How He Built Cameo To A $1 Billion Valuation

What this episode is about

The discussion centers on Stephen Galanis, co-founder and CEO of Cameo, as he shares insights into his entrepreneurial journey and the foundational principles behind building a billion-dollar company. He emphasizes the significance of having a strong entrepreneurial mindset, the influence of familial ties to entrepreneurship, and the Japanese philosophy of Ikigai, which guides individuals toward finding their passions and creating value in the world.

Key takeaways

• Entrepreneurs are born, not made—3% of people possess the innate traits for entrepreneurship.
• Growing up amidst entrepreneurs is intoxicating, but not everyone finds solace in that chaos.
• Feeling like a square peg in a round hole? Welcome to the entrepreneur's life; it's a tough fit.
• The 'Ikigai' formula: love what you do, meet a need, shine at it, and make money—simple, right?
• True entrepreneurship demands passion; without it, you're just a conflicted employee dreaming of a bigger desk.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Host (Host) · 8 min speaking
• Stephen Galanis (Guest) · 18 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Stephen Galanis
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Field Glass, Icky Guy

Notable quotes from "How He Built Cameo To A $1 Billion Valuation"

• Hey everyone, welcome back to Founders Story. Today we have a special guest, Stephven Galanis. I'm sure you've heard of it and you could see his shirt. He is the co-founder and…

  about Stephen Galanis · at 1:19

• So yeah, so you talk a lot about icky guy and the importance that's been in your life. Can you explain more about that?

  about Icky Guy · at 5:07

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Stephen Galanis — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:24

Companies & orgs

• Cameo — Company · 6 mentions
• Field Glass — Company · 1 mention · first at 5:20
  Chicago I remember really early on. his name is Jay and he had s sold his company Field Glass for over a billion dollars. It was one of the top exits, all time in Chicago. a lot of people built billion-dollar companies. Not many have.
• SAG (Screen Actors Guild) — Company · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

• Icky Guy — Concept · 1 mention · first at 5:08

Places & events

• Duke University — Place · 2 mentions
• USC (University of Southern California) — Place · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 How do you build a billiondoll company? Can you explain what was that spark that made you want to say I want to be an entrepreneur?

0:07 I am one that definitely believes that entrepreneurs are born not made. I was very fortunate to grow up in a family of entrepreneurs. Uh nobody's surprised that I became an entrepreneur.

0:18 I almost think that maybe sometimes this can like you said push people to be one, but maybe it can even push people to not want to be one because we know there's a lot of ups and downs. You know, one thing I will say is when you are an entrepreneur, often times you become a square peg in a round hole, when you're, you know, trying to work in, you know, not as an entrepreneur. And it was, you know, really clear that like at some point I was going to be doing my own thing. And and when you you have that mindset, a lot of times it might be hard to to really be like the best employee you possibly could be.

0:49 You talk a lot about Icky and the importance that's been in your life. Eekyu is a Japanese philosophy and and basically if you were to think of a ven diagram or two circles, but an eeky guy diagram has four and it's the intersection point of what do you love to do? What does the world need? What are you great at? What can you get paid for? And if you're actually in that eeky guy point, it it kind of almost gives you perpetual energy. Hey everyone, welcome back to Founders Story. Today we have a special guest, Stephven Galanis. I'm sure you've heard of it and you could see his shirt. He is the co-founder and CEO of Cameo. I know I have used it many times and I've always wondered what is the story. How do you build a billiondoll company? How do you get all these celebrities and people to do something for you if maybe you're not a celebrity? I I want to dig into all these things, Stephen. But

1:46 before we get into all the meat and potatoes, can you explain what was that spark that made you want to say I want to be an entrepreneur?

