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Steven Galanis

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It's me buying it for you and then sending it to you in a text message, in a group chat, maybe posting it on your Facebook wall back in the way or tweeting it out to you or posting it on my Instagram story and tagging you in it. And then that created this phenomenon where it was getting shared. So we always say every cameo is a commercial for the next one.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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And one thing that we had on there, every video is watermarked, right? So you see this video, you're like, holy shit, how do I do that? And then you see cameo, right? And then people watch the video, they Google cameo, they come into our site and that's really the flywheel. So it's supply side acquisition, talent promoting,

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User sharing and then the customer sharing to the recipient and then the recipient tending to share it on social in their group chat or just taking their phone out and being, holy shit, look what I got.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Yeah, one of the really unique things about Cameo is that we kind of found product market fit almost right away. You know, we had a really disastrous launch, which I can tell that story in a little bit. But shortly after that, like, you know, first we started just with NFL players. We thought, like, there was this big need. And then it really wasn't until we started.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Devin, my co-founder, one day was like, hey, I think Cody... Er ist ein Freund von Cody Co., der 10 Millionen Follower auf YouTube hat. Und Leute wie Cody können es gut machen. Cody hat es versucht, er hat es auf einem YouTube-Video veröffentlicht. Wir sind für das erste Mal viral gegangen.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Und wir haben unsere Produktmarkt-Verteilung wirklich mit ex-Vine-Stars, TikTok, YouTube, und dann wurde Realität TV groß. Und, weißt du, während Athleten wahrscheinlich noch die größte Anzahl der Leute auf dem Site sind, Es ist vielleicht 14-15% unserer gesamten Firma. Wir haben also das Produkt-Markt-Fit gefunden, als wir es entlangfügten.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Die Firma hat sofort funktioniert und funktioniert wirklich gut für die ersten vier Jahre. Ich meine, das ist eine Firma, die von 0 bis 100 Millionen Topline in vier Jahren mit keinem Marketing-Spend. Es gibt nicht viele Firmen...

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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in the world that did that so interestingly our biggest problems actually happened like after massive success after we became um a unicorn and it really started when we uh you know basically we were we were trying to like conquer the world um uh not just like in our core market Das haben wir geografisch gemacht.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Wir haben uns mit Amio Japan befasst und haben Leute in den USA, Australien, Europa und Südamerika eingeladen. Was wir gleichzeitig auch gemacht haben, war, dass wir über all die Möglichkeiten, die die Stadt monetisieren kann, nachdenken und wir wollten sicherzustellen, dass wir eine Antwort in jedem Raum hatten.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Hi, my name is Stephen Galanis and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Cameo. Cameo is the world's largest marketplace where you can book personalized video messages from tens of thousands of the most exciting names in pop culture.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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So broadly, the four ways that talent can monetize their fame on the Internet, they can have a subscription business. So think OnlyFans, Patreon. In 2020, we launched our answer to that called Fan Clubs.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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And suddenly, you know, we had some of our best engineers working on, you know, basically all of the same features that you would see on OnlyFans or Patreon, you know, things like subscriptions and, you know, MassDM and all those type of products. Zweitens haben wir ein Live-Calls-Produkt gebaut.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Während der Pandemie waren alle Meet-and-Greets nicht mehr möglich, die man an einem Konzert oder Comic-Con sehen würde. Und wir fühlten uns, dass wir das in einem digitalen Weg füllen könnten.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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worked a little bit but then the when the world opened up you know we built great tech but there just wasn't the same product market fit to sit online and and you know talk to someone on facetime versus like meeting them in real life um you know so we we kind of missed on that uh third you know physical goods is another thing that people can sell on the internet uh we bought the world's largest celebrity merch company a company that really focused on a plus um you know

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Schauspieler und Athleten denken an Arnold Schwarzenegger, Matthew McConaughey. Wir haben diese Firma gekauft und wir fühlten uns wirklich so, als würde die Welt öffnen, könnte Merch etwas sein, das es etwas einfacher wäre, Talent zu verkaufen. Danach sahen wir große Veränderungen in Facebook, Instagram und TikToks Algorithmus. Das machte es viel schwieriger, Talent zu promoten.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Wir hatten acht Jahre Sales-Date auf bestimmte Leute und ihre Drops wurden immer weniger, obwohl sie nicht weniger populär geworden sind. Das war ein weiterer Wegblock, den wir aufgenommen haben. Letztendlich der B2B-Bereich. Leute können Brand-Deale bekommen und wir hatten ein Cameo für das Geschäft und das Team begann schnell zu erweitern.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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CMOs und CEOs, die unsere Produkte als Konsumenten verwendeten oder während der Covid-19, sie kaufen sie für alle Hände oder wie viele Team-Meetings hatten Cameos in ihnen während der Covid-19. All of a sudden sind sie jetzt versuchen, sie für ihren Marketing-Kontent zu verwenden.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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das ist eine wirklich spannende Sache, aber plötzlich ist es uns passiert, dass wir von einem Team von 100 zu ungefähr 400 437, aber unsere besten Leute waren auf alle verschiedenen Dinge konzentriert und was oft in Start-ups passiert ist, dass die Leute vergessen, dass wenn du dein core Business bei fünf Prozent, zehn Prozent optimierst, ist es fast immer besser, als das nächste zu bauen.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Und wir waren sicherlich schuldig und ich war schuldig, dass ich auf diese Sachen aufgehoben bin, um das schwarze neue Objekt zu fangen. Und ein Teil davon ist, dass wir den Produktmarkt so schnell mit dem, was wir gemacht haben, gefunden haben. Und jetzt hatten wir ein besseres Team, als wir es jemals hatten. Und wir haben das losgelassen und wir haben uns einfach überstärkt.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Und jetzt, wenn ich mich daran erinnere, denke ich an all das Geld, das wir verdienen und all die großartigen Erfahrungen, die wir gemacht haben. Und im Endeffekt, wenn das Team, das ich verabschiedet habe, alles daran arbeitete, die eine Sache, richtig? Und das weiter verbessern und verbessern und verbessern. Was könnten diese komponenten Spiele sein?

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Also, ich würde sagen, dass es für mich, wenn ich zurückkehre und mich in 2020 oder 2021 anschaue, es wäre, um wirklich zu resistieren, wie das glänzende Objekt zu fangen und weiterhin den Grind zu erneuern, um einfach dein großes Körner-Business so gut wie möglich zu machen.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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It took a lot of coaching. I was really fortunate throughout that era to be working with a CEO coach named Bing Gordon.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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And Bing's kind of a legend in the Valley, one of the founders of Electronic Arts, 30-year GP of Kleiner Perkins, you know, had served on the board of Amazon from like seed stage all the way until probably 22, you know, was, I think, chairman of Zynga and, you know, so influential in Duolingo and, you know, so many of the great consumer companies of the last 30 years.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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And Bing introduced me to a framework that has become my core operating framework as a CEO and something that I like to teach every founder that I talk about when they hit a certain scale. Und er hat dieses Konzept von Forever OKRs. Wenn du dich mit der OKR-Philosophie kennst, ist das eine Philosophie, die die Leute bei Kleiner sehr berühmt, wie Leute wie John Doerr, zu Google und

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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LinkedIn und so viele der legendären Technologien der letzten 20, 30 Jahre. Und OKR steht für Objektive Key Results. Also, was es eigentlich sagen würde, ist, dass du ein großes Objektiv hast und es könnte sagen, ich will meinen Talent basieren. And then the key result would be specific, measurable, and time-bound. So I want to go from 1,100 talent to 1,500 talent by November 1st.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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So having some specific goal. Bing's idea in his experience watching so many great CEOs, whether it's Mark Pincus or Jeff Bezos or Daniel Acker, any of these great CEOs that he'd worked with and mentored, he basically distilled what made them great, what separated the top 10% from the rest was really people that could nail these five very specific things.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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And the idea of Forever OKR is as a CEO, or let's use a head of sales as an example. The Forever OKR of a sales leader is beat plant. You don't know what the number is going to be. It might be 2 billion today and 5 billion next year, but it's always a beat plan. As a CMO, your forever OKR is to build a legendary brand for your employees and customers.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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No matter what the product is, that's what you want to do as a CMO. As a CEO, in Bing's experience, he thought that there were five things on the forever OKR front that every CEO should be thinking about. And really, at scale, every other job that's not these five things are stuff that other people could do.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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So the first of these forever OKRs is product market fit, something we've spent a lot of this call talking about. Find it. And when you find it, you know, continue to make sure you don't lose it. And then as a CEO thinking about when you have product market fit and you feel like it's solid, like at what point do you start finding product market fit on other things?

