Jonah Peretti helped shaped digital media — can he do it again?
Jonah Peretti’s career to date has been defined by constant reinvention. As the founder and CEO of BuzzFeed, Peretti has been at the forefront of digital media for almost two decades, navigating changes as the once small startup transformed into, at one point, a multimedia powerhouse.
But as the company grows older, one question lingers: Has Peretti’s relentless drive for innovation made him too entrepreneurial to lead BuzzFeed to long-term stability?
“The nice thing about this field,” Peretti muses, “is you do something [different] all the time. It’s not been 20 years of one job. It’s been 20 years of running a startup, then managing a hyperscaling business, then figuring out how to get the company public . . .and now the explosion in generative AI. There’s always something to keep the job fresh and new.”
Peretti’s ability to adapt and stay ahead of the curve has been a hallmark of BuzzFeed’s success. Years ago, BuzzFeed enjoyed almost singular success in its uncanny ability to create shareable media. (One video segment, centered on why Disney princes would make “terrible boyfriends,” has racked up 77 million views over the years.)
Today, BuzzFeed’s focus is on AI, including AI quizzes and other AI-generated content. It’s also pouring some of its resources into a product in development called BF Island, a social network that aims to merge AI with content creation to “spread joy and enable playful creative expression.” So he told Axios last month, anyway.
Peretti routinely discusses the company’s upcoming ventures with the media, even when they’re still in their infancy. Asked why, he tells TechCrunch: “The idea of talking about things you’re working on is that you make the product better . . .When you talk about them, it’s not just with your team but with outside people who might want to collaborate. When there’s a new computing platform, there’s an explosion of creativity. Those are the moments when you can build something new.”
This entrepreneurial drive has fueled much of BuzzFeed’s most iconic projects. The company pioneered viral quizzes and listicles, then pivoted to more serious journalism with BuzzFeed News. But not all of these shifts have paid off. Notably, despite its early success, BuzzFeed News was shuttered in 2023, leaving behind questions about whether the company should have stuck to one clear vision rather than jumping between them.
BuzzFeed’s shareholders might be pondering the same after the roller-coaster ride they’ve been on. BuzzFeed went public through a special purpose vehicle in 2021, and as part of the transaction, it acquired a media company, Complex Networks, for $300 million in cash and stock. Today, BuzzFeed still trades publicly, but it doesn’t own that business; it sold it for roughly $108 million last year. More recently, BuzzFeed sold another asset from that Complex Networks deal – First We Feast – in a separate $82.5 million all-cash deal. (Explains Peretti of both sales, “They’re not so much tech businesses. They’re more production and talent heavy.”)
BuzzFeed’s stock, priced at $10 initially, now trades $2.20 per share.
This is where the tension lies. Peretti’s embrace of constant reinvention is striking, but it also means that the company’s strategy has often felt like a series of experiments rather than a cohesive long-term plan. The experiments also come at a cost. Peretti says BF Island is a $10 million gamble for now that is not expected to bring in any revenue this year. He adds that BuzzFeed’s “core business” is profitable.
It’s a fair question whether BuzzFeed would be better served by a singular, consistent vision for the future – like The New York Times has managed to achieve – rather than betting on one new idea after another.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to know the answer. The media industry has long favored stability, but Peretti isn’t wrong to believe the current wave of generative AI is revolutionizing how people create and share content. Also, as excited as he sounds about the possibilities, Peretti sounds clear-eyed about the risks.
“The big thing is that BuzzFeed has given us a lot of experience with new formats,” he says. “We’ve gotten a lot of inbound from people who have ideas and want to collaborate with us.”
Besides, adds Peretti, who by now is accustomed to balancing growth with financial pressures: “I think the deeper next-level understanding is that just doing the same thing over and over again and trying to to grind it out is actually a more risky strategy than innovating, experimenting, trying new things, keeping an open mind, and trying to figure out new approaches or new ways to win in a really tough market.”
You can hear much more from our interview with Peretti in an upcoming episode of StrictlyVC Download; new episodes drop every Tuesday.
Loizos has been reporting on Silicon Valley since the late ’90s, when she joined the original Red Herring magazine. Previously the Silicon Valley Editor of TechCrunch, she was named Editor in Chief and General Manager of TechCrunch in September 2023. She’s also the founder of StrictlyVC, a daily e-newsletter and lecture series acquired by Yahoo in August 2023 and now operated as a sub brand of TechCrunch.
