The challenge is that the past is not really a great guide of what things are going to be like in the future.

Talking to you reminds me of our last conversation and just how different things are in the world and also in BuzzFeed's business

in just a relatively short amount of time and whether it's the digital economy or whether it's unexpected things like a pandemic,

you just have to be able to build a company that is so adaptable and dynamic and can change and shift in order to navigate this economy.

The Trump presidency had a huge impact on the news industry.

Trump was very focused on those sort of baby boomer brands and was constantly in fights with them.

And to me it felt like the millennials and the Gen Zs were just forgotten about.

The digital strategy became the strategy for the whole business during COVID.

And as a pure played digital company BuzzFeed was in a really good position to say, hey, why don't you partner with us?

That's Jonah Paredi, founder and CEO of BuzzFeed.

The pandemic forced dramatic adjustments to BuzzFeed's business and its content.

Yet by the end of 2020, Jonah and his team had engineered a rebound finishing with record profitability.

I'm Bob Safian, former editor of Fast Company, founder of the Flux Group and host of Masters of Scale Rapid Response.

I wanted to talk to Jonah not only because BuzzFeed recently announced plans to go public via SPAC at a $1.5 billion valuation,

but because Jonah has uncommon insight into digital first customers and businesses.

Jonah's also been a wizard in knowing when to patiently fine tune things through grinding detail oriented effort and when to quickly take advantage of new opportunities.

And his assessment of Trump's impact on the media business is priceless.

We'll start the show in a moment afterward from our premier brand partner, Capital One Business.

The SPAC we know from Arizona is there used to be something like 20 journalists per capita and now there are three.

That's Becky Palak for over 20 years she'd been a newspaper reporter in Arizona and over that time she watched her newsroom shrink around her, which meant local issues weren't being covered.

What's going on in your city council, what's going on with your taxes, what's going on with your local streets and parks and libraries.

The problem wasn't just in Arizona and it wasn't getting better.

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