How BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti took an instant messaging bot and turned it into a $1.5 billion media empire

What was the thought process behind sending that tweet? Were you drunk? Were you okay? What happened?

Peretti: You know how if you meet a celebrity, you have a story of, "The time I met this person ..." and you remember it? Not everyone's met a celebrity, but a lot of people have this experience if you live in New York or LA. The person came into the restaurant you're in and they did something funny or whatever and you remember it.

For me, what I remember about Ivanka...We had a mutual friend. She came out for drinks. We were doing sake bombs at a dive bar in Chinatown on the lower east side. It was just a shock that she said that. It was like, "What?"

I got off a flight and I was in the Burbank airport, and I was reading Twitter. There was a Buzzfeed news story that had quoted her saying she was shocked at her father's language, something like that. I saw it and I was like, "What? She's shocked? She uses that kind of language! How could she be saying she's shocked by her dad's language like she's some choir boy?”

Anyway, I saw that and then without really thinking much — obviously because you wouldn't tweet that if you were thinking a lot — I just retweeted that tweet with a comment of, "Funny she's shocked by it because this is what she said the one time I met her. 

Shontell: I remember Ben Smith, your head of news, saying, "Are there medics on this flight?" You of all people should know to not tweet before flying, but I guess you were off the plane.

Peretti: I was getting off the plane. I did kind of get very quiet after that. I didn't follow up with an additional explanation or tweets.

Shontell: Right. If I remember correctly, Buzzfeed wrote an article interviewing you about what your tweet was.

Peretti: Shani calls me, and I can't not take the call when it's Shani calling me — she's a very key, important and powerful person in our news room. She calls me and is like, "I have a reporter here who wants to talk to you." I was like, I never would've taken a call from any other news sources but I have to when it's ...

Shontell: It's your employee.

Peretti: I have to answer the phone. Then I did some awkward interview about why ...

Shontell: Did you talk to Ivanka after?

Jonah: I haven't talked to her.

Shontell: One other more serious thing that you all published was the [Trump-Russia] dossier. This is the Donald Trump pee tape origins, allegedly. You all find this document that's been circulating around all of Washington. Obama's read it. Donald Trump has apparently been briefed on it.

It's got a lot of different allegations in it, and you publish. You say, "We haven't verified everything in it. We tried. We spent weeks sitting on this thing, but we feel like you, the public, deserve to see it because, frankly, all of Washington already has."

It created this storm within media of, “Should they have published it? Should they not have?” We debated it in our news room. What was it like for you all, and what was it like for you as a CEO of the company deciding to publish this?

Peretti: I would say in retrospect we feel like we made the right decision. When you have a documents circulating in the highest level of the government and people are taking action based on the document... We have Harry Reid referencing it but not saying what's in it, and you have CNN referencing it but not saying what's in it. How's the public supposed to understand what's happening at the highest level of government in something that's incredibly important to the country and to democracy if they can't see the thing that everyone in power is looking at?

We don't see ourselves as being a news outlet that's trying to tell people how to think and tell people what matters. We try to inform people, let people know what's going on, be transparent with our readers, assume that our readers are intelligent and can understand context that we provide. It fit BuzzFeed New's values, to make the decision to publish.

Building a company for the way the world works today, not 20 years ago

Getty Images/Michael Kovac

Shontell: A few wrap up questions. What is Buzzfeed, and what is its future? Are you the next Disney? Are you the next NBC? What are you building here?

Peretti: I think every time there's been a massive shift in technology of media, there's been a few companies that have emerged that are large sustainable hundred year companies. When you look at ... There was a period of tons of new people starting newspapers that coincided with roads and be able to deliver newspapers, and a few of them became really huge, enduring companies.

When you look at magazines, it was really the postal service that enabled magazines. You could deliver magazines to people's houses and also raise their literacy. There were lots of magazines, and then consolidation, and a few that became really, really big. The same thing happened in the ‘80s with cable. You could actually talk to people who experienced that. There were lots of cable channels that then ended up becoming a few big companies.

I think with internet and media, you're going to see something similar. We want to be one of the ones to emerge from the era, redefining how news and entertainment should work for the era of digital, the internet, mobile and social. It feels like there's a possibility to build a media company that's much more connected with people's lives, that has a much more intimate relationship with readers, that serves readers whether it's news or entertainment or things like Tasty and lifestyle content.

I think we're also very well positioned as a company with all the advances that are happening in machine learning and deep learning and technology that's going to really advance what's possible in media. We're building a global news and entertainment company for the way the world works today, instead of the way the world worked 20, 80 or 120 years ago.

Shontell: Do you ever regret raising so much money? There's an argument to be made that ... I think TechCrunch sold for $30 million. Huffington Post sold for $300 million. Arianna and Mike Harrington, the co-founders, made about the same. One was much smaller, didn't raise really much money, and one raised a ton. You've raised how many millions? Hundreds of millions. Do you ever think, "I should've just gone a little smaller."

Peretti: No, I don't. I think it has to do with what you want to do and what you want to build. My advice is there's not one path. There's not one way to skin a cat. You see arguments online sometimes where people are like, "You should raise a lot of money. You shouldn't raise money. You should raise a little." It totally depends on what you're doing and also what you're good at and what kind of life you want to live.

If you are excited about building something that grows really fast and has a lower chance of success but could be giant, you should try to raise venture capital and you should try to raise a lot of it as soon as you have signal that you're onto something and that you can deploy that capital to do something useful.

If you're someone who has a special skill or wants to be an artist or wants to do something that you can do with a small, core group of people, then you shouldn't raise venture capital and you shouldn't feel badly if you don't do the venture capital route. You should feel badly if you're doing something that isn't the right fit for you and isn't the thing that you're passionate about and doesn't fit your strengths and the things you're interested in doing.

I know people who what they want to do is think and write, and that's great. You can be really successful, and there are multimillionaires who are writers. You can be Malcolm Gladwell, who I think probably is richer than Arianna Huffington or Michael Arrington. That doesn't mean that you should not raise venture capital. You should just try to be like Malcolm Gladwell. You should do what's right for you and what fits your temperament and your passion.

 Shontell: Anything else to add for someone who wants to build an empire like you're doing. 

What to do if you want to build a business empire

Peretti: If you want to build an empire — I accidentally/reluctantly found my way into building something that was much bigger than I expected. But I think, start small and focus on the customer or the audience, solving problems for them and focusing on that small thing. Then figure out how to scale that into something much bigger.

Then if you are trying to build something really big, then you just need to figure out how do you find really great people that you trust who can join your team and be part of it with you because, really, the key to everything is you can't do it all on your own. You need to have really great, smart people, people like Ze Frank and Ben Smith with doing the product lab, and all these people who have a unique perspective and are way better at their jobs than I am. I would never be able to do what they do. That's what you need.

I think that's the other thing. If you want to build something really big, you have to be okay with the fact that you're not going to be able to be in the weeds on everything, and you shouldn't be micromanaging everything. You need people who can do things way better than you can in the areas where they have the ... What's the right way to end the sentence? Sometimes I start sentences and ... 

Shontell: We can just let it trail off and just play some music?

Peretti: Just end with, "Errr ..."

Shontell: That sounds great.

Peretti: You need to find people who are better at speaking than you also.

Shontell: Perfect. Thank you so much, Jonah. It's been a real pleasure.

Peretti: Thank you so much.