Jonah Peretti is sitting at a table and scrolling through his iPhone. It's what most of us do these days when we're waiting for someone. And it's how millions of people consume his media company's content.

I'm a couple of minutes late for my lunch interview with the BuzzFeed chief executive officer, after placing too much faith in Sydney's traffic. We meet at The Bridge Room, just a couple of blocks from the viral content powerhouse's Sydney set-up. It's a good time to be interviewing Peretti. His company – which is eyeing a potential sharemarket listing, and only days earlier was sued for defamation – is entering a critical phase. So too, it feels, is the very medium upon which it was founded.