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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If you don't have product market fit, all of the rest of the things that I'm going to talk about, they don't matter. So as a CEO, like that's where your time needs to be spent, you know, exclusively and especially if you're building new initiatives, right?

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Like, you know, you got to be as in the weeds on that as possible to make sure, like, should the investment, like, am I making the right investment by starting this new product or expanding the geography? So product market fits, number one. Nr. 2 ist, ein Weltklasse-Exekutiv-Team zu bauen.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Auf der Höhe, wenn du 437 Leute hast, und es gibt 4.000 Personen und 40.000 Unternehmen, wird das exponentiell wichtiger werden. As a leader, and especially as a leader that was leading a company that was fully remote during COVID, you're not going to be the person that's in the weeds on every decision.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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So making sure that you have a world-class executive team that can come and take your vision and execute it. They're the people sitting with the pencil behind their ear, taking notes with what you say, but then taking the things you're talking about in the executive room and actualizing them on the front line. Du musst ein Weltklasse-Exekutivteam haben. Und dann kommt die nächste natürliche Frage.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Well, I think there's a number of those, but I think it really starts with a few things. Number one, it's really important that as a founder, you're building in a space that you want to work in in a really long time. And when I was pretty early in my career,

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Wie weißt du, dass dein Exekutivteam Weltklasse ist? Das ist meine nächste Frage. I guarantee you that some other company in their portfolio has an industry leading or many industry leading CMOs. So go talk to those people and see what good feels like. Go get a coffee with them. And then you start to, you know, over time, you start to get pattern recognition. You have a bar.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Bing would make me do this exercise with them once a quarter. where I would have to rank my executive team five to one, five being this is the best person in the world that could possibly do this job at this stage, four being their 90th percentile, three being their industry average, two being their below average, one being why the fuck do they work for you, right?

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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And what you do is you take all those scores, you add them up and you divide them by the amount of direct reports you have and you get to a number that's somewhere between one and five. Und die meisten CEOs, wenn sie das zum ersten Mal machen, ranken ihre Geschäftsführung 3,5. Das ist die Anzahl. Das ist nur, wo es endet.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Und was Bing immer wieder gefunden hat, ist, dass eine weltklasse Geschäftsführung eine 4,25 oder höheren Anzahl hat. So as you're thinking about the members of your executive team, today's three like could potentially get coached up to be tomorrow's four. But at a hyper growth company, it's actually much more likely that, you know, today's five is tomorrow's three, right?

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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So constantly you have to think about, okay, where do I up level? Can I continue to bet on this person? Like what coaching can we get them? And, you know, uh, Wenn wir ein Unicorn geworden sind, hatten wir einen wirklich unangenehmen Fall, wo jeder von uns das erste Mal gemacht hat. Und jedes Mal, als wir jemanden gehirrt haben, waren wir die größte Firma, die wir jemals gemacht haben.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Also, du weißt, wahrscheinlich eine Entscheidung an dem Zeitpunkt, die sich als eine tolle Idee sah, war, mein Exekutivteam aufzuleveln, du weißt, von diesem Team, das ich was excellent, had built the company, had the passion, had the knowledge.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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But we were really bringing that next level leadership in because we were working on our ultimate goal, which was to ring the bell and to become a private, a public company. And in that time, we hired the global head of people away from McDonald's, one of the biggest employers in the world, absolute world-class leader.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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We hired a head of product away from Uber, someone that was responsible for building the driver's side and the rider's side app of the company. A marketplace that's very similar to ours. We hired the CTO away from... That had been the head of engineering at... Oh my God, I can't believe I can't... Hulu, right? Like Hulu, we had the global head of ops from LinkedIn came to be our COO.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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found a cameo i ended up meeting this founder in chicago who had sold his company for a billion dollars and was kind of one of the tech luminaries here and he introduced me to a framework that i love telling founders about and it's called ikigai and the it's a japanese philosophy and basically imagine a venn diagram but instead of two circles there's four and the idea is that you know to really be the best in the world at something you have to

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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At every position, we had just built this all-star leadership team. But ultimately, what you learn when you hire those people, then... Great people that they worked with in the past want to come work for them, right? So suddenly you hire the C-Suite and then the VPs want to come and those VPs have their directors. And this led to a huge influx of talent in the company.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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It was embarrassing how stacked our bench was. People three, four rows down the level were insanely high ceiling, great people. And that's one of the reasons that having a great executive team is important, because great leaders will get amazing, the best people they ever worked with to come follow them. So that's the second one. Das dritte ist Mission, Vision, Value.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Also das ist wirklich um Beziehung, Kommunikation und Beziehung. Versteht jeder in der Firma, was die Vision der Firma ist? Wissen sie deine Mission? Wissen sie deine Werte? Sind sie damit lebendig? When you're sitting making decisions, do they have the same rubric? Because there's a common language and a common framework.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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And at LinkedIn, where I worked before Cameo, I think every person that's ever worked at LinkedIn could recite the mission, vision, values of the company. Sie würden es schlagen. Also jeden Dienstag hatte ich alle Hände an Cameo. Ich fange mit unserer Mission an. Unsere Mission ist es, die am persönlichsten und authentischsten Fan-Erlebnisse auf der Erde zu erschaffen.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Ich wette, dass jede Person, die für uns gearbeitet hat, diese Mission beurteilen könnte. Unsere Werte, du weißt, rollen den roten Karpfen, act like an owner, kämpfen für Simplizität. Das sind Dinge, die im DNA verbunden werden. Das ist das Wichtigste. Viertens ist das Arbeitsempfehlungsengagement.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Dies kann von Dingen wie NPS betrachtet werden, aber am wichtigsten ist, ob die Leute, die für dich arbeiten, die beste Arbeit ihrer Karriere machen. Wenn sie die beste Arbeit ihrer Karriere machen und ihr habt Produkt-Markt-Fitz und es gibt Leiter, die sie genießen und sie lieben die Mission, Vision, die Werte der Firma, dann was werden sie tun? Sie werden nicht weggehen, richtig?

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Und in der Tat, anstatt wegzugehen, werden sie den meisten talentierten Menschen, mit denen sie jemals gearbeitet haben, zu sagen, kommt her und arbeitet in Ihrer Firma. Right. So employee engagement is so critical. And, you know, probably the best leading indicator of your employee engagement is, you know, doing something like an employee NPS for, you know, once a once a year or twice a year.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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You do an employee voice survey, like find out anonymous, you know, one to ten. How likely are you to recommend us as you know, as an employer, you know, ask some specific questions, get feedback. It's absolutely critical. Und dann, you know, the fifth one. And by the way, these are stacked ranks. These are in order. Right. The fifth one for a long time, people probably thought was the first one.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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But the fifth one is keep the lights on. Right. And and that's, you know, fundraising. It's budgeting. It's, you know, making the hard decisions when you have to, if you need to cut, reduce OPEX. But those are the five things. And, you know, if you have the money and you have product market fit and you've got great leaders and you've got.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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internal communication and alignment and you've got employees that are highly engaged, like that is the recipe for a, you know, a truly world-class organization. And that is the type of thing that, you know, I strive to do every day. Like sometimes I've fallen short and not been able to execute on all that. But those are the things I work on every day.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Ja, schau, wenn du, wenn du, da war in der Zero Interest Rate Umgebung, richtig? Three guys in a pitch deck could get funded. But at the end of the day, if you find product market fit, if you have something that people want, you're going to be able to find capital. It's really, really rare that I see founders. I see founders all the time talking, oh, it's so hard to fundraise, blah, blah, blah.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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When you have something real and your customers are raving about it and they see it and the VCs, I never see those people struggle to raise capital. I'm sure it's happened. There might be exceptions, but it's almost always the founders that don't have product market fit that are bitching about how hard it is to fund. And guess what?

