Steven Galanis
speaker
239 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Mar 2025
Steven Galanis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Finding Peak with Ryan Hanley · How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis · 6 Mar 2025
podcast
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Es ist so unterwertet, aber es ist so kritisch.
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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