zlacker

On one side, an army of HN commenters: “Repeat after me. Don’t build on someone else’s platform.”

On the other side, Mr Beast:

> Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. That’s the number one goal of this production company. It’s not to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest quality videos.. It’s to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. Everything we want will come if we strive for that. Sounds obvious but after 6 months in the weeds a lot of people tend to forget what we are actually trying to achieve here.

>>renewi+(OP)
Yeah this hit hard for me as well.

I’ve studiously avoided building on platforms, but very different mindset to decided to be the best player on that platform.

Lesson learned: don’t make it about something else. Win the algo.

>>renewi+(OP)
For every MrBeast there are tens (hundreds?) of thousands (millions?) you've never heard of. And for some of them, it's because the platform pulled the plug on them.

If someday YT decides to pull the plug on MrBeast, he might start singing a different tune. Or not, I mean, his millions and millions of dollars will probably make him feel better.

>>renewi+(OP)
Building on someone's platform is a gamble.

It paid off for Mr. Beast.

Maybe it will pay off for you, or maybe you will get banned before you make enough to retire or create another company. This is prime example of survivorship bias.

>>renewi+(OP)
I read that as less about "building on someone else's platform" (though that's still a risk they're taking) and more a youtube / media content producer version of "perfect software doesn't pay the bills, shipping software does". I've known plenty of good developers that if they didn't have hard deadlines and people reminding them about what the real goal of the company is, would spend 6 months developing a perfect, provably correct PDF to JSON converter for reading any possible design of tables in all PDFs. Missing the fact that they only need to parse the tables in the CSV files that the vendors are sending us so we can invoice the customers.

That quote reads like its reminding people that youtube and a youtube production company job is not where you go to make art house silent films.

>>sirspa+Y
Fine Arts would like a word with you

>>renewi+(OP)
There's a difference, video is probably transferrable to an extent (with their capital they could probably buy/launch beast-tube quickly and kids would follow).

Building your software to depend on Google API's and then be banned from Google would put you in deep trouble, building on Google systems but not relying on their API would still allow for an migration.

>>renewi+(OP)
Is this supposed to be a gotcha of some kind? I don't see any point or value in this comment.

>>whizzt+m5
YouTube is fine as a distribution channel for now. Though there is some risk of being extorted or losing access, the bigger threat will come some years down the road when video is a legacy distribution format.

Diffusion at the edge is going to change a lot of things. Especially since it won't have to encode to linear formats.

>>renewi+(OP)
Many people are so uncomfortable with risk that they publicly advocate (and personally live by) a policy of taking zero risk. Of course they also throw away the very real benefits that come packaged with many risks.

>>renewi+(OP)
Mr Beast videos do single digit millions in revenue per video, and he operates on razor thin margins re-investing everything. Youtube does $8.5Bn a quarter in revenue. For startups the target is the Youtube exit, not the Mr Beast exit. In fact, whilst Mr Beast is obviously doing a great job and making tonnes of money it's not clear if he even ever could exit. What Mr Beast is doing is incredibly successful, but it's not the silicon valley start up model.

>>tpmone+T3
>That quote reads like its reminding people that youtube and a youtube production company job is not where you go to make art house silent films.

It's more specific, a YouTube video is very different from a TikTok video or an Instagram video.

>>arder+qb1
You actually believe he makes razor thin profit? And you believes he reinvests everything? Sorry but none of us have verified his company’s books. Just saying

>>renewi+(OP)
“Repeat after me. Don’t build on someone else’s platform.”

Initial growth on someone else's platform is a good idea. However, once you see some small success, it's best to think about diversifying. Mr. Beast has already done this. He's essentially his own brand now.