Cameo's Comeback: From Crash to Profit with Steven Galanis

"You need to make sure you're working on something you care about when everybody cares about it and you care about it if nobody cares about it... You need to make sure that you're building in your ikigai."

• Pursue ventures aligned with passion and strengths.
• Stay committed regardless of external interest.
• Building in your 'ikigai' leads to success.

"We hired an elite executive team... We then started building other businesses... Our best people are spread out on all the problems... The core business fell faster than the new businesses were able to make up the revenue."

• Cameo overextended by pursuing too many initiatives.
• They diluted focus from their core product.
• Prioritize and avoid spreading resources too thin.

"When the world reopened... Traffic came down... The cost bases of our business didn't make sense... Over three really painful rounds of layoffs, that's what we were able to do."

• Cameo faced declining demand and realigned costs.
• They made tough decisions to regain profitability.
• Prepare to make hard choices during market shifts.

"COVID was just such a crazy time... Every single athlete, actor, celebrity in the world was out of work... We started seeing an insane wave... We had these insane tailwinds."

• Cameo saw massive growth due to external circumstances.
• They capitalized on talent availability.
• Be adaptable to leverage unexpected opportunities.

"We get that term sheet from Lightspeed... People just felt our product... It's always way easier in consumer when your VCs have used your product."

• Investors were users, which built conviction.
• Making the product accessible attracted interest.
• Find investors who understand and use your product.

"That was the moment where I'm like, oh shit, we got something here... If you can make one person feel like that, you could make millions or billions of people feel like that at scale."

• A single user's emotional reaction signaled strong fit.
• Steven saw potential for scale from one response.
• Pay attention to user feedback for signs of fit.

"We did this without marketing spend... We hired fresh out of college kids and interns to be DMing celebrities all day... We invested in our supply side, and then that became demand."

• Cameo focused on supply acquisition to drive demand.
• They used interns to scale outreach to celebrities.
• Investing wisely can yield growth without heavy spend.

"We were one of the first to basically tell talent, we don't need you to promote Cameo the service. We need you to just promote your own page... So we never paid the celebrities to join."

• Cameo leveraged talent's audiences to drive demand.
• They empowered talent to promote their own pages.
• Use creative strategies to grow organically.

"We launched with one person... I see so many founders that are like, we need more people or the app to be further along... Let me tell you how bush league our launch was... we had one talent, Cassius Marsh."

• Steven launched without waiting for perfect conditions.
• He used personal networks to kickstart the platform.
• Take action and iterate quickly, even with limited resources.

"We had the idea for Cameo at probably the last place that you would ever expect to have your billion-dollar idea—driving home from my grandmother's funeral... We started uncovering some of the problems in sports... the top 1% athletes make 99% of all the endorsement revenue."

• Steven identified a market gap in athlete endorsements.
• He leveraged a personal experience to create a scalable solution.
• Opportunities can arise unexpectedly; stay receptive to them.