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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You have to find product market fit before you raise real capital. Right. Andererseits ist es nur Spekulation, weil, schau, es gibt so viele tolle Ideen, die existieren. Und ja, vielleicht hat jemand eine tolle Pädagogik und wir haben das gesehen. Ich habe viele Leute gesehen, die Kameo verlassen und sie waren der Grund, warum wir gewonnen haben. Und sie kommen und dann werden sie gefundet.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Be at the intersection of what do you love to do? What does the world need? What are you great at? What can you get paid for? And, you know, when I think about Cameo and, you know, kind of the ups and downs and, you know, the things that get you through, you know, eight years of building something. And, you know, hopefully I can work on it another 80 years. Like, I love what I do.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Und ich habe viele dieser Karten auch für tolle Mitarbeiter geschrieben. Und vielleicht, wenn du wie ein Weltklasse-Org verlässt, dann sind die Leute auf der Pädagogik bettend. Aber fast immer sehe ich... Those founders ended up struggling two, three years later where they have the money and they haven't found product market fit.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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And they're kind of in this limbo where it's like, do I return the money? Do I keep doing what I'm doing? Do I pivot? Product market fit needs to be number one.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Right. And again, I think that's the single biggest mistake That you can make as a CEO, as a founder. And anytime I've struggled or Cameo struggled, it's when I got away from focusing on product market fit. And in the times where we've had to come in and save the company or really decided, that's when I'm super, super deep in the weeds of the front lines trying to make it happen.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Look, for us it's really simple, like as I mentioned, you know, the company got bigger, we were working on all these different initiatives and, you know, suddenly like when the world opened back up and when stimulus checks started and people could, the talent could play their games and go on tour and People started spending money differently.

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Instead of buying cameos, they were going to the restaurant. It was revenge spending. Going to Mykonos and Ibiza. People used to go to Europe once a summer and now I feel like you watch Instagram and people are there four or five times. It's crazy, right? But people started clearly spending money differently and our core business took a big hit in that period. Our core business dropped by over 50%.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Now when you're

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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when your revenue is dropping by 50 percent and you're incubating a bunch of new things but the core business the core money maker is going down faster than the new things are growing and your you know your opex has increased by three four x right that is not good math right and in fact at that point suddenly you go from being a profitable company and in our case we were burning like six million dollars a month you know and that ended up being

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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And you just kind of wake up and it can happen. And in our case, it literally happened like that. It happened so fast. So then at that point, Als Leitungsgruppe haben wir angefangen zu überlegen, was wir tun sollten, wenn wir alles wegwerfen und von einer Zero-Base-Budgeting-Approach anfangen. Was müssen wir tun, um in der Spielzeit zu bleiben?

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Und über drei wirklich schmerzhafte Zähne haben wir die Firma von 437 Leuten bis zu 35 genommen. Oh, did that by exiting business lines and getting out of international markets. But what did we end up doing? Our best people suddenly were for the first time in like five years all working on the main thing. Right.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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You know, being at that EQ guy point, it kind of gives you perpetual energy. It almost is like Iron Man's heart. Und eine Sache, die ich so oft sehe, ist, dass die Founder zum nächsten Top-Ding springen. Und gerade in den letzten acht Jahren denke ich an die Venture-Hype-Zyklen, die ich gesehen habe, als wir Geld für Cameo am Anfang bezahlt haben.

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And keeping the main thing, the main thing ended up being absolutely critical to us doing something that, you know, I think Elon has had to do at Twitter, like bringing the headcount down so drastically. But it works because all the best people were working on the biggest problem. Und das war eine wirklich schmerzhafte Lektion, die diese Firma gelernt hat.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Aber als wir wieder aufbauen, hat es mein Geschäftsteam gemacht, viele von denen, die Nummer drei oder Nummer vier in der alten Welt waren, wie die Leute, die noch hier sind. Sie sind so, wenn es ein neues schwarzes Objekt gibt, um es zu fangen. Diese Schmerzen sind da, diese Lessons. Es ist so, dass diese Firma Grit hat. Das sind Überlebende.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Das sind Leute, die auf der Liste der Überschriften waren. Und sie waren immer auf der rechten Kolumne gegenüber der linken. Und das ist nicht zu sagen, dass die Leute, die nicht mehr hier sind, nicht großartig waren. Ich sage den Leuten immer, wenn sie ein Cameo auf jemandem Resümee sehen, wie wir so gut als jede Firma in der Welt vertreten sind. Aber dieser Rebuild war nicht für jeden.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Wenn du jemanden bist, der ein Team bauen wollte, dann ist es plötzlich so, dass du vielleicht ein Team von einem sein würdest. Und du könntest die beste Person in der Welt in dieser Rolle sein. Aber vielleicht war es jemand, der nur bereit war, zu sein, der CTO, der auch bereit war, zu coden. Und das war für uns das, was groß wurde. Und

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Despite my board and investors telling me that if I made these cuts, we would be a zombie company and there would be no way that we would ever be able to grow again. Last December, our busiest time of the year, we were 30% bigger in revenue than we were the year before with 70% less headcount.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Wir sind wirklich super gespannt auf die Zukunft für das Unternehmen. Wir konnten die Firma, die 4-5 Monate hervorragend war, aufrufen. Und effektiv, was das tat, war, dass es uns ermöglicht hat, die Wertung zu versetzen. Wir hatten Mitarbeiter, die sich an eine Wertung von 1 Billion Euro eingeladen haben, viele von denen sind heute hier.

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Und wenn Sie sich darüber nachdenken, ist der Streitpreis ihrer Optionen hier. Und wenn die Wertung, der Tag, an dem wir ein Unicorn geworden sind, Facebook war eine Trillionen-Dollar-Familie und Snapchat kostete 120 Billionen Dollar. Schaut euch Snapchat's Valuation heute an. In den öffentlichen Märkten sind die Valuationen für diese Firmen so stark eingestiegen.

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Wenn du plötzlich über M&A und irgendwelche Art von Ergebnissen denkst, dann hat sich die Zahl verändert. Als wir unsere Unicorn-Valuation erhielt haben, Die Marketplace-Businesses wie uns haben 8x bis 12x nette Revenue gewertet. Wir hatten 75 Millionen nette Revenue, 12x mehr, 900 Millionen pre, 100 Millionen post. Es war nicht mal eine teure Runde. Wir hatten echte Revenue.

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Wenn du keine Micro-Mobilität-Start-up gemacht hättest, dann hättest du keine Spaß gemacht. Das ist wie die verrückte Zeit von Bird & Lime. Und dann gab es AR VR und dann gab es Blockchain und dann The Creator Academy got super hot right after companies like us and OnlyFans really exploded. And then everybody was building Creator Economies. Then it was Web3.

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Unsere Runde war 400 Millionen Dollar übersubscribed. Die Leute kämpften. Wir hatten Investoren, die Karten, die größer waren als ihre Ausgabe, um in die Runde zu kommen. Die Leute kämpften wirklich darüber. Und... Yet today, marketplaces are getting valued on even a multiple. So if you're burning money, it doesn't matter what your net revenue is.

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The market's effectively telling you you're worth nothing. So we got into a point where when you looked at the public market comps of businesses like ours, If we had gone to try to sell the company, we probably wouldn't have been able to clear our prep stack.

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So that's why taking the tough medicine, bringing the valuation down, doing a recap, it ended up being the thing that really, I think, has given us a second life. It's been absolutely critical for me to keep my best employees. They need to be incentivized. And as we build a billion dollar company back up, I want the people that We're here for this ride to be very richly rewarded.

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And I'll tell you one more thing. This group right here, the new goal is the 10x evaluation of the company before we double headcount again. In the old world, when we raised, I remember we raised, you know, 12 and a half in our Series A and 50 in our Series B and 100 in our Series C. And every time you'd read those press releases, it's like Cameo raised $50 million.