1:54 First off, thanks for having me. Um, look, I I am one that definitely believes that entrepreneurs are born not made. Um, in fact, when we started Cameo, there's a personality test we used to make everyone take called 16 personalities.com. And in that, one of the archetype personalities is actually entrepreneur. And about 3% of people um actually are born with with kind of the capabilities to be an entrepreneur. Now that said, I think people can become more entrepreneurial by being entrepreneurs. And I was very fortunate to grow up in a family of entrepreneurs.

2:31 Uh my grandfather and my uncle uh ran one of the oldest wedding studios in Chicago. Uh my uncle was a movie producer on my mom's side. So, I grew up, you know, sitting at the dinner table, hearing them talk about deals, hearing them talk about a wedding that didn't go their way, hearing about, you know, the trades that were going on. The Wall Street Journal was always on the table, CNBC was always on TV. And I think when you grow up around that, you know, it's intoxicating. It's exciting. And, um, you know, there's really no question. I think if you were to talk to any of my teachers from kindergarten all the way through college, uh, nobody's surprised that I became an entrepreneur.

3:11 I almost think that maybe sometimes this can, like you said, push people to be one, but maybe it can even push people to not want to be one because we know there's a lot of ups and downs. And I think as a young, you know, in a young age, you might say, "Wow, you know what? I don't want to be a part of that. Let me just get a job. Let me be comfortable." But what was there another drive in you that said, you know what, this is what I want to do?

3:35 Look, I I think that's certainly true and and I have uh you know, a brother and and many family members that wouldn't want to touch being an entrepreneur with the 10-ft pole. And that's totally cool. You know, everybody should do the thing that fills them up and gives them passion. it's really too hard to do um you know this if you don't if it isn't you know kind of your eeky guy point the intersection of what do you love to do what does the world need what are you great at and what can you get paid for um and you know one thing I will say is when you are an entrepreneur uh oftentimes you become a square peg in a round hole when you're you know trying to work in you know not as an entrepreneur and and in my journey I had a business in college that was my first taste of entrepreneurship is really successful and then I always knew I was going to be an entrepreneur but it really took me you know kind of seven

4:26 eight years to have my big idea um along with my co-founders and and ultimately you know that put me as a square peg in a round hole you know in a variety of other jobs whether it was uh you know options trading or doing real estate uh or you know really at the end of my career before starting Cameo um you know going to LinkedIn and being in sales so um had some great formative professional experiences. But I think if you were to talk to anybody that worked with me at that point, it was, you know, really clear that like at some point I was going to be doing my own thing and and when you you have that mindset, a lot of times it might be hard to to really be like the best employee you possibly could be.

5:07 So yeah, so you you talk a lot about icky guy and the importance that's been in your life. Can you explain more about that?

5:13 Yeah, there was a an entrepreneur in Chicago I remember really early on. um his name is Jay and and he had s sold his company Field Glass for over a billion dollars. It was one of the top exits, you know, all time in Chicago. Um you know, a lot of people built billion-dollar companies. Not many have actually exited for over a billion. Um and I remember Jay coming to speak to a group of of entrepreneurs at a Chicago ventures um you know, founders day basically CEO summit and I remember him talking about this concept of VQ guy.

5:47 And one thing he said at the time was like, look, doing what we do is too hard to do if it's not, you know, really your eeky guy point. And your eeky guy, eeky guy is a Japanese philosophy. And and basically, if you were to think of a ven diagram with two circles, an eeky guy diagram has four. And it's the intersection point of what do you love to do? What does the world need? What are you great at? And what can you get paid for? And if you're actually in that eeky guy point, it it kind of almost gives you perpetual energy. It's like Iron Man's heart, right? And it allows you to just keep pushing through uh you know, no matter what obstacles you face or or no matter what um you know, trials or tribulations kind of pop up your way.

6:31 Um and it's something I've thought a lot about both through the good times of Cameo and the bad times. Uh because just like any journey like we've had our ups, you know, highs of highs, we've had our lows, you know, our lows that were kind of the lows of low. But one of the things that's kept me going, you know, day after day and and tried to get get me pretty consistent, like you could see me on my best day or my worst day and I'm the same. It's because I'm working on the thing that I love to do and, you know, I would continue to do it if I if I couldn't make any if I couldn't get paid doing it, I'd still do what I'd do.

