Steven Galanis On Raising $200 Million To Build A Platform And App Allowing Fans To Request Personalized Video Messages From Celebrities

Steven Galanis, co-founder of Cameo, epitomizes the entrepreneurial spirit. His story, steeped in family tradition, innovation, and grit, is a fascinating tale of navigating life’s twists and turns to build a hyper-growth company in the talent world.

Steven’s latest venture, Cameo, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Valor Equity Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Morgan Stanley, and Amazon Alexa Fund.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Steven’s upbringing in a business-oriented Greek-American family instilled a strong foundation in entrepreneurship, resilience, and the value of steady progress.
• Leveraging early adoption of Facebook and organizing events at Duke University honed Steven’s skills in networking and branding, which became pivotal in building Cameo.
• A successful stint as an options trader and film financier laid the groundwork for Steven’s pivot into tech and entertainment.
• The idea for personalized celebrity video messages democratized fan interactions, creating a scalable marketplace with a powerful emotional connection.
• Early challenges, including co-founder exits and initial backlash, tested Steven’s resolve but reinforced the importance of perseverance in entrepreneurship.
• Support from mentors like Mike Gamson and connections with investors like Lightspeed Ventures played a crucial role in scaling Cameo.
• Steven emphasizes hiring based on potential and fostering innovation, rather than solely relying on resumes, to cultivate a dynamic team.

 

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About Steven Galanis:

Steven Galanis is the CEO of Cameo, the world’s leading marketplace for personalized video shoutouts. He launched the company in 2016 with co-founders Martin Blencowe & Devon Townsend after seeing a personalized video message taped by a prominent NFL player congratulating a friend on the birth of his son.

To date, the company has sold over 2,700,000 Cameos and has seen over 45,00 athletes, actors, and influencers join the platform. Steven was named to Chicago Inno’s 2018 “50 on Fire” list.

Steven is a LinkedIn alum who previously worked as a trader on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange. He was the founder of two film investment companies where he produced movies featuring stars such as Bruce Willis and Robert De Niro.

Outside of work, he is an avid Chicago sports fan and serves on the Board of Directors for Habitat for Humanity Chicago. Steven is a 2010 graduate of Duke University, majoring in History.

Connect with Steven Galanis:

• LinkedIn
• Crunchbase
• TheOrg
• RocketReach

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: All righty. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Deal Maker Show. So today we have one of those incredible founders. you know I have a huge amount of admiration and respect for what they’ve done, and also for his journey, too. I mean, it’s really remarkable. you know It’s ah a company that has paved the way you know in the talent world you know segment. They’re our first mover. I mean, they have everything you know that you can dream of know when when being an entrepreneur and and quite an inspiration conversation that we’re going to be having. We’re going to be talking about the founding story of the company, you know the different rounds that they did, some of the crazy stories that they encountered with investors, and then also the ups and downs, you know which are involved in ah essentially you know being an entrepreneur and running a hyper growth company. So building, scaling, financing, you name it. and So all in between. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Steven Galanis. Welcome to the show.

Steven Galanis: Thanks for having me.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born and raised in the Chicago area. Give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you?

Steven Galanis: ah Life was amazing. I grew up in Glenview, which is just north of of Chicago. Had a really active childhood, played every sport you could think of, and you know ended up playing hockey, baseball, and and football through high school and hockey in college.