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And now they're going to take headcount from 50 to 175 people, right? Like hiring people itself was like a goal. And part of that is, I've always believed fundraising is just a proxy for hiring. People are giving you money so you can hire people on their behalf, basically. um ihre Investitionen wertvoller zu machen.

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Aber ich liebe dieses Mindset, das mein Team jetzt hat, das sagt, wir können das mit den Leuten, die wir hier haben, tun. Und oh, übrigens, wir müssen so eine hohe Bar haben, dass wenn wir jemanden hinlegen, es wird nur so viele Säte auf diesem Rocketschiff geben. Und wir müssen sicher sein, dass wir unglaublich glaubwürdig und selektiv sind, wer kommt. Und es ist einfach ein anderer Playbook.

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Yeah, my morning routine, I go and do Pilates every morning. And then I go and follow that up with a cold plunge. Yes. And honest to God, it doesn't matter how shitty I was feeling. And I'm not someone, I'm very envious. I'm like a four-hour-sleep guy. I've done the eight sleep, I've done everything. It's just not, my mom was like that. I go to bed at two, I wake up at six.

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That's how I've always been.

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Ja, aber wie und ich könnte so witzig sein, aber wenn es Zeit ist und ich um sieben Uhr bin, bin ich auf dem Reformer und dann, weißt du, um acht Uhr bin ich, weißt du, in der Steine und dann um acht, zehn Uhr bin ich in dem Kühlschrank, wie es einfach literally, es ist wie, es ist wie super, es ist wie das Plug in den Tesla in einen Supercharger und, um, weißt du, für mich, das ist, das war, weißt du, absolut essentiell, wie sich sicherzustellen, dass das Körper sich gut fühlt und schau, wie

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The tide came in so hard on the Creator Academy and everyone was building a Web3 business. And today a lot of the founders that were die Web3-Businesses oder die Investoren, die Web3 auf ihrem LinkedIn-Profil oder Twitter-Bio hatten. Plötzlich machen sie alle AI. Ich habe das gesehen und es ist sehr selten nachhaltig.

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I think all of us are guilty as founders that when things are going really shitty, then, you know, you're, you just let your habits come out the door. But like it, as we were rebuilding the company, like it was during that time that I kind of refound my like health habits.

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And like, then, you know, as I was feeling better and I was healthier, like I made better decisions, you know, and that's something that, um, you know, I have a warning sign to myself of, of if I start all of a sudden, I'm not making the gym or I'm feeling things are good. Like that's, That's the danger, danger will Robinson lights at this point.

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To be honest, I'm not super active on LinkedIn as far as posting. I work there, so I'll post big company announcements, but I'm not the LinkedIn guru making posts. I'm not particularly active on X as well, but my handle on Twitter is Mr312, MR312, the Chicago area code. It's just my name on Instagram and on Twitter and on LinkedIn, Gotcha.

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Und ich denke, das ist oftmals nur eine der Dinge, wie deine E-Key-Guide-Punkte zu befinden. Und ich dachte, deine Intro hier war ziemlich interessant. Du sprichst darüber, es gibt dieses Bild, das du liebst. Und das ist, wo ich denke, von all diesen vier Blocken, dass du etwas bildest, das die Welt eigentlich braucht, ist das eine, das ich denke, wird zu viel verpasst, richtig?

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Wie wenn es einen dieser VC-Hype-Zyklen gibt, weißt du, es geht alles darum, wie viel finanziert werden wird. Das ist, wie viele Founder denken. Aber im Endeffekt kommt es immer darauf an, ob der Produktmarkt fit ist. Bist du etwas bilden, was die Welt eigentlich braucht?

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Ich denke, es kommt darauf an, was du in deiner Sparezeit tust, wenn niemand es sieht, was du tust. Ich denke an meine Karriere als Start-up-Kameo, ein ehrgeiziger Sportfan, während ich ein Options-Trader war, mein erstes Job aus der Schule. I started a movie production company, right? So, you know, since kindergarten, my nickname's been the mayor.

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I've always been somebody that brings people together and connects them and kind of unlocks, you know, whatever experiences, whether it's in Chicago or at Duke or any of the places that I've been, you know, I like the classic guy that like opens the red velvet rope and brings people in.

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So I think most, if you were to go to my kindergarten teachers or my college professors or my friends from any era of my life, Ich denke nicht, dass vielleicht die Leute nicht genau wussten, was ich tun werde. Aber als sie herausgefunden haben, dass ich das mache, hat das den ganzen Sinn der Welt gemacht. Und es brachte meine Liebe für Social Media und für Fandom.

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Und es hat auch ein Problem geschlossen, das vielleicht nicht jeder aufmerksam denkt. Aber als jemand, der mit einem meiner anderen Co-Founder, und unser dritter Co-Founder war ein Athlet in den USA. We had really good friends that played Duke basketball and won national championships or were at USC, played on those Matt Leiner, Reggie Bush-era teams.

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And, you know, years after selling out the Coliseum or Cameron Endor, you know, they're basically middle school gym teachers or they're working as parapros at their old high school. Because, you know, the reality is, unless you become like a top, top tier player, you're not going to make enough money to sustain yourself.

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Und ich erinnere mich, als wir angefangen haben, kam ein Dokumentarfilm namens Broke. Es war ein 30 für 30. Und in dem hat es gesagt, dass 85 Prozent der NFL-Spieler fünf Jahre nach dem Spiel in ihrem letzten Spiel gebrochen sind. Und das war ein störend, störend. Wow. Wow. Ich denke, es kommt einfach darauf an, dass du die Leidenschaft für das Problemset hast, das du tust.

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Es ist so unterwertet, aber es ist so kritisch.

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There's a really smart investor that I like that I met at a Duke founder and investor forum they held on campus. His name is David Cummings. And David is a partner at Atlanta Ventures, backed a lot of the early stage companies that came out of there. And I remember hearing him talk one time and he said that in consumer... He often found that the best founding teams had these three co-founders.

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Now, these attributes could all be in one person, could be in two person, could be in three. But he's like, I've never seen a company that doesn't have the hacker, the hustler and the hipster. The hacker is somebody that finds a new and novel way to make things happen. In our case, that was like Wie kommst du aus Hollywood oder NFL-Agenten, die die größten Gatekeepers der Welt sind?

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Und wie schneiden wir die Agenzien durch, schneiden wir den Geräusch durch und gehen direkt zum Talent? Und es brauchte wirklich einen Hacker, um das herauszufinden. Und in unserem Fall war es Instagram-DM. Wir haben eine Armee von Leuten gebaut, die Celebriten auf Instagram DM'en hatten. Und nur das genaue Volumen und durchgehen. Und dann kamen sie auf und liebten es. Wir haben für Anrufe gefragt.

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Das ist so, wie wir unser Geschäft brick-by-brick gebaut haben. Und heute haben wir Tens von Tausenden von Talenten auf der Plattform, die größer sein würden als alle, die die Agenz kämpft. Also das ist Nummer eins. Nummer zwei, du brauchst den Hustler. Der Hustler ist die Person, die FOMO und Hype bauen kann und die Leute darüber aufgeregt wird.

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Kritisch für das Erwerben der initialen Seed Capital und das Erwerben von Angels. Noch kritischer, noch schwieriger als das Erwerben von Kapital ist, wie man die Leute verabschieden kann, um ihren tollen Job zu bekommen. Die besten Leute, weil du wirklich gute Leute brauchst, um das zu machen. um auf deine verrückte Idee zu arbeiten, bevor es Produkt-Markt-Betriebe gibt.

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Denn wenn du das nicht hast, wirst du es nicht beachten können. Also brauchst du wirklich einen Hustler, der das kann. Und dann letztlich, ich glaube, das ist etwas, das man vergessen hat, aber im Konsum ist es so wichtig, Du brauchst den Hipster. Der Hipster ist derjenige, der sehen wird, was cool in der Zukunft ist. Und oftmals ist es so, dass die Hipster ihre Sache in der realen Zeit machen.