7:03 So, let's talk about some of those down moments because I think in social media a lot of times we only see the good and it's hard it's hard not to be like, "Oh, wow. You know, I'm doing business and I'm not making $10 million yet or a million dollars or maybe even not a $100,000, but it seems like everyone else is driving a Lamborghini. How did you deal or handle with those with the downs uh and the you know the up and down swing uh as you were building up Cameo to an you know incredible huge billion dollar company it is today.

7:35 Well first off I never worried about what anybody else was doing. Um when we had the idea for Cameo we were very convinced that this just needed to exist and you know many people had tried to do what we did. Um but we had what I think was a pretty unique insight and that was the internet was creating you know more fame than wealth right so ultimately you were getting this new class of people on the internet that were that were more they were uh more famous than rich and that ended up being the place that we found product market fit and I know you were you know there there's a bunch of articles and you know things talking about the creator economy but like let's just talk about the entertainment business at large before we even talk about the crater economy. So, we saw a lot of these stats last year when SAG uh was having its strike, the Screen Actors Guild. And one of the stats that was

8:32 most striking is that 86% of the members of the Screen Actors Guild don't make enough money to qualify for their healthcare and pension benefits. To qualify, you need to do like $24,000 a year, right? that's less than minimum wage. At any given time, 99.9% of the Screen Actors Guild is unemployed. And that's why one of the oldest memes is the, you know, the actress or actor that's waiting tables in Los Angeles while they're waiting to get cast in something. In sports, the top 1% of athletes make 99% of all the endorsement revenue. ESPN had a classic documentary that was one of the reasons we started this business. It was called Broke. in it. It said that, you know, 85% of NFL players will go broke within 5 years after playing their last game. You know, you see the same thing in music where the top 1% of musicians make 95% of all the streaming revenue. And when it comes to touring, it's it's even more skewed

9:31 like with the, you know, the Taylor Swifts make compared to like, you know, any random band that's that's out there trying to make it playing at dive bars. Uh, so whether you're talking about sports, whether you're talking about entertainment, we're talking about the creator economy where on YouTube the top 3% of creators make 97% of all the ad revenue. The one thing that's really clear is that there's more famous people being made every single day, right? Tik Tok's creating more fame. Uh, Soundcloud's creating more fame. You know, it used to be that if you weren't signed to a label, your music didn't get out there. Now, if it's great, you can put on Soundcloud, you can put on YouTube, and and you can blow up, right?

10:06 and you can become Chance the Rapper or Justin Bieber who was discovered on YouTube, right? This is a new era and in this new era where there's an exponential increasing amount of fame but the underlying business models supporting fame are growing linearly like ad revenue is not going up exponentially to support you know NFL players for example right and if anything like cord cutting with cable TV um is is making it you know even tougher to support the income streams that right now allow for these huge salaries to come out. Um, when you look at the record labels or the movie studios, they don't have as much money as they used to because technologies completely disrupted their business models. So, it became really clear to us that direct to fan monetization was going to have to be the answer. As people were getting more famous on Tik Tok, on Instagram, on Snapchat than they'd ever been on

11:00 Twitter, they they needed to be more reliant on selling directly to their fans because the underlying business models that historically supported them, there was just no way they were going to keep up with the exponentially increasing demand.

11:13 I guess you could say you're like a pioneer in fandom. And you're also giving them an opportunity like you said to make money when most of them after retirement unfortunately are not going to continue making any money. Do you have any stories or is there someone that stands out who you were like who really came to you was super excited about the fact that they could monetize their fans or create a new revenue stream when maybe they were in sports or in music and they didn't they couldn't think of another way besides what they had always known. I mean, look, there's there's literally we have 60,000 people on the platform and uh almost all of them in their own way had a reason why.