Steven Galanis: um you know, was involved with everything you can imagine, student council, you know, president. I was a debater, you know, like high school and middle school and elementary school were all just absolutely amazing times. One of the, you know, things that really shaped me is is kind of my background and and heritage. My family is Greek. And unlike a lot of Greeks in Chicago, I’ve i’ve kind of I have a dad who came over you know when he was really young. So he came over at four years old to Chicago. But on my mom’s side, our family’s actually been in the US s since the 1890s. So I’m third generation, which is you know very like old for the Greek families here. But that culture ah certainly shaped me. And especially my mom’s side of the family, who are all entrepreneurs and actually all really worked in a space that I think when when I tell a full story, you’ll understand that this is the third generation that my family has been using the camera to make money. ah my My grandfather, my dad, my mom’s dad, Spiro, who was the person I was probably closest to in the world for until he passed was

Steven Galanis: was an only child. And when World War II happened, he didn’t get drafted because he was the last of his family name. So at 18, he ended up going into a factory where he learned how to use photography and x-rays to make sure that the planes that were going overseas were structurally sound. He then took that knowledge and started a wedding studio that is probably still the oldest in Chicago today. It’s been around since 1945. One of my mom’s brothers runs that studio today. But just, you know, being around an entrepreneur like that, you know, at the dinner table, the Wall Street Journal is on the table, CNBC is on the background. and

Steven Galanis: you know, you’re talking shop and you’re talking about the wedding that went another place and that competition and ah competitiveness and the all-in on entrepreneurship. And I learned that, you know, from the earliest ages sitting at the table at at my Yayam Bopu’s house. On my dad’s side, he was the complete opposite. He is an accountant, you know, very steady eddy type of guy, but his story is super inspiring to me. and He came over when he was four at the age 18. His parents wanted him to move back to Sparta. Like I’m a hundred percent Spartan. And my parents wanted ah his parents wanted him to move back to Sparta because he was now a US citizenship and he could go back to the village and get a big dowry. Like they probably would have given. you know his parents a bunch of goats and lambs and and fig trees. um So at 18, my dad decided to stay in the US by himself because he’s like, I have a second grade education in Greece and and he assimilated and and he worked his way up from

Steven Galanis: cutting fries at one of the first McDonald’s to paying his way through college, $91 a quarter back then in 1968, you nineteen sixty eight and um ended up becoming, you know ran finance at a multi-billion dollar company, and and just is such a inspiration to me. And you know while he wasn’t an entrepreneur, he just you know really showed me like the value of kind of compound interest and and improving over time and just being like rock solid steady.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s incredible. Now, in your case, you ended up going to Duke.

Steven Galanis: Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: And not only that, you ended up being the guy that anyone you know wanted to know when it came to the nightlife. So how did that come about?

Steven Galanis: I think part of it is the timing. So my senior year of high school was right at the beginning of of Facebook, basically. so at that point, you could only be on Facebook if you had it a dot .edu email address. And I remember how crazy this was because, you know, like that first fall break, Facebook had come back and a lot of my friends who were a year older, two years older were coming back and they’re all talking about how awesome Facebook was.

Steven Galanis: So at that point people literally used to apply to certain schools that let you in earlier just so you could like put a deposit down and get an email address and get on Facebook. So I remember like literally putting my deposit down for U of I ah even though I never had an intention of going there just to get a .edu email address to get on Facebook. Now the upshot of that is because I had Facebook starting senior year of high school, every single person I knew from high school and from college, like I got connected with. right So at that point, you know you’d meet someone, you’d you know you’d friend them on Facebook, you’d develop this relationship. And I ended up building this really big network ah early. And because I was the first class to have Facebook like all four years of college, it really was my senior year. And then and then coming in,

Steven Galanis: ah it It just allowed me to do things differently than people even two years older, three years older would have ever done. And it it was a moment in time for those four years where it it continued to just be a network for people that had either graduated college or were in college. So at that point, what we did was we created a Facebook group. Me and and my co-founder, Zach Maridis, who was a senior when I was a freshman, We started a group where we started, it was a Facebook group where we would ah basically throw different events. So it started with one night we went to the big bar on campus. On a night they’re usually closed and said, hey, can we do a drink special here and and we’ll we’ll start throwing beer pong tournaments. And then that blew up. and

