Known for its ubiquitous and highly shareable cat slideshows, quizzes, and time-lapse cooking videos, BuzzFeed’s stories and videos have incredible reach on the internet. “With BuzzFeed, I always felt like, let’s have as big an impact as we can,” founder Jonah Peretti told Fast Company.

“Let’s grow this into something giant.” BuzzFeed’s numbers speak for themselves. Each month, the site generates more than 7 billion global content views across all of its platforms and brings in over 200 million monthly unique visitors . Leaked documents show that it’s been growing at around 200% annually since 2013, and despite a recent failure to hit revenue goals, BuzzFeed’s amplification is remarkable. The site earned a $200 million investment from NBC Universal last summer, valuing the company at $1.5 billion.

That’s because BuzzFeed knows what readers want – especially the coveted millennial generation. Instead of sticking to longform pieces housed solely on its own site the way traditional media companies did upon entering the digital space, Peretti pushed the company to adapt to readers’ tastes. In 2014, BuzzFeed started publishing content directly to social media, tailoring it to each platform – and it worked.

The site earns more traffic than The New York Times, despite the majority of its content first appearing somewhere else. Meanwhile, the organization has also established a significant news presence, especially in political coverage – and it has won awards for its growing number of investigative reports as well.

LESSON: Know what your customers or users want