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Es scheint seltsam, es scheint interessant. Wie in unserem Fall, als wir das Instagram-Aesthetik-Kameo begonnen haben, das hochpolierte Licht, Kamera, Make-up, das war die in vogue Ästhetik für Videocontent. Aber eines der Dinge, über die wir uns überzeugt hatten, war, authentisch über hohe Qualität zu bauen.

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Also anstatt unsere Feiern in ein Studio zu kommen und die Videos oder die Produktionsgruppe zu filmen, Die iPhone-Kamera ist cool. Es ist sogar besser, wie die Zoom-Setup, die ich habe. Es ist mehr authentisch, auch wenn ich die guten Lichter und die gute Kamera habe. Es ist eigentlich mehr authentisch für das, was wir verkaufen. Wie das Selfie-Style-Video, sie gehen herum, wie, oh, was ist das?

I am Charles Schwartz Show

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Wer ist hinter ihnen? Was haben sie? Was machen sie? Was ist das Essen auf ihren... Like that's the authenticity that really worked. And as TikTok has risen and promised that that authentic aesthetic actually ended up being the winning one. And even in our B2B business today, you know, we find that the brand's

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prefer this content that looks like real videos that people are posting as opposed to the Madison Avenue glossy. So this is a long way of saying in my case, our co-founders had each of those attributes, right? Like, like, you know, Devin is very clearly the hipster in the group. Martin was very clearly the hacker and I was very clearly the hipster. Sorry, the hustler.

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roles have evolved as time's gone on and we've hired great other people to come in and um but you know i think at the end of the day like the conviction of the founders and and all of us like working on something that you know is our eki guy that we really care about it's it's been critical

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Ja, ich meine, ich denke, ich denke, viel davon hat mit dem wirklich einzigartigen, ein paar einzigartige Attribute unseres bestimmten Produktes zu tun, richtig?

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Und die Lektionen, die ich habe, funktionierten exzellent für uns und wir haben sie früh verstanden und wir haben sie wirklich gut gegen diese, aber diese Lektionen können nicht, weißt du, wahr sein für jeden, jeder Mann, ob du einen Marktplatz baut oder du nur versuchst, deine Worte in eine direkte Konsumerbranche zu bekommen. Aber wirklich war das Cameo Flywheel einfach.

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Our marketplace, unlike Uber or Airbnb or DoorDash, is particularly unique because our supply can beget their own demand. Everyone on Cameo is famous. They have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers on TikTok, on Instagram, on X, on whatever platform you care about. And one of the things they can do that an Uber driver can't do or an Airbnb host can't do, is they can post...

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Und die Leute, die sie folgen, sind wahrscheinlich die wahrscheinlichsten Menschen in der Welt, um zu kaufen. Das ist also eine wirklich interessante Dynamik. Als wir mit unserem Marktplatz angefangen haben, das klassische Hühnchen und das Ei, es gibt keinen Talent, es gibt keine Kunden.

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Wir hatten die absolute Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass, wenn wir die Verpackungsseite aufgenommen hätten, dann die Verkaufsseite folgen würde. Eine der Taktiken, die wir gemacht haben, und jetzt ist es in Ordnung geworden, aber We were one of the first companies to not ever ask people, hey, we never asked people to promote Cameo. We would create a link for everyone.

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Cameo.com slash Steven would be like my profile. And I would ask you to tweet that out that would go to your page. And then once you're on your page, you could go browse and see who else was there. But we never asked people to like go to Cameo.com. We always ask them to go to their unique link. And the value prop made a lot of sense. You make three times as much as we do for every sale.

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And we take a take rate. So we're completely incentivized for you to be as good as you possibly could be. And we've really worked on creating great tools that talent could share their own links out. So that's number one. Our product is pretty unique in that over 80% of them are bought for other people. So it's not you buying for yourself and watching it on your phone.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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So it's like, you know, you're never just gonna go say this is good enough, like you should really own your work and feel like you're, like you're named the, you know, Stephen Golanus or the Ryan Hanley, like, you know, money back guarantee is like stamped onto the work that you're doing. Fight for Simplicity is a really interesting one. That came from Devin, our co-founder.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Devin ran product and engineering for most of Cameo's history. Today, he kind of oversees all creative and runs design. And the idea with Fight for Simplicity is to build something globally scalable, It is so hard to to do that if you have like all this complexity, like different buttons, different skews, et cetera. So what we're always trying to do is like, you know, how do we delete?

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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How do we streamline? How do we make this as easy as possible? Because if you make it as easy as possible, it actually allows it to scale. And, you know, fighting for simplicity

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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often means very difficult trade-offs, but cutting it all the way down, and that's something that I think that we're pretty proud of as far as the core product that we built, what the whole universe of things we could have done was, but focusing for, we're nine years in to this per-size video product.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Well, of course we want good ideas coming, coming to get surfaced. Right. And you know, it's funny, I was in a product review yesterday for this product called broadcast DMS that we're rolling out. And one of the ideas that we had, so, you know, imagine an algorithmic list, social feed.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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So basically if you follow anyone that follows you on cameo, Ryan, like you could send them a mass message that appears in a one-to-one DM thread and let it start having like a personal conversation with them. So we're really excited about that. One of the killer features we're thinking about is the ability for the talent to actually own, not rent their audience.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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So right now, like you're following on Instagram, you're following on Facebook, you're following on Twitch or YouTube, like the platforms own your followers. You just kind of rent them.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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But like, what if like we actually gave you like radical ownership and you could take anyone that followed you and export, you know, export their you know, their, their email or their phone number, their birthday to a CSV and like use that in whatever directive fan rails you, you think is best to go cultivate your network.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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So we were talking about this yesterday and, you know, we were really thinking about, okay, if we were to do this, like what are the critical things of information? Like you want the name, you want the email, you want the phone number, you want the zip code, you want the, you know, you want, you want their birthday, but like, like, do you really need email and phone number?

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Like, so it's just constantly, cause every time there's another field, you're going to have drop off. So, you know, we ended up getting to a really elegant solution where, you know, three of those

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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six things that we said were critical are like what we decided to move with in an mvp and then later you can always add add more information on or complete your profile in a deeper way have you had any that's not the right way to ask the question this idea of radical ownership of your audience

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Well, number one, the business model, our business model is really different from TikTok and Instagram and Snapchat. We do not have an ad-based revenue model. So for those platforms, they monetize on DAUs, MAUs, and basically selling their user data. The talent or the creators make the content for free, and then they sell ads against it to advertisers.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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So they are always going to be an advertiser-centric model, and the talent are – the deal they basically make with the talent is, hey, use our platform. You're going to get famous, but then we're going to sell – and if you get really famous, you can make money doing other shit. Like that's basically how it works is the –

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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The red share that comes from any, like any of that on TikTok or YouTube, it's, it's, it does not, you cannot support yourself unless you are like the biggest person in the world on the platform. So that's kind of the, so then what happens? Like you sell merch, you go on Cameo, you, you know, have a subscription on Patreon or OnlyFans. Like that's how you monetize.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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For us, the talent are the four knocks, right? Like our business model has always been talent centric. Like the talent make more money than we do for everything. So for us, if we can provide the best,

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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tools in the world the best rails in the world for talent to directly monetize their fan base and nurture it and cultivate it and strengthen it then like i think we win in the long term but it's impossible to go from you know a tick tocker youtube business model where you know they have 100 gross margins basically on this ad product and they don't have to give anything to the talent or they give almost nothing versus our model where the town are making 75 to begin with yeah

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Let's take it all the way back. This is December 2018. We're right in the middle of Christmas season, which is our busiest time of the year. I think literally this was like Thanksgiving weekend. Brett Favre had joined Cameo earlier that year and at this point is the biggest person on the platform, you know, like an American legend and like

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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hall famer and you know just getting a bread on had really started to be a halo for us to get you know snoop dogg and other like you know that kind of level talent onto the platform so that we're really just hitting kind of this big tipping point at that point we had closed our series a you know maybe six months before and all of a sudden we get a actually i think we closed the series a like like weeks six weeks before this happened and all of a sudden i get a

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Thanks for having me.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Frantic text message from this guy named Sean Finnegan, who was extremely important to us in building this business. And Sean was working with Brad on a lot of his social stuff. And he goes, Steven, we got a problem. And I go, what happened?

