Jonah Peretti’s profession up to now has been outlined by fixed reinvention. As the founder and CEO of BuzzFeed, Peretti has been on the forefront of digital media for nearly twenty years, navigating adjustments because the as soon as small startup reworked into, at one level, a multimedia powerhouse.
But as the corporate grows older, one query lingers: Has Peretti’s relentless drive for innovation made him too entrepreneurial to guide 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 capacity to adapt and keep forward of the curve has been a trademark of BuzzFeed’s success. Years in the past, BuzzFeed loved virtually singular success in its uncanny capacity to create shareable media. (One video section, centered on why Disney princes would make “terrible boyfriends,” has racked up 77 million views over time.)
Today, BuzzFeed’s focus is on AI, together with AI quizzes and different AI-generated content material. It’s additionally pouring a few of its sources right into a product in improvement known as BF Island, a social community that goals to merge AI with content material creation to “spread joy and enable playful creative expression.” So he advised Axios final month, anyway.
Peretti routinely discusses the corporate’s upcoming ventures with the media, even after they’re nonetheless of 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 a lot of BuzzFeed’s most iconic tasks. The firm pioneered viral quizzes and listicles, then pivoted to extra severe journalism with BuzzFeed News. But not all of those shifts have paid off. Notably, regardless of its early success, BuzzFeed News was shuttered in 2023, abandoning questions on whether or not the corporate ought to have caught to at least one clear imaginative and prescient relatively than leaping between them.
BuzzFeed’s shareholders could be pondering the identical after the roller-coaster experience they’ve been on. BuzzFeed went public by way of a particular objective automobile in 2021, and as a part of the transaction, it acquired a media firm, Complex Networks, for $300 million in money and inventory. Today, BuzzFeed nonetheless trades publicly, however it doesn’t personal that enterprise; it bought it for roughly $108 million final 12 months. More not too long ago, BuzzFeed bought one other asset from that Complex Networks deal – First We Feast – in a separate $82.5 million all-cash deal. (Explains Peretti of each gross sales, “They’re not so much tech businesses. They’re more production and talent heavy.”)
BuzzFeed’s inventory, priced at $10 initially, now trades $2.20 per share.
This is the place the strain lies. Peretti’s embrace of fixed reinvention is hanging, however it additionally implies that the corporate’s technique has typically felt like a collection of experiments relatively than a cohesive long-term plan. The experiments additionally come at a value. Peretti says BF Island is a $10 million gamble for now that isn’t anticipated to herald any income this 12 months. He provides that BuzzFeed’s “core business” is worthwhile.
It’s a good query whether or not BuzzFeed can be higher served by a singular, constant imaginative and prescient for the long run – like The New York Times has managed to attain – relatively than betting on one new thought after one other.
Unfortunately, it’s exhausting to know the reply. The media trade has lengthy favored stability, however Peretti isn’t incorrect to consider the…
