Jonah Peretti

“BuzzFeed started as a lab with a small team where we would play with ideas.”

“Mormons know that it's not enough to practise your religion - you also have to spread your religion.”

“People don't do good work when they feel like losers and are second-class citizens within their own company.”

“At The Huffington Post, we thought of the front page as a one-stop shop for everything you'd need in news.”

“One of the things that is counterintuitive about BuzzFeed is that there's not a natural corollary to what we're doing because it isn't possible to distribute content through word-of-mouth in print.”

“I think the best content on BuzzFeed is something you share with someone else in your life, and it connects you to them. And that's a big part of what e-mail's about as well.”

“The biggest misconception people have is that quality is all that matters. The truth is that quality helps, but there's a ton of high-quality things that don't go anywhere.”

“I think a lot about how ideas spread, how information spreads, why is it that something you're really proud of and you spend a lot of time creating sometimes doesn't go anywhere, and something that you kind of do on the side, on a lark, ends up getting shared and passed around and having this big impact.”

“I did parallel entrepreneurship, which was very hard to do. It was hard to keep your head straight and know which ideas were with which company.”

“It's so much easier to write for a person in your life than to write for some imagined readership, so you write something that's more intimate and true.”

“A lot of web companies will take a short-term approach and sell to an incumbent and don't end up living up to their full potential.”

“People on Twitter can follow tech if they're interested in tech, or business if they're interested in business, or they can follow celebrities that they're fans of.”

“It's important that all my friends have verified Twitter accounts. The blue checkmark makes me feel comfortable and like I'm friends with a legit, high-quality person. I also prefer friends with ridiculously long usernames.”

“I'm a typical Capricorn. I'm hardworking, loyal, sometimes stubborn, and I don't believe in astrology.”

“People go to the front page of BuzzFeed partly because they've seen a bunch of things in their stream, and they're like, 'Oh, I like this site. Why don't I go to the source?' I think that happens. But also people are going to look for something to share.”

“People used to share things with e-mail on a massive scale. If you remember e-mail forwards from the late '90s, it was a terrible way to share content.”

“People say the Internet's made of cats. The reason isn't because of cats; it's because people like to have an emotion where they say 'aww' all at the same time.”

“If you look at the heritage of the best advertising, you can make stuff that is great for both readers and advertisers. I don't think Don Draper would have loved banner ads.”