrBeast memo is a clear manifestation of founder mode,” said Tom Alder, who writes a weekly growth hack newsletter called Strategy Breakdowns.

Donaldson’s guide “demonstrates the intensity and hardcore thinking that rarely characterizes non-founder-led companies,” Alder said.

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A hardcore founder who writes like a real person

The MrBeast Guide is the latest “hardcore” corporate document to go viral in the tech world. Netflix’s culture memo was once a hot topic among tech workers, and Jeff Bezos’ “Always Day One” mantra has inspired a corporate doctrine at other Big Tech companies, including TikTok owner ByteDance.

“The leaked internal emails and memos are religious texts for the tech world,” Alder said. “An artifact of a specific moment in time that becomes more compelling over time as companies become more prolific.”

Of course, not everyone shared MrBeast’s workplace manifesto.

One commenter on the Y Combinator post described it as “insane nonsense from a garage boss/would-be cult leader.”

Donaldson’s business practices have also come under scrutiny recently, especially in connection with filming his upcoming show for Amazon.

However, the wide popularity of the MrBeast guide among tech entrepreneurs and startup founders shows how, in just a few years, influencers and the creator economy have become legitimate business figures in the tech and media industries.

Not only is Donaldson a top YouTuber (with 317 million subscribers and counting), but he has also expanded beyond social media to include several business ventures spanning merchandise and products. It aims to reach $700 million in revenue in 2024, according to a set of court documents from earlier this year.

“To me, it’s another sign that the YouTube creator space has reached an ignition point where you now have to think about this type of thing to build a big business,” said John McCarus, founder of Content Ink, an executive search firm that handles the popularity of MrBeast’s introductory guide.

Stay casual while asking for unique work

Donaldson, who has expressed admiration for technology visionaries such as Steve Jobs, set a casual tone for his guide that differs from other leaked company documents.

Yes, MrBeast wants “A-Players” who are “obsessed, learn from failure, coachable, intelligent, don’t make excuses, believe in YouTube, see the value in this company, and are the best in the damn world at their job,” as Donaldson wrote in the guide. But he also doesn’t care about workplace decency the way an executive at a larger company would.

“I think it’s awe-inspiring because it goes against current trends in work culture, which seem soft by comparison,” Rachel Roberts Mattox, a brand development specialist and marketing consultant, said of the MrBeast documentary.

“It doesn’t sell employees on the list of benefits they’ll enjoy, such as hybrid work and flexible schedules or unlimited PTO, while showing them how to ‘work well’ with other departments for optimal productivity,” Mattox said. “On the contrary. It says that unless you are obsessed with a single goal and don’t mind uncritical micromanagement and radical accountability, quit now.”

Industry insiders told BI that Donaldson’s casual and unpretentious writing style has largely helped him spread in the tech world.

“It feels genuine,” said Marc Cohen, an early-stage tech investor at Unbundled VC. “It feels like it was written by a person, not a corporation. And when you do that, you convey a message.”

“I really liked the very raw nature of the document,” said Abhishek Sharma, senior product marketing manager at Rafa.ai, an upstart AI fintech company. “If you look at other companies’ documents, they’re very fluffy, with very corporate jargon and very nice, nice-looking visuals. And this one was straight from a Google Doc.”