Steven Galanis: To this day, if you go to Duke, Wednesday Night Beer Pong is still probably the best thing that happens on campus. But over the years, we ended up aggregating 17,000 college students from Duke, UNC, NC State, Elon, all the surrounding schools in the in the triangle area. And we were throwing you know over a dozen events a week on a recurring basis in all these different campuses. and And once we built that network up, we people trusted us, right? They knew that Spartan Entertainment, our business, it stood for value. it So on top of that, we had a college box moving business. um So at the end of the semester, we would hire a bunch of hockey, football, and wrestlers to come

Steven Galanis: grab your boxes we’d store them for you and when you came back to North Carolina we’d bring them back we had a t-shirt printing company we had a hot dog stand at one point we were even you know looking to start our our own college music festival so it it was an amazing ride and and again that was like one of the first times where I really you know It was very clear to me that aggregating ah these networks and building different businesses on it could be really, really valuable. So I kind of learned about network effect through that, and I learned about the power of social.

Alejandro Cremades: So then in terms of, um you know for you then, you know it was about the the the financial crisis. I mean, it was not a good time to to go out and and secure a job.

Steven Galanis: Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: So you ended up going back to Chicago. ah You went there, you know you were back home, and eventually you become an option straighter. But But I wonder, you know like how do you eventually get involved with the entertainment world? Because you were doing that on the side, which you know seems to be a complete different direction from maybe like the financial you know ah services you know space that you were you know um going towards.

Steven Galanis: Totally. and Again, this this goes back to my grandfather as well. I mentioned my grandfather was a you know was a ah photographer, but what he really, really loved was the stock market. like He was a broker. he you know He had one of those early handheld computers when nobody had it, like like in the early 90s, watching his tickers every day. and And his son, like he has two sons, so my mom’s the oldest and then he had two sons. One of the sons, Peter, went to take over the family business on photography side. The other son, George, ended up moving out to L.A. after going to USC, and he got into film financing. So he was always on the movie side, but always on the financing side of the movies, and he’s produced

Steven Galanis: ah hundreds of movies, including Rambo, Conan, Lone Survivor, The Irishman, you know, just among lu those are just some of the ones that ah you would know, but you know, ah yeah probably dozens of movies that you’ve seen before. And um I remember when I was ah I was kind of my second or third year in trading, and trading is a very hierarchical business, and I was an open outcry market maker. So when you picture the movie Trading Spaces, and you see the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the guys with the jackets making the hand signs, like that’s what I was doing.

Steven Galanis: And when you’re young, you’re you’re trying to establish yourself because there’s guys that have been in there, you know, 20, 30 years and and they get all the seniority and the tie will always go to them. but So I was always just trying to way to make make a name for myself down there. And my uncle had a movie called Lone Survivor that came out I think in 2013. And What I ended up doing was renting a movie theater out and inviting all the other guys that traded in the pit with me to do like a mini premiere, like a fake movie premiere for my uncle’s movie. It was during that time where a bunch of the guys that I invited were like, Steven, this is awesome. Why are you here in Chicago trading with us? Why aren’t you in l LA producing movies with your uncle? So I did what any like enterprising, I don’t know, 24 year old at the time would do.

Steven Galanis: I started raising money from those guys to invest alongside my uncle in different movies and television shows. it It was through that that I met my co-founder, Martin Blenko, who had been doing production with my uncle before. And my uncle was like, hey, you guys are both young. I think you guys both bring a lot of capital registry skill sets. And and you know that’s how we started doing business together.

Alejandro Cremades: So it sounds like the entertainment you know side of things was really appealing and really exciting to you. So why didn’t you go like double down on that? and And what happened for you to all of a sudden switch from options to like being at LinkedIn? I mean, that’s quite the the the turnaround of events.

Steven Galanis: Yeah, well, at that time, like options trading, there’s a lot of great things about it. ah But I’ll tell you the biggest thing that I noticed. I remember walking onto the floor of the CVOE, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, for the first time. And this is a trading pit where over 40,000 people used to go to work every day. And I remember walking in as a 21-year-old.