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Some alt-right group had tricked Brett Favre into making a dog whistle anti-Semitic video where basically the script said something like he was talking about, you know, The shout out goes to the families of the USS Liberty, which was this ship that Israel bombed of the US in like 1970s. It's like a very like esoteric reference in history.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And Brett just thought he was doing the shout out for, for, you know, basically for, he thought he was doing a shout out for veterans. And then this group took that and put it on 4chan and they'd made a bunch of little dog whistle references that I wouldn't have caught or I don't think anybody reasonably would have caught.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And suddenly, you know, they were making it look like Brett was, you know, advocating for these, you know, like these Proud Boy-like groups, like these alt-right, kind of neo-Nazi type groups. And this became like a massive, massive story. And first things first, we always want to make sure our talent's safe. As I mentioned, the talent are our Fort Knox. Without the talent, we can't do what we do.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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We can't manufacture happiness. The biggest fear at that point was, holy shit, if like Brett loses his Wrangler jeans ad or, you know, and he leaves the platform and he never comes back, that will put a cap on whoever could go and join Cameo because suddenly he becomes the cautionary tale. And every single agent is going to be like, yeah, not worth it. I don't care how much you make.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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You just threw everything else away. So this is really existential at the time. And so what we immediately do is we kind of let our talent base know that this happened. Like we were super transparent.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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We immediately built this kind of like early AI bot on Slack that would basically, you know, we, we went to the Southern poverty law center and got this list of all these like hate words and different hate groups. And then it would, it would basically flag, uh, we called it Nazi bot at the time. It would basically flag anything and then let our talent team know,

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Hey, there's something fishy about this request or this reference. And then what we did was, you know, I needed to make sure Brett stayed and he felt safe. And I had heard that the 96 Packers, the Super Bowl champions were having like a reunion. Maybe it was 97. They were having a reunion up in Milwaukee, like, signing autographs and everything.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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So, like, me and my chief of staff at the time, Adam Ostrom, we drove up in a huge snowstorm from Chicago to Milwaukee. We waited in this big-ass line. There were hundreds and hundreds of people there. And we got to the front line and, you know, hey, I'm Steven from Cameo, Adam from Cameo. We talked to Brett. We told him how much we appreciated, you know, him. And we were there for him.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And, you know, by the way, we were – I didn't want to have that conversation like that, you know, but you know what he said to me, he looked me straight in the eye and goes, Steven, wasn't my best day, but it wasn't my worst day. I love how Cameo makes people feel. And, you know, just thank you for being there and stepping up.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And honestly, that's one of those little moments that kind of saved the company at the time. And what we didn't. What we didn't realize was even though that was as bad of a press cycle as you can, you can kind of get a lot of people found out about Cameo from that. And, you know, instead of the platform dying, like we had the biggest month we ever had.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And that really started, you know, just accelerating the flywheel of our business. And the rocket ship really started igniting at that point.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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I mentioned run through walls was that value that's not there, but that's just how we built this business. Cameo was built by very gritty people building the business brick by brick. And when some insurmountable obstacle came in our way, we busted through it. And that's something that it's really, even as we're rebuilding our culture right now,

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Like, that's the thing that, you know, and by the way, that run through walls, like, what is that? I mentioned we hired a lot of entrepreneurs at this company, right? And like, what are entrepreneurs? They're run through walls type of people.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Yeah, it was a really, really difficult, tough time. But, you know, let's start even going into COVID because I think it's a really important part of the story. So coming into COVID, I mentioned like this Brett Favre thing happened. And, you know, when you look at the first four years of our business, like we became a unicorn on the exact four year anniversary of launching. Right. And

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And that was at a time where there were no AI unicorns popping up pre-revenue. Our business went from $300,000 to $4 million to $20 million to $100 in its first four years. And this is just the classic rocket ship.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And for us, one of the things that happened, and we got called a COVID darling a lot, but people don't really know that in 2018 and 2019, we were the fastest growing consumer marketplace in the world at that time, too. So coming into COVID, we had this huge momentum.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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We had just raised our series B from Kleiner Perkins and churning group and a lot of like incredible investors that joined the cap table. And like this thing was like ready to launch when COVID hit. Initially, we didn't know how that was going to deal with our business, right? The whole world shuts down.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And in fact, the first week of COVID, the first week of lockdowns, our business went down by 50%. And we had an emergency board meeting that Sunday night about, Hey, like what, like, were we going to need to do layoffs? Like, what were we going to need to do? We didn't know how long this was going to go on. So like, I remember me and the founders, we cut our salaries to zero.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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We got rid of like a lot of these benefits that we had like, Ooh, you could Uber to work back in the day or like gym membership or like, well, if everything's shut down, like we're not going to need any of those things. So we just basically did everything we could to avoid laying people off and took some costs out of the business.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And then basically the next week, like it rebounded and then it just shot out like a cannon. And, you know, in 2020, we grew about 500% in revenue, right? So suddenly, you know, this thing is like full speed ahead.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And as I like to describe it to people, that period of time was like playing the game Mario Kart when you hit the star and you can kind of go 10 times faster and you can bump into shit and you just keep going. And then at some point, like that star just kind of fades off. And for us, that was when the second vaccine came out.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And if you think about why our business accelerated during COVID so much, you mentioned that this was becoming a new way to communicate. Your mom is living across the country, so you couldn't see her for Mother's Day. You sent her a Kenny G to tell her how much you loved her and wish her a happy Mother's Day. So you're literally sending digital love.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And you think about the missed weddings and birthday parties and life events that happened, and a cameo is such a great way to do it. But On the supply side, for the first time in history, every athlete, actor, celebrity in the world was out of work.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And none of them, even those that are like, if you're a pro, if you're an MLB player, you're an NBA player, you have an annual salary, but you get paid per game. So guess what? When the games weren't happening, they weren't getting paid. So this was a massive supply side tailwind for us.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And, you know, there was more availability, they were busy and it just kept people were on their phones and at home. And it just, it was just the perfect storm, you know, for our business.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Yeah, that's a great question. Happy you asked it. You know, one thing I know a lot of you that are listening, you know, probably can empathize with, you know, the entrepreneur that was, you know, finding every excuse to be entrepreneurial even before college was over or while it was going on. I can't tell you how many successful founders I know that were running the nightlife at their school.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Our leadership team knew that at some point that was going to end, but at the same time, like we just raised a hundred million dollars and now we are, you know, we're building up to try to future proof the business and ultimately take it public. If you remember that period of time, this is specs, this is direct listings.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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You know, coming into 2020 Cameo was named the most promising consumer internet company in the world by the information. And we are just like humming on all cylinders. We hire a public company ready management team. We hire kind of the best of the best.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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The team goes from 100 people who are all in person in Chicago and LA to about 400 people that are fully distributed across 38 states and 13 countries, right? And we're building international out. We're starting new business lines. We're doing all these things to try to diversify our base. And then all of a sudden the second vaccine comes out. Like when people got their second shot.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And organic traffic to our site ended up dropping by 65%. So the core business, which was never built on paid marketing, was always built on virality and talent promoting and customer sharing, like just 65% less people came into our store and OpEx at three X, right? So suddenly, you know, we went from being profitable, breakeven business to burning $6 million a month.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And it happened in like under 90 days. When that happened, all of a sudden, our leadership team was like, we have to take costs out of the business. It was a falling knife. We didn't know how far it was going to go. Over the next 18 months, which were probably the worst 18 months of my life, we had to tear the company down to the studs. We went from over 350 all the way down to 32 people.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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You know, when we got to that third one, this was basically like, you know, our board was talking about, Hey, if we go that deep, you're a zombie company. There's no way you can grow again. You guys are dead, blah, blah, blah. But I was just like, I can't go and look at my team again if we're not profitable. I'm like, we have to get to profitability.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And, you know, happy to report that last year, you know, we were breakeven for the first time. And, you know, this is a company that was burning over $50 million two years ago. And it just was an absolute wild ride. And some of the lessons from that, you know, my biggest regret is in the first riff, we ended up, you know, laying off 25% of the company. And we should have gone deeper.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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We absolutely should have gone deeper in that, you know, our... you know, my naivety and, and like trying to save people's jobs ended up costing more jobs in the longterm.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And it's something that I, I deeply regret because if we could have done that in two swoops versus, you know, versus three, there's so many great people that aren't here anymore that I, that I wish were here, but you know, I'm so grateful to those that stuck it out and stuck around. And, and, you know, you mentioned Ryan, like that culture is what kept people here because by the way, like,