11:53 Um, you know, some of my favorite stories I think of someone like Kenny G and you know, he would tell me like, man, if I had, you know, five bucks for every person that's ever come up to me, you know, in the airport and and wanted to take a selfie with me. Uh, I think about Snoop Dogg who when he first heard about Cameo from Ice Tea, ended up facetiming me and was like, "Stephen, this is brilliant. You know, my second biggest fan base is in Brazil. This is a way for me to go to Brazil without without having to go to Brazil. Let me on this so we can billionize their together." Like, that's the type of passion I would hear from, you know, from from talent.

12:29 You really are your rapper's favorite rapper or my rapper's favorite rapper. Tell me, how do these how do these relationships I got that from your from ex uh how do these relationships get built from you? I mean it seems like you really built up like these these famous people that most people would be like oh my gosh I could never I could never partner with these people. I could never create a business where I was helping these people. It seems nearly impossible. How did that start with you?

12:58 Look, it's it was a team effort. Um, I think when you look back at our founding team, um, we while none of us like come from a traditional Hollywood background, like working at a talent agency or being basketball agents or something, um, we had a pretty unique group of founders that I think really contributed to building the the early part of the network. And then and then it really was about retention and referrals after that. So, um, two of two of us, me and Devon, uh, what did Duke and one thing that's really cool about Devon is in addition to being, you know, our our technical co-founder at CTO, uh, early CTO, uh, Devon was one of the early stars on Vine. say he'd have he'd had over a billion loops on Vine and many of his, you know, best friends uh ended up not just being big on Vine, but you know, one Cody Co um has, you know, millions of followers on on YouTube and is one of the, you know, biggest

13:56 YouTubers on the planet at this point, right? So, having a CTO and had a product that like actually is a creator and understands the plight and understands that, you know, he had a billion loops on Vine but never made a dollar from it. like that made this problem really passionate to him. Our other co-founder, Martin, went to USC. He was an athlete there. He ended up walking on to those Matt Liner, Reggie Bush era, great USC teams. And he had teammates that went from selling out the Coliseum uh to suddenly like a year later, they're not in the NFL and they're, you know, can't make money doing anything. And again, keep in mind when when I was at Duke and Devin was at Duke and Martin was at USC, this was pre-NIL. Um, you know, one of my best friends who won a national championship for Duke basketball, I remember 6 months after winning a national championship, he called me and he asked if I could

14:47 Western Union him $300. Right. So, this was a problem that was really personal to us. And because we went to the schools we went to, we did the sports and the activities uh that we did. It gave us a great rolodex. So when we started the business, we were able to get, you know, a lot of our friends and family to come on the platform first and then once they were on and they liked it, they told their friends. What's something besides business success? What is something like personal success or something that happened after starting this company on a personal note that has really stood out for you as a as something that you you know, a memory that you want to cherish? I mean, there's literally like an exponential amount of them, but one of my favorite moments. Uh, you know, probably happened in 2020, Super Bowl 2020 was my dad's 70th birthday and I decided to bring him to Super Bowl and he got to like spend a

15:40 week with me at Super Bowl. And, you know, people will often say that something is their Super Bowl, like a big time at work. Super Bowl is literally our Super Bowl because all of our talent are there. We're running around seeing everyone in person. Um, and I just remember bringing my dad and my mom around Miami and you know, so many of my dad's heroes, they're coming up to him and they're thanking him for having me because I'm putting money in their pocket. I remember Isaiah Thomas, the you know, Hall of Fame basketball player. You know, we were at the NFL PA party and Isaiah goes to my dad, look around, all these guys work for your son, right? And it was just like moments like that or you know my dad's all time f even though we're Bears fans my dad's all-time favorite quarterback is Brett Favre and you know Brett on the day that he got inducted to the NFL 100 greatest players of all time team um you know

16:30 spent that morning having breakfast with my dad and my mom and um you know those are the moments that that you really treasure. Another fun one happened at Super Bowl the next year during COVID. This was the you know Super Bowl in Tampa Bay. only one quarter of the seats were allowed to be sold. We were in a box with you know Mike Tyson and Snoop Dogg and Shaq and you know and it's just it's those are the pinch me moments and yeah I just remember like how happy my dad was like being able to meet all these people and and how proud he was.

