How MrBeast Built Feastables in 90 Days | Ben Acott, Feastables Founding Team

When Ben Acott received a phone call from Reed Duchscher (MrBeast's manager) in late 2020, he had no idea he was about to help engineer one of the most explosive brand launches in CPG history. Within 90 days of joining what would become Feastables, Ben and a scrappy team hand-coded a Shopify store, broke platform records, and pulled three all-nighters to meet an unmovable deadline: MrBeast's main channel video announcing the chocolate brand to 100+ million subscribers. But here's the twist that changed everything—Jimmy barely gave them any attention at first, delivering one brutal message: "Let me know when you hit $100 million in revenue, then I'll give you more time." That constraint forced Ben to build something most celebrity brands never achieve: a framework for extracting the DNA of a creator and embedding it into every aspect of a business, from product formulation to thumbnail-tested marketing. Now, as founder of Magnetic Labs—a venture studio that exclusively builds and invests in creator and celebrity-founded brands—Ben is applying those hard-won lessons across multiple categories, from Willie Nelson's cannabis beverage company to unrevealed billion-dollar opportunities in the pet space. In this episode, he pulls back the curtain on what actually works in 2025 versus the outdated playbook from 2020, why 90% of creator brand opportunities deserve a hard "no," and the morbid-but-essential questions every operator should ask before partnering with talent. In this episode, you'll discover: The exact moment MrBeast told Ben he wouldn't get more time until Feastables hit $100M—and how that constraint became the brand's greatest advantage Why Ben walked away from Feastables after two and a half years at the exact moment "boring guys from incumbents" started arriving to scale operations How Jimmy solved a $250,000/week merchandising crisis at Walmart with a single tweet offering $10K—bypassing traditional CPG playbooks entirely Why Magnetic Labs says no to 90% of talent opportunities and the three non-negotiables they look for: passion, creative understanding, and the ability to steal double-digit market share from boring categories The "creator product fit" testing framework: how they create 30 fake brands with landing pages and $1 pre-orders to reverse-engineer the right product before ever involving the celebrity Why the 2020 playbook is dead: first-purchase conversion was easy with one tweet, but retention rates were "incredibly poor" because products were skipped and it was all about the cash grab The new 2025 framework: start with a world-changing product, build a brand that can speak on its own, then layer in the creator for stunts and spectacles they actually look forward to His unfiltered take on equity crowdfunding for celebrity brands: "I cringe every time I see one—it's so public when it goes bad" Why he prefers digitally-native creators over legacy celebrities: "You could hold up a piece of broccoli to iRaq and say let's create 20 bangers to launch this in 72 hours—he's got it down to a fine art" The equity structure philosophy: talent should retain majority ownership, but with clawback provisions and cliff vesting schedules to protect against creator fatigue, mental breakdowns, or career-ending tweets How Willie Nelson's cannabis beverage (Release Remedy) went from phone call to launch in two months—and why his 50+ years of weed evangelism made it the "most perfect talent with the most perfect timing" The billion-dollar bet on pets: why no creator has cracked this category at scale yet, and how Magnetic is testing 30 fictitious brands to build a list of hundreds of thousands of validated customers before launch His number one advice for founders: "Get rid of the management and agents as soon as possible and get to know the talent intimately—bring them into product and formulation early to give them true ownership" Chapters: HotStart VC Subscribe to the HotStart VC newsletter: https://hotstart.beehiiv.com/ Become a HotStart Angel and co-invest with us in celebrity-founded brands starting from $5,000: https://www.hotstart.vc/hotstart-angels/ Check out our fund: https://www.hotstart.vc/ Scott van den Berg LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-van-den-berg-22b534150/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scottvandenberg_/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@scottvandenberg_ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@scottvandenbergvc Ben Acott Magnetic Labs: https://magnetic.co LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benacott/ HotStart VC is a fund that exclusively invests in brands founded by celebrities and creators. We're the go-to platform for celebrities and creators launching brands, providing capital, strategic support, and the infrastructure to scale.