Steven Galanis: And it looked like at the dinosaur graveyard from land before time. ah These trading pits were empty. The monitors were ripped off the screen. Pits where hundreds or thousands of people used to stand suddenly were completely empty. And it had been because of the impact of technology. So I i actually literally remember as a 21 year old,

Steven Galanis: Having the very weird thought in my head that I wanted to be the last great open outcry market maker in Chicago like nobody listen your podcast says says I’m gonna be the last great tech entrepreneur and That’s because when you get to treat when I got to trading at least in that era All the guys that were there, they were talking about how good it used to be, right? Hey, you missed the flash crash. You missed O8. You missed the O1 bubble. you know You should have been here in the 90s. Everybody had the stories about how it was, and you know it was it was very clear that while options trading is still a massive industry, that particular part of it was a dying industry, and we were kind of last of breed.

Steven Galanis: and um You know, very fortunately for me, because I was young, because I had, you know, I had shown an aptitude, especially in social networking, and I had a lot of closer relationships from college, I was able to transfer into tech when LinkedIn wanted to create a team that sold this new enterprise sales product, Sales Navigator, into FINRA and SEC regulated industries. So what they wanted to do, they they were specifically looking for people in finance, that they could bring in their training program and and and teach him teach them how to sell. And and I got recruited to that program by a guy named Arthur Leopold who ah ended up being, um he was he was my little, little brother in my fraternity in college at Duke. And after recruiting me to LinkedIn, when I had the idea for Cameo, he was one of the first investors and then you know joined about eight months later as our founding first employee and COO and eventually became the president of the company.

Alejandro Cremades: so then So then how that does all transition into Cameo, into really pushing Cameo, you know getting going with Cameo? I mean, how was that the founding story like?

Steven Galanis: Yeah. Yeah, so I go back to my grandparents again. My my grandfather died like maybe my sophomore year of of high school. My grandmother was still alive. In 2016, we were celebrating her 89th birthday or 90th birthday. and And then, you know,

Steven Galanis: Everybody’s there was a great birthday party and then like a week later her caretaker was walking and was closing the door and she ended up falling cracking her head and and ended up passing away um and it was at my grandmother’s funeral actually that we had our the idea that would would become cameo kind of the last place in the world ah you would expect to have your big idea and As a backstory my uncle his business partner and Martin my co-founder flew in from l LA for the day that for the funeral And I’d gotten really busy when I was at LinkedIn and my film production stuff just kind of waned off. And Martin, who I’d been doing it with, at that same time decided to become an NFL agent and get certified. And his whole idea was if I could sign a big NFL player with a personality and a cool look, maybe I could find the next Rambo or Conan the Barbarian and and basically sign as a football player, the next rocker, Jason Momoa, and turn him into like an A-list action star.

Steven Galanis: So that was his idea. He signed one guy. His name was Cassius Marsh. Cassius was a backup defensive end on the Seattle Seahawks. But he’s you know he’s got a great look. He’s all tatted up. He’s like like stone jaw. he He literally looks like ah an action hero.

Steven Galanis: And to Martin’s surprise, like despite this guy having a big personality, he just couldn’t get him any type of off-field income. And as an agent, that’s where you make your money. You make your money from getting them endorsement deals. So he was really frustrated by this. um And just to get some time with him, I i agreed to like drive him from the funeral home.

Steven Galanis: to the hotel. He was staying at Trump Tower and then driving back. And if you know Chicago traffic at all, going downtown to O’Hare and back, like that is that is a long time in the car. And while we were in the car, we we really Martin was telling me about this problem and he pulled out his phone and he showed me a video of Cassius Marsh congratulating ah this executive at Nike on becoming a father for the first time. This guy loved the Seattle Seahawks.