17:01 That's incredible like to be among all these people all these legends. Do you ever get nervous? Who would make you nervous? If there's anyone that you could be in a room with that would make you nervous who would that be?

17:11 I don't know. I I think I think it would probably be, you know, maybe Michael Jordan. Um, you know, I know his sons pretty well. Uh, I've met MJ before, but, you know, growing up in Chicago in the 90s, like that's that's probably the guy. Um, but at this point, I mean, so many people that were my heroes or people I watched or people I listen to their music, I've gotten to know. Um, kind of the more you're around that, the more normalized it's been. But to be honest, I've never been that person that was a I love like my sports teams, but I've never gone like gaga over. I'm not the person that's going to like go and ask for a selfie or or go get their autograph. That's just not me. Um, but you know, MJ's probably the top of that list, I guess.

18:00 Well, I can imagine with the Super Bowl in LA, that's going to be a good one. That's I'm sorry, not Super Bowl, the Olympics in LA in 2028. That's going to be an incredible time for you, I would imagine. How do you feel with with the, you know, the Olympics leveraging Snoop Dogg or maybe even leveraging other creators coming up? Like, how do you see these big brands, these big media companies or media events that are going to be leveraging creators in the future? Again, I think every brand is looking for distribution and creators are um are are certainly like a way to get to cut through the noise. Otherwise, you know, you have to go through paid channels. Um Instagram and Tik Tok have certainly made organic sales harder than ever before. And you know, even when creators are posting, um, depending on the algorithm, um, you know, there there's only a small fraction of their followers that are actually going to see whatever

18:58 they post. So brands are are excited about creators. Like we have a B2B business called Cameo for Business uh, that's been growing, you know, a ton since we started it. Um, and and I think again those trends are only going to continue.

19:13 Yeah, I've used the Cameo for Business Genius. So what what else do you see? in the future for Cameo.

19:18 Look, the core idea for Cameo was always for X amount of money, you know, you should be able as a fan to pay to do Y activity with Z person you love or admire. So, you know, we think that if you build the world's largest rolodex of talent, you know, there should be kind of an unlimited amount of businesses that could be built off of that. um you know in the tough times or in the really great in the in the times where people were probably overexuberant in our business or even myself was overly exuberant. we probably trying to do too many things and our core business is is a great one and it's it's a magical product and you know we've sold you know millions of cameos and there's billions of people out there so I think there's like a ton of room in our core market to continue to do what we do and and do it all over the world and um you know sometimes we have to we have to like make sure that we don't get too

20:12 distracted by you know chasing um you know cha chasing you know the rainbows that and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbows that are beyond the horizon and if we just focus on you know making our core product better like you know how long it takes to get a video like we should that's about 36 hours today like how do we get that to zero how do we get making a cameo is close to getting doing a gy um you know when I think about price uh we'd rather sell a million $1 cameos than one million dollar cameo so if we can continue to figure out ways to get the price down and get the time completion uh down as well. Like I think we're building a really great business here.

20:52 Hey, I I have the problem. I chase way too many rabbits and I never catch any. So, you know, I can relate to that. It's hard not to. I'm curious on how you look at global expansion. I'm a huge proponent of going global. I think there's just so many people that that want a lot of different products and services that they may not be able to get today. How do you guys look at that in terms of what markets you're going to go into or when you go into a market if it's working then you double down?

