Mr. Beast makes YouTube videos the way most companies ship software: with product reviews before, retros after, and a daily build cycle. In this episode of The Product Podcast, Carlos (CEO at Product School) sits down with Shiva (Chief Product and Technology Officer at Beast Industries) to unpack how a channel with 520M+ subscribers and 1.6B views in the last 90 days treats every video like a product launch, and how AI is now rewiring the whole operation. Shiva has built products inside some of tech’s most iconic platforms (Google, Spotify, WeWork, Uber), but this role is fundamentally different: here the product is the output itself, not just the platform that enables it. He explains why that lets his team do something a platform never could, get deep into the actual workflow and change it, and why off-the-shelf enterprise SaaS kept falling short for a company that regularly attempts first-ever-in-the-world productions. So, about three months ago, they started building their own internal operating system instead, and now they ship every day. He and Carlos get into the mechanics that make that possible: forward-deployed engineers embedded inside functions (the studio, marketing) who prototype solutions overnight and ship the next day, why it’s now so cheap to try ten versions of something and throw away the nine that don’t work, and how an issue spotted on set at midnight becomes a meeting that night, a vibe-coded prototype, and a live feature by morning. Shiva also reframes what AI really unlocks for product people: not just speed, but the superpower of exploration, the ability to build three variants instead of betting on one, which finally fixes the oldest failure mode in product (shipping what the founder wants instead of what users need). He shares how working with Jimmy (a creator who thinks like a product manager, breaking creative wins into analytical recipes) shapes the culture, how he builds an institutional memory layer so one person’s hard-won knowledge becomes available to everyone on day one, and how the business thinks about turning attention into revenue through a new consumer app, sponsorships, merch, and testing monetization differently across markets like the US and India. What you’ll learn: - Why MrBeast runs every video like a product launch, with reviews before and retros after - What changes when the product is the output itself, not the platform behind it - Why they ditched off-the-shelf SaaS and built their own internal operating system in three months - How forward-deployed engineers prototype overnight and ship to the team the next day - Why “try ten, keep one, throw away the rest” is now a viable way to build - How AI gives product teams the superpower of exploration, not just speed - Why founders so often ship products built for themselves, and how AI finally fixes that - How to build an institutional memory layer so knowledge isn’t trapped in one person’s head - What it’s like to work with Jimmy, a creator who thinks like a product manager - How Beast Industries thinks about converting attention into revenue across global markets Connect with Shiva: Chief Product and Technology Officer, Beast Industries LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shivar/ Host: Carlos, CEO at Product School LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/villaumbrosia/ About Beast Industries: Beast Industries is the company behind MrBeast, the world’s most-subscribed YouTube creator, spanning its flagship channels, a growing studio of new channels, and consumer products. About the Product Podcast: Product School’s podcast brings you candid conversations with the founders and product leaders shaping tech. Social Links: Find out more about Product School hereFollow our Podcast on TikTok hereFollow Product School on LinkedIn here