Steven Galanis: And this is a player on the Seahawks. And he was congratulating him on becoming a dad. And he shows me this video. And I’m just like, right away, that Eureka moment went off. And I’m like, Martin, we should sell this. And that was kind of the beginning of the idea that would become cameo.

Alejandro Cremades: So I guess for the people that are listening to get it what ended up being the business model cameo. How do you guys make money.

Steven Galanis: Yeah, so on Cameo, we are a marketplace. um we The supply side of our marketplace are famous people. So think athletes, actors, creators, pop culture personalities. Each one of them has a price upon which they will make a video for you. The videos can be any length. It’s not about that. But basically, as a consumer, you have 400 characters you can write in, you select the price that the talent says, the talent have seven days or less to do the video in, and and ah you know they make 70%, we make 30%.

Alejandro Cremades: So I guess the um you know for this too I mean you guys didn’t have the the best lunch. It was saying a little bit disaster you know um involved in the in the lunch. So what happened there.

Steven Galanis: Well, yeah, it was a disaster. So first off, I dropped Martin off at O’Hare after we have the idea. He calls me up immediately after he gets through security. He’s like, you got to get on the next flight to LA. So I took the first flight the next morning to l LA. He comes, picks me up from the airport. We go to Soho House in Santa Monica, and we just start you know we just start like ripping picantes as margaritas that they have.

Steven Galanis: and While at this lunch we have the idea that would become cameo like we really start formalizing it And we wanted to do is to create the marketplace for people’s time for X amount of money You should be able to pay to do Y activity with Z athlete and at the time we were just thinking about athletes um You know, we felt like if we wanted our favorite football player to come to lunch with us like we should be able to do that or if I want to FaceTime them or I want to call them or I want to buy their merch like there should be a place where you could do all of those things. ah The personalized video message was one of the many why activities, but ultimately we decided to focus on that first because we felt like it was requiring the least out of them. You weren’t making them move. It could be asynchronous. Like there were just a lot of, you’re on their phone, you’re not on their agent’s phone or your manager’s phone. So there’s a lot of reasons we picked that. And the other thing too is like every time we kept showing people these videos, they’d be like, whoa, like that’s so cool.

Steven Galanis: So we started dreaming up this marketplace. And you know for any marketplace founders listening, you guys will totally ah you know empathize with the chicken and the egg that happens every every entrepreneur that’s trying to build a marketplace. You got the supply side and and the demand side. I remember going around telling people about the idea that it would become Cameo. and And they’d be like, so what’s your business? I’m like, wouldn’t it be cool if Michael Jordan could wish you a happy birthday and a video message like, Oh my God, that’d be awesome. How much is he? Well, we don’t have it. Well, who do you have? We don’t have anybody yet. But like, that’s what we’re going to build. And then on the, when we’re talking about the talent, you know, they’re like, who’s on this and nobody’s on it. How, who’s made money and nobody’s made any money. So it just, you have this chicken in the egg. And very fortunately, Martin and I were able to use our personal networks to like, get a couple of people to say yes before that.

Steven Galanis: Now that said, Martin and I are both non-technical, right? So we have we have no ability. We’re just two guys with an idea. And I ended up calling upon Devin, who was a classmate of mine a duke at Duke and a brilliant engineer. He had been at Microsoft. But most interestingly for Devin was he was one of the original stars on Vine. So he had over a billion loops on Vine. His roommate Cody Ko, another one of my classmates from Duke, ended up having four billion loops on Vine. So these guys were like really, really famous, but they never were able to make money from it because there was no monetization on Vine at that time.

Steven Galanis: And, um, one of the striking memories I have in this period was I remember going to Las Vegas with, uh, Devin, uh, Cody, our friend, Adam Q and, and myself, and we were at the Mayweather Pacquiao fight. And I remember Cody code took a picture of us and posted on Instagram. And at this point, I didn’t know to turn my notifications off for all the things that happen now. And my phone, which was fully charged, overheated and died in my pocket because there were so there was such a high velocity of likes, comments on this picture I was tagged in that my phone literally like it was a big night out in Vegas. My phone died in my pocket.