21:20 I have a very different answer on this today than I probably did if you interviewed me three to five years ago. Um if you win the US in a business like ours, you win the world. So I think like kind of any effort spent going outside of your you know the place where you you have your core you know your core market um especially if you're in the US and and it's a big enough market like the US consumer market's pretty big the US entertainment market's pretty big. So if you win the US like it's aspirational right if you're a Bollywood star like you aspire to go to Hollywood and you aspire to touch your fans in the United States. So I think ultimately we've been at our best when we've been really focused and disciplined on staying within our lane and that doesn't mean you know expanding to India or Korea or Japan or any of these markets uh isn't appealing. It certainly is. And I've spent uh a lot of money and hired a lot

22:13 of people to help go build that stuff out. But ultimately like we have seen the ROI repeatedly been doubling down at home.

22:21 Oh, I I love that perspective. So thank you for sharing that. uh if somebody out there is like they want to build something like what you've done, is there one or two things that you would tell them that you wish you knew? Look,

22:34 I think it's really important first to uh understand in a marketplace business what's you know what's going to be the critical side to get first supply or demand. Um, in our market, it was really important that we acquired supply side first because in our marketplace, supply could uniquely be get their own demand. And that was kind of the growth equation for us. Uh, we get Talon on, they would come, they'd promote on Instagram or Twitter that they were on Cameo. Their users would become our customers for free. And that's how our flywheel started. Um, very oftent times I see entrepreneurs trying to do both at the same time to solve the chicken and the egg and and that rarely works. The other thing I'll mention too, and and this is something we still wrestle with at Cameo, and it's probably the thing preventing us, you know, so far from becoming a $10 billion business or more.

23:23 Um, retention is just absolutely critical. Um, it's always harder to, you know, acquire new customer than it is to get a really happy person to come back and use you again and again and again. And, um, you know, focusing on retention and this isn't things I didn't know. we just weren't able to, you know, really execute it. And our market is so new and so big that it's easy to just keep going and finding new folks year after year. But ultimately, um, you know, building really making sure that you've got great retention. It's it's super important at scale because otherwise you get to a point when you're 100 million revenue business or something like that where it just gets so hard to fill the bucket up every month.

24:07 Oh, I Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, you know, when you're starting off small, your your budgets and then as you grow, I mean, your budgets become giant. I've heard so many people now complain about, you know, acquiring customers. It just sometimes it's more expensive to acquire a customer than the revenue you have coming in and then they're looking at lifetime value, but who knows if they'll even stick. There's so much complexities now and I mean the markets are so competitive. Uh, but thank you for sharing that. If people want to get in touch with you, they want to learn more information, what can they do?

24:40 Yeah, follow me on Twitter, Mr. 312, or on LinkedIn. I'm probably most active on LinkedIn.

24:46 Stephen, thank you so much for joining us today on Founder Story, sharing all your knowledge, getting to over a billion dollar company, soon a 10 billion dollar company. I can't wait to have you back at that moment. But, uh, this has been really great. So much knowledge shared, and thank you for all the impact that you do, and I'm I'm super stoked, man. you're coming back at 10 billion, please. But, uh, Stephen, seriously, I I really appreciate you being on today.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "How He Built Cameo To A $1 Billion Valuation"?

Host (Host), Stephen Galanis (Guest).

What is "How He Built Cameo To A $1 Billion Valuation" about?

The discussion centers on Stephen Galanis, co-founder and CEO of Cameo, as he shares insights into his entrepreneurial journey and the foundational principles behind building a billion-dollar company. He emphasizes the significance of having a strong entrepreneurial mindset, the influence of familial ties to entrepreneurship, and the Japanese philosophy of Ikigai, which guides individuals toward…

What is mentioned in this Founder's Story episode?

7 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Cameo, Duke University, Stephen Galanis, Icky Guy, Field Glass, SAG (Screen Actors Guild). Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "How He Built Cameo To A $1 Billion Valuation"?

The episode runs 25 min; the transcript is about 5,036 words in 44 timestamped sections.

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