Chris Dixon: BuzzFeed will be a new media empire as smartphone access grows; $850M is a bargain
How Jonah Peretti and BuzzFeed Got to $850 Million — We passed the billion dollar mark awhile ago. Today a hot tech company is worth multiple billions of dollars, easily.
Context & Ripple Effects
BuzzFeed's $50M round from Andreessen Horowitz at an $850M valuation landed the day before this piece, with Chris Dixon joining the board and the New York Times noting that most of BuzzFeed's revenue comes from creating ads for other brands rather than selling its own inventory. The pickup was unusually broad — the BBC, BuzzMachine, PandoDaily and BuzzFeed itself all carried the story within a day, which is itself a signal of how contested the valuation debate already was.
Dixon's argument, stated plainly here, is that the number is cheap: he says BuzzFeed passed a billion-dollar mark 'awhile ago' on his own math, and that growing smartphone access will carry Jonah Peretti's company toward what he calls a new media empire. That framing puts a top-tier venture firm publicly on record that native advertising at scale is a software-style growth business, not a media one.
First-order effects
- Dixon now has a board seat and public price anchor to defend: every future BuzzFeed financing will be measured against his 'bargain' claim, raising the stakes on the company hitting growth milestones under his watch.
- BuzzFeed gains both capital and a credibility halo from Andreessen Horowitz at a moment when its revenue base — ads made for other brands — still has to prove it can scale beyond custom campaigns.
Second-order effects
- Rival digital publishers and legacy outlets face a well-funded competitor whose investor is arguing valuations should be set by mobile reach rather than current media multiples, pressuring them to seek comparable growth-capital terms.
- Brand advertisers get a clearer signal that native advertising is where mainstream budgets are being pushed, strengthening BuzzFeed's hand in pricing sponsored content against traditional display sellers.
Third-order effects
- If Dixon's thesis holds, the line between media companies and technology platforms blurs structurally: venture-scale returns in publishing would depend on distribution ownership and data, redrawing how media assets are valued and financed.
- A pattern of top VC firms taking board seats inside newsrooms points toward media consolidation around a few venture-backed players, with editorial independence questions following the money.
The trend: Venture capital is repricing digital media as a mobile-distribution business, with flagship firms like Andreessen Horowitz betting that audience scale, not ad-market tradition, sets the multiple.