Steven Galanis: And that was a moment where I’m like, whoa, there’s something if interesting and different about creators. And Devon was really, really motivated at this point to to kind of build this this marketplace. So as we think forward to you know kind of the MVP,

Steven Galanis: You know, Devin builds a simple website. Martin gets Cassius Marsh, the first talent to join. When we launched Cameo, it was with one person, Cassius Marsh. And we always had the idea that in our marketplace, supply was more important to aggregate first because the supply are famous. They have hundreds of thousands of millions of followers on TikTok, on Instagram, on Twitter, and they could turn their followers into our customers for free. So that was always our belief. So I’ll never forget. It was like May 17th, 2017.

Steven Galanis: I’m in Scottsdale, Arizona, trying to close the second person on Cameo, a guy that ah went to my rival high school that was playing for the Cleveland Indians at the time. I literally had dinner with him during launch night. Devon, Martin, and Cassius are in Devon’s apartment in Venice, California. I’m at a steakhouse in in Scottsdale, Arizona. I have Google Analytics up on the table, you know, kind of like I’m still having the conversation, but I had it up so I could see what was going on.

Steven Galanis: And there were two dots. There was one in Scottsdale, one in Venice Beach. Cassius sends the tweet out with that video, the first one that gave us the idea. And he’s like, hey, fans, like I’ll make one of these for you for 20 bucks. He sends that video out. And you know he’s got 100,000 followers at the time. And we’re just expecting all the people to come to the site and to just get going. And crickets, nobody came to the site.

Steven Galanis: It was so bad that we’re texting each other on the side and we’re like, I think Google Analytics might be broken. So I’m like, how about this guys? I’ll sign off and then tell me if the doc goes away. And then if I sign back on, so I sign off the dot and Scottsdale goes away. I go back on the dot and Scottsdale comes back and it’s like, no, no, no, it’s not broken. Nobody’s coming to the site.

Steven Galanis: And on top of that, a bunch of trolls started talking shit to Cassius Marsh. You’re a professional football player. You make a million dollars a year. Why are you charging 20 bucks for your fans? Like this should be free. Like shame on you. So all these people start kind of like trolling them online. Cassius gets like frustrated. He’s like, fuck this. I’m out. And by the way, he put the first $25,000 into the company. So now we just lost our first investor. We lost our first talent.

Steven Galanis: Martin, my co-founder, was his agent. So now he’s got this problem on his hands where he’s like, did I just lose my only client money? So he basically is like, fuck you guys, he’s out. So now I’m down a co-founder. I’m down the only talent I have. I’m done with my only investor. And Devin and I are sitting there and being like, well, you know, I guess maybe we should I should have left my job elected before we do that. There was demand for it.

Steven Galanis: ah So we’re we’re kind of texting and by the way, I’m in the middle of pitching this guy at dinner while this is going on. So I couldn’t have felt lower, but I’ve got project to project like confidence and and show the vision that that I had conviction would be would work.

Steven Galanis: and And all of a sudden, a dot popped up in Renton, Washington, which is up near Seattle. And this dot was just on the site for what seemed like an hour, right? And by the way, you got a cameo today. There is like hours and hours of videos you can watch and people you can browse. You can window shop all day there. At this point, it was like going to a Google Form. What’s your name? you know What’s the message? And like put your credit card in. That’s it.

Steven Galanis: There was one person, there were no videos. It was like, it was as simple and MVP as it got. And, you know, I remember just being like, my elbows on the edge of the table. Is this guy gonna buy? What’s gonna happen? What’s gonna happen? And then the dot just like disappeared. And I had this just sinking, feeling my stomach. I’m like, God, we even got someone on and they didn’t want it. Like, I was dejected. And then,

Steven Galanis: About five minutes later, my phone starts vibrating. And I see that I get a DM on Twitter from this guy who goes, hey, Stephen. Or he goes, hey, Power Move, which is what we were calling ourselves before we you know named ourselves Cameo. He’s like, Cassius Marsh is my daughter’s favorite place player on the Seahawks. It’s her birthday on Thursday. This was a Tuesday night.

