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- The venture capitalist Bill Gurley said embracing peers, not having sharp elbows, is key to success.
- MrBeast, the world's most followed YouTuber, exemplifies this lesson, Gurley said.
- Donaldson has described spending hours on calls with peers, learning how to go viral.
Want to be successful? Follow MrBeast's playbook and embrace your peers instead of seeing them purely as rivals, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bill Gurley said.
Gurley, who is best known for his early investments in Uber, Zillow, and Grubhub, told "The Tim Ferriss Show" that success in any field requires being knowledgeable about it and going to its physical epicenter, such as a city where the action happens.
However, he added in the episode, published in December, that virtual relationships with peers and mentors can also be valuable, and gave the example of MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, the most-followed YouTuber with 459 million subscribers.
"I think far too many people have sharp elbows to peers, because they think they're climbing the ladder and they've got to beat these people, and the world's just way too prosperous to have that mindset," he said, adding: "You can learn so much and get so much value from co-climbing that you should definitely do that."
Gurley said that Donaldson was "infatuated" with YouTube early on and would have long Skype meetings with others who shared his passion, exchanging best practices for social media success. Gurley said he first heard Donaldson share the story on a podcast, but had also spoken to him about it.
Gurley said Donaldson's story exemplified the importance of embracing peers, which is one of the six principles mentioned in his upcoming book on success, "Runnin' Down a Dream."
Donaldson shared the story on a 2022 episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience," where he said that after graduating from high school, he'd talk daily on Skype with a group of four small YouTubers, sometimes from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m.
"We basically talked every day for a thousand days in a row, and did nothing but hyperstudy what makes a good video, what makes a good thumbnail, what's good pacing, how to go viral," he said.
By the time the group stopped convening, he added, they each had millions of subscribers.
