How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
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What is Cameo and how does it work?
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. We have a tremendous conversation for you today with Stephen Galanis, co-founder and CEO of Cameo. Yes, that Cameo, the marketplace where you can connect with creators, sports, with athletes, celebrities, all kinds of different influencers, icons, and have them send personalized messages either back to you or to a team member, a loved one, People use Cameo to send happy birthday messages, thank you messages, congratulations messages. It's a wonderful platform for connecting people with the individuals that they follow, that have influenced their lives, who've done meaningful work and building that business. While as Stephen will describe, Cameo had product market fit from very early on. Thank you so much for having me.
You are going to love it. and we pull off those questions in future episodes when we do our Q&A show. So love you guys for being here. Love you for listening to the show. With that, let's get on to this absolutely tremendous conversation with Stephen Galanis.
In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home...
Steven, it's great to have you on the show, man. I appreciate you making the time.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, there's a part super early in your story that I'm interested in because I think it's something that happens to a lot of entrepreneurs. And I just want to take you back. Like in college, you start this Spartan Entertainment. You're building this big community. You know, so far as I think I saw that you're nicknamed the mayor and all this kind of stuff, which is awesome. So very entrepreneurial. And then your first job out of college is actually kind of going back into the corporate world, right? Like a trader for large finance. I'm interested in because I see this a lot in entrepreneurs journeys where early in life or college, they have this pull to build their own business. And it's almost like we have to try the other side.
Like, was it like a feeling like you needed to try corporate life? Or like, why not roll your kind of entrepreneurial spirit right into an entrepreneurial endeavor right out of college?
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.
How can entrepreneurs be fostered?
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 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.
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. 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.
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.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Cameo and how does it work?
0:00–3:38
2
How can entrepreneurs be fostered?
3:38–12:13
3
What are the core values of Cameo?
12:13
4
What was the Brett Favre controversy?
7:47–9:43
5
How did Cameo achieve growth during COVID-19?
9:43–12:13
6
What is the value of loyalty and resilience in business?
12:13
7
How does Cameo's revenue model differ from social platforms?
6:39–12:13
8
What lessons can entrepreneurs learn from corporate experience?
12:13–51:04
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