Steven Galanis: I’m trying to book, but your payment processor is not working. So I’m like, tell me the message. like We’ll take care of it. And then, of course, Cassius and Martin were so mad at me and Devin that you know they weren’t responding to our texts. Two weeks go by. We don’t get the video. Finally, Cassius turns the video around. It’s honestly the worst video I’ve ever seen. ah you know He’s like, hey, Reese, sorry for missing your birthday. Thanks for being a fan. It was so bad I didn’t even really want to send it. I ended up sending the video to the dad. And about an hour later, I get a ah message back from him. And it’s a video of his daughter watching the cameo. And she gets so excited. She literally starts crying. She’s got half her hair is green, half her hair is blue. She’s in a Seahawks, a Cassius Marsh jersey. She’s watching the video. And and like she cries. And at she ends by by saying,

Steven Galanis: Daddy, how she goes, how did you do that? And he goes, daddy’s awesome, that’s how. And if you watch this video, it’s better than any Super Bowl commercial that we ever could have made. And I’m so grateful for the fact that this guy, like,

Steven Galanis: When it felt like we didn’t have product market fit, that was a very strong sign to say, hey, the website didn’t work and they wanted it so bad that they got in my DMs and we made it happen. And even if it wasn’t, even though it wasn’t the best video ever, like the emotion that it elicited gave me absolute conviction that if we could make one person feel like that, we could make millions and hopefully billions feel like that at scale.

Alejandro Cremades: and and Obviously, the rest is history. you know Now, in your guy’s case, obviously, to build a marketplace, it takes money right to build that supply demand. How much capital have you guys raised to date?

Steven Galanis: The business has raised over $200 million dollars since since we started. Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: and I know that there have been some really incredible stories. ah you know One, you know at the Series A level, and then with Masa. Not pitching him, but getting pitched back. so Walk us through those particular stories that happened on the fundraising.

Steven Galanis: Yeah, I’m going to tell a few, and I’ll even tell one before before the Series A that I just think is is so important. so One thing i didn’t we didn’t get too deep on is LinkedIn was really the formative experience of my professional career. I remember walking into LinkedIn on my first day, and this guy named Mike Gamsen, who is the global head of sales at LinkedIn at the time, he’s in Chicago where I am, and all the new hires are there, and then those that aren’t in Chicago are are kind of like blue-jeaning in, this is before Zoom, blue-jeaning in at the time. And the first thing he says when he gets on stage, he goes, welcome to LinkedIn.

Steven Galanis: Two years from today, none of you will have the job we just hired you for. We know that, we support that, and at LinkedIn, we literally have the profile data to prove that that’s true. So our job in the next two years is to make sure that we work with you to get the skills you need for your next job, whether it’s internal or external.

Steven Galanis: And oh, by the way, all we ask is crush your job. And when you’re ready for the next thing, whether it’s here or somewhere else, recruit someone better than yourself to take your place. And that was like that was such a huge change. I mentioned when I was trading, it was such a fixed mindset. You missed this. And then at LinkedIn, they’re talking about the economic graph and providing, you know helping the world’s professionals become more productive and successful. And it was like mission-driven growth mindset. it was just I just sucked it all in. I couldn’t get enough of it. And you know the really interesting thing that happened was my last day at LinkedIn, like so I have this idea for Cameo. My last quarter there was probably the worst employee at the company. you know like My mind was somewhere else. All the guys at work and gals around me, like when we were on calls, we’d be talking about what this thing could be. And you know we wanted to almost build this company while working at LinkedIn. And one guy wanted to run sales and one wanted to run marketing. and

Steven Galanis: and And frankly, like you know if you look in the next four years, almost all of those people ended up coming to work for us ah you know over the years. So we ended up having a lot of LinkedIn people leave. but I the and remember being, it was New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, 2017. I’m still at LinkedIn. And this guy, Will Hearn, who I worked with at the time, we’re in a hot tub in Nicaragua with a bunch of our coworkers that are there. And he’s like, Steven, this idea is too good. If you don’t leave to go start it and somebody else builds it and becomes a billionaire, could you live with yourself? And nobody had ever asked me that question before.