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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When you lay off 300 people, these are awesome people. And suddenly they're at new companies and great jobs. And they're calling the people that are still there like, hey, the water's warm over here. Like, what the hell are you doing? I remember Mackenzie, my now chief of staff, came up to me late in that year. And she's like, Steven, I kind of feel like it's 2 a.m. at the bar. It's closed.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And we're the only losers left on the dance floor. Like, what's going on here? What are we trying to do? And, you know, I, and this is where like having a product that makes people happy every day and having a mission and core values and teammates that they love and leaders that they're inspired by, like that's what kept people together.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And, you know, I think it is a very similar skill set. But in my particular case, I had built the moat of my business in college, which had gotten really big. And there's a little background. So Spartan Entertainment was a company I started with my co-founder, Zach Maritas, who's now running a really successful software company in the triangle in North Carolina called Teamworks.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Yeah, I think there's parts I handled better than others. But one big learning that I took from that is in the ride up and the initial crash down. I was probably the most positive person on the ride-ups. I was the Pied Piper. No matter how excited anybody was, I was more excited.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And then when shit was going bad at the beginning, my expectations were so high that my tolerance for missing plan or shipping when we needed to or things not getting done, I just was so pissed off all the time. And I was more mad than anybody.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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You know, so one of the things that I've been really working on myself through coaching that I've tried to do better is to be more of the ballast of the emotional ballast of the company. So when things are very exuberant, like that's where I want to pull them back or where things are really shitty. That's where I want to pull people up. Right. So I've been working on that a lot. But, you know,

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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At the end of the day, you have to be putting a brave face out to your company. You have to have conviction in what you're doing. And in that period of time, I leaned on some amazing entrepreneurs that were part of my YPO forum and other people that kind of have come up when I did.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And we spent so many nights on the phone with each other, talking through the issues that we were all going through at that time. And it was just... you know, I know it's funny. My dad was like a longtime finance leader at a multi-billion dollar company. And I remember him saying like, man, that 18 months, you got like 30 years worth of experience with that.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Yeah, I think that's a great point. You know, one thing I was really worried about culturally, like as we went from 100 to 400 in 12 months, it had been such a winning team that had literally had, you know, like we had, you know, we had the Brett Favre issue.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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The two of us started this business where we used Facebook in the OG days. This is still when you needed a .edu email address to even get on Facebook. to eventually aggregate a group of 17,000 college students at Duke, North Carolina, NC State, Elon, and the surrounding communities. This became the dominant force in nightlife in that area.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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We, you know, of course in any business, you've got your little minor lumps, but like in many ways, like it kind of cameo just kind of worked from the beginning, right? We had, we found product market fit right away. The first thing we ever sold ended up being like the thing that we did. You know, had the name, had the space, like just it kind of was this company that had everything.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And when we started hiring people in that pre IPO level that were leaving public companies to come work for the next one that was going to be public. Like we had, you know, the resumes of people we were hiring were way better. They went to better schools, you know, they had, you know, they had, you know, better resumes.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And we started hiring for like resumes and experience over kind of what got us there, which was giving like really smart young people with no, that had no business, like having the responsibility, giving them the shot to be great.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And that was one of the periods where I really felt like organizationally, my spidey sense at the time was like, I don't know how much resilience or grit this, you know, this group of people have. Right. And, and obviously, you know, as layoffs started, um,

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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you know like we really found you know we we really found at that point like the those that remained the 32 that like cut down all the way from the mid 300s like those people like they've been through health with us right and that's why you know when it came to the return to office i'm like of course i'm going to roll out the red carpet for these people i know we need to be in the office but i love these people i want every one of them to be here for 10 years and you know part of the reason i want the people back in the office is because

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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This group of people creates magic when they're together. Right. So I don't want to do anything to force somebody to get another job. Like these are people that, you know, when push came to shove, like every single time in those spreadsheet exercises kept being on the green list versus the red list.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And and by the way, there's so many people on those red lists that I would kill to still have at this company. Right. But, you know, we had to do what we had to do.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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So, right, I got a my CEO coach who's now my board member, Bing Gordon, kind of like legendary long term partner, Kleiner Perkins, like founding board, like board member of Amazon for 20 plus years. He one time, like we're both hockey players and he gave me he gave me a framework on team construction that I think was so valid.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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He had basically went back and looked at all the Stanley Cup champions in the last 25 years, and he found that they had a mix of three archetypes of players, and You'll see where I'm going with this when we come and talk about how that applies to the company.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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But basically, he's like every great Stanley Cup winning team first had kind of your two lines of guys, like six players who are at the peak of their career and they're going to do the best work of their life right now. Then you also have a group of another six that are young, dumb, hungry, stupid, but they're playing out of their minds. They don't even understand what's at stake.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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In that generation, by my senior year, we were throwing 17 recurring events a week. I'm getting paid cash every single time somebody's coming in the door. It was a great business, but what ended up happening was, right at that point, because I was the first like grade that had Facebook all through college. Eventually once people started graduating, they needed to get rid of the dot edu limitation.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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They're rookies, they're second year in, but they're just workhorses and they're gonna do the best work of their life later, but they're playing out of their mind right now. And then he goes, lastly,

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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every team needs this you have to have the grizzled old vet that still has the blue burning flame that wants to lift the cup one more time maybe they've had a hall of fame career and they never won the championship and like they become the the the people that rally around this and you know at cameo we've had a really good mix of of those types but that's a framework and archetype i like for team building that at least resonated with me yeah and then your job becomes and i'm

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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That's how they draw it up, but in retrospect, that's probably the single thing that I fucked up or got wrong most in the build-up, especially in the heyday. When we were building this executive team, we're preparing to be a public company at some point in the next two to three years, and we went and hired the best of the best. Our head of product was one of the top product leaders at Uber.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Our CMO led Hims and Hers, which was the hottest brand out there at that point. Our COO was the global head of ops at LinkedIn. Our chief people officer was the global head of people at McDonald's. Our CFO was the CFO that everybody thought she was going to be the next great one to take somebody public. So we built this all-star team. But the problem was...

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And I remember at the time, my, one of my board members told me something. She's like, Steven, you've been Michael Jordan this whole time, but now it's time to be Phil Jackson. You know, like the last dance had come out and, and really like what she was asking was like, you need to now be the person that just brings all these people together. And I don't know if it's because it was remote.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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I don't know if it's because I brought in six senior executives, like all at the same time. And everybody's kind of fighting to be number two, but like, The sum of the parts, the whole was worse than the sum of the parts. Like that group of people I could not, and this was my failure and it costs, you know, it costs the company time. It costs the company money.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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It costs a lot of people, their jobs. And this was my failure. I couldn't bring that group together to make that a cohesive, you know, high functioning, high trust management team. And that is the regret that I have from that period of time. So.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And as we've torn the company down, I realized that like the consensus-based management or trying to get everybody on the same page, like that's not, I just had to step up more and be like, this is the direction we're going, like figure it the fuck out, right? So I actually needed to become Michael Jordan again and not be Phil Jackson.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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So I think like a lot of the management books will tell you it's all about being the maestro and creating the culture, but like, you know, as a CEO at the end of the day, like, Hey, I ran the company, you know, we as founders, we control the board.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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So they ended up opening it up and then suddenly the bar owners and the venue owners, like anybody could kind of create Facebook events. It didn't just have to be college students. So we kind of lost our edge if that makes sense. That said, the network that we built was, you know, was pretty enduring.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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You can't really look at anybody else on the bad things, you know, at the end of the day, like that, that starts and ends with us, with me and my co-founders. And ultimately I didn't do a good enough job in that period.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Well, let me, I think that's a really important point. I also think that that period of time was a very weird period, right? You had the great resignation. You had all these startups have, you know, series A companies had more money than series C companies.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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You had like, just, there was so much craziness going around, quiet quitting, you know, people wanting to, you know, only be remote or only be an office. Like it just, It was just chaos. And then you had, you know, employee activism and woke ism to the point where, like, as a leader, you're trying to foster a culture that's inclusive for everybody.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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You know, we're we're trying to build diverse teams. We're trying to build, you know, have different leaders with different perspectives there. But at the end of the day, like, I don't know, the captaining sports teams my whole life and having other businesses.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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aligned teams have always been the ones that have won right it hasn't been the dream teams it's been the ones that are aligned that have a share they have shared core values and that doesn't mean i don't care about diversity and it doesn't mean that i don't like bringing in different perspectives but it means that at the end of the day like everybody's got to be pulling on the same rope yeah steven i dude i could i could talk to you for another three hours about business this has been absolutely incredible i want to be respectful of your time you know

