Hardware Podcasts

Live Episode! BuzzFeed: Jonah Peretti

How I Built This · 27 Jul 2017 · 48m

What this episode covers

Jonah Peretti, co-founder of BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post, explains how an early email prank involving Nike shoes sparked his fascination with viral content and audience-driven distribution. He details the transition from a student experiment to launching the Huffington Post with Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, and subsequently creating BuzzFeed as an R&D lab to understand why people share content. Peretti discusses the strategic decision to hire journalists and pioneer native advertising, turning content creation into the core business model rather than relying on traditional banner ads. He also reflects on the challenges of scaling a media company, rejecting a buyout from Disney to maintain independence, and the importance of loving the struggle of building a business.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies and companies scaling up

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Nike, Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, SoftBank, Politico, Disney, Facebook, Twitter, HBO, Google, CNN
Also
Arianna Huffington, Ken Lerer, Phil Angelini, Duncan Watts, Cameron Marlowe, Chelsea Peretti, Ben Smith, Ellen DeGeneres

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