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Well, stay tuned. This is a plug for the soon to be launched Zeitgeist podcast. I'm going to be interviewing the top founders and marketers in the world that have shaped pop culture and hear the story behind the brands that are influencing like pop culture. So I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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In fact, the signature party that we started Wednesday night beer pong and shooters still goes on today. And I'm about to have my 15th year reunion. So this thing's going about almost 20 years strong now, you know, which is, which is pretty funny, but you know, really to answer your question, like, I think you also have to go back to that time period.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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We've got a really killer season one lineup, but look out for that probably in the next three months. We'll get the first episode out.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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I graduated in 2010, which was right in the middle of the financial crisis. So, you know, you could imagine that, you know, maybe if I graduate three years earlier or three years later, you know, you're a sophomore year, junior year, you're interning on Wall Street or whatever. at a consulting firm, and then you're going to go work there.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And, you know, there was this whole cohort of people that were walking around Duke at that time that like maybe otherwise would have been at a Goldman or maybe otherwise would have been in a McKinsey that ended up starting companies like Coinbase and Plaid and Airtable.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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You know, these are guys that were like all the same age, you know, as me in that cohort from Duke in that era was pretty incredible about the talent and founders that came out of it. But one thing that I feel really confident about is the time that I spent both trading and at LinkedIn were things that really did shape me professionally. Now I think in both cases, I probably, especially trading,

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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If I had done two years of it versus five years of it, I would have been better off. But at the same time, I don't have regrets because I learned a lot. I made a lot of the connections that ended up being those that were my early investors or early employees of the company. So I don't have any regrets, but I do tell people that I always knew I was going to start a company.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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It just took me nine years to find my really good idea.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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We'll start from the top on this.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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I'm a deep believer that entrepreneurs are born not made. I think you can become more entrepreneurial by being, you know, hanging, working at startups or being around other entrepreneurs. But, you know, most entrepreneurs that I know, like, they – They were entrepreneurs in kindergarten.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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They were the ones with the lemonade stand or they were flipping baseball cards or pogs or whatever the fuck it was. Yeah, pogs. Oh my God. I just see that over and over and over again. You know, in fact, there's a personality test we used to make everybody take in the OG days of Cameo.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Now, One thing that I'll tell you is that entrepreneurs can be fostered by being around other entrepreneurs. And one thing that we've done, and I take a lot of credit and I take a lot of pride in is we've always like openly wanted to hire like future founders, like people that know they want to be an entrepreneur. They like.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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want to get their feet wet and i i think there's probably over 10 people that have left cameo over the years to become you know venture-backed ceos including two that became unicorns right which is which is something you know i like think i'm a college sports fan i love thinking about like coaching trees and and you know like the ceo tree and the alumni tree of cameo has has really spawned some incredible founders that have that have come through and and you know try to do

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Things from pet insurance to NFTs to, you know, marketplace for art or, you know, different things in the creator economy. So like we we've kind of run the gamut, but you know, I think, I think that's, I think that's super important. And then the last thing that I'll mention is that.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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If you are an entrepreneur and you know eventually you're going to start a company, but I really would say this is true for like anybody in any job. It's critically important to find the thing that's your ikigai. This is a Japanese philosophy that I really love. For those of you not familiar, imagine a Venn diagram with four circles instead of two.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And basically you're trying to find the intersection of what are you great at? What do you love to do? What does the world need and what can you get paid for? And if you find the intersection of those four things, you kind of get what I call like the iron man heart, right? It's like that perpetual motion machine. It keeps you going through the good times through the bad times.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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You know, you could have the best ride up ever, but that doesn't mean the, you know, the come down is going to be anything but Rocky, but like, you know, 99.9% entrepreneurs. go through major, major adversity at some period. And you know, sometimes the sector that you're in is the hottest thing in the world.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And then other times, you know, nobody wants to touch it with the 10 foot pole, especially on the venture side. So ultimately the way that I've always looked at it is if you find the thing that is your key guy point, it allows you to keep going on regardless of what's going on around you.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And then the last thing that I think is really important, and this is, you know, when you asked me the first question, Ryan, like, do I regret you know, being in the professional world versus being an entrepreneur, as long as you're learning, you don't regret it. Right. But the big thing is like I see too often and I've been guilty of this myself.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Like I mentioned, hey, maybe if I just in two years of trading, I kind of got what I needed out of that and I would have been ready for the next thing. But I stayed for five. Right. And ultimately, I think I think that's so important, whether you're in a role and thinking about a promotion or at a company. Should I stay? Should I leave? Are you learning? Are you growing?

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And if you're not, you should find something else.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Totally. And that's really what the whole premise of the Yuki guy is. you know, framework means to say, like, if you found that thing, then you are going to put the time and the effort because you love it. You're great at it. You know, you're, you're inspired by it. Like all those things, like you can get, you can make money doing it. Right. That's, it's so important.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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Well, I will tell you that those are the three that have stood the test of time. The other core values have been altered at different points, but those three along with run through walls, which is no longer a core value, but still like very much an ethos of Cameo are really the pillars upon which we built the company.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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So the thing that's kind of cool, I mentioned there were like four kind of OG core values at Cameo. We have six now, but each one of the founders and then Arthur Leopold, who was our first employee founding COO, each one of us had kind of a value that we brought to the table that became the bedrock and foundation of our culture.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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So starting with, you know, fight for simplicity, starting with Roll Out the Red Carpet.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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was the one that came from me like the whole idea with roll out the red carpet is any single person that interacts with our brand whether they're trying to interview for a job or they're a talent on the platform or a customer like the way that they should feel after interacting with cameo is like they were just escorted down the red carpet at the oscars and like they're the star of the show and you know the red velvet rope is there and everyone they want to meet behind it and

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And like we're lifting that red velvet rope up and introducing them to everyone they ever wanted to meet. Like that is us to a T. And you know, when we think about that from an employer employee perspective, you know, we always talk about like your first day at Cameo should be the best day of work you've ever had in your life. And then your second day should be better than the first.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And like, that's such a ingrained part of our ethos. And when we think about things like roll up, like the return to office policy that we just did. You know, we're giving a $10,000 raise to all of our Chicagoland employees to come do that. We lived up to our value of roll out the red carpet there, right? Like, I don't know of another company on the planet that's doing that.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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I totally think that people were asking more out of them if they have to come in and their peers don't. So like, why should we not compensate them for that and do that in a really generous way? So roll out the red carpet, number one. Number two, act like an owner is actually one that was a LinkedIn value link. I worked at LinkedIn right before, so did Arthur.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And this was one that we stole, but we really liked, you know, it's this idea that like every single person, like you mentioned earlier, you know, being in that role, but you don't really love it. So like, you know, you're remembering baseball cards. Like if you act like an owner, like,

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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you're the CEO, if you're the janitor or you're the COO of the company, like you're going to act like a CEO for your role. And we really believe in that. And you know, part of the, you know, part of putting our money where our mouth is like every single employee at the company has options in the, in the company. So like literally they are an owner. I've always felt that that was really important.

The Ryan Hanley Show

How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis

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And, and on top of that, it's, it's just this whole idea of like, you know, like for the owner, the job's never done, right?

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