Steven Galanis: But it was so obvious the answer was no. like my I remember my brain chemistry just changing instantly. So I remember I left Nicaragua. I go tell my parents that I have something to show them. And it was the letter that I’d sent to my team letting them know I was going to start Cameo.

Steven Galanis: But the craziest part of it was the day I left was my exact two-year anniversary of my first date there. So in this case, Mike Gamsen’s prophecy at least ended up being true for me. Like two years to the day is when I left to go do that. And and you know I wrote about this to my team. I published that post on LinkedIn. If you guys go to my LinkedIn, you can literally see the the the note that I wrote telling the story I just told.

Steven Galanis: And a quarter into it, when we were we had sold maybe 100 videos, I get a cold call from Mike Gamson out of nowhere. And he just wanted to check in on how the business was doing. I pitched him on it. And you know to my surprise, he’s like, Steven, I like this business. I’d like to make a small investment in it. And at this time, we’d now raised $150K of friends and family. And you know I think he’s going to say $25K, $50K.

Steven Galanis: And I’m like, Mike, we don’t really need more money. we We’re burning $500 a month. We have 150K in the bank. He’s like, Steven, you don’t understand what you’re building. If you’re gonna build this thing and it’s gonna be what I think it could be, you’re gonna need a lot more capital. So I’d like to make a small investment in your business. I’m like, all right, well, and he’s this huge mentor and someone I really liked up to. So I’m like, what are you thinking? And he goes, I’d like to put a half a million dollars into the business. And you know this is like on the phone. I remember like those words came and I just like,

Steven Galanis: It was just unbelievable. And you know he was excited about Cameo. He’s excited that we were building it in Chicago. um And that was the investment that like changed everything for us. I don’t think I could have built this business in Chicago. I would have had to be in l LA or New York.

Steven Galanis: So that that was huge. And then you know for a while, we were just kind of this thing in Chicago that people knew about, but it was under the radar. And you know the VCs right away like got excited about it. um I remember one of our investors, like right after that round got done, Chicago Ventures, which was a firm that was in the same building as us,

Steven Galanis: um this guy named Jackson Jin, who was on his second day of work, like got locked out into the office. And he ended up knocking on the door to see what was going on. ah you know He spent three hours with us the next morning on his, he was literally working in venture for two days, fresh out of undergrad. He walks into his partner’s office and he goes, the next Snapchat is a hundred feet away from us. If we don’t invest in this company, I’m leaving. And they’re just like, kid, like you just got charmed by the first entrepreneur you ever met. That’s not Snapchat, no fucking way.

Steven Galanis: e And he’s like, trust me, take a meeting. So I end up taking a meeting with a guy named Ezra Golston, who would go on to lead my seat around. And, you know, on the spot, he’s like, we want to put a million dollars in after I ran him through everything. And, you know, we didn’t need the money. So we took 100K and then they wanted to get ready to lead our next round. And ultimately, ah you know, that that kind of set the tone of like all the good early stage investors in Chicago.

Steven Galanis: backing the business i remember our seed round was a very competitive round among amongst these firms, the guy from Chicago Ventures that wrote my check, you know he was like, hey, I’m going to leave to start my own fund. Can I lead this? And Chicago Ventures, we’d had the relationship with. And Origin, another firm that we loved, like they literally were like, we will do anything. Here’s a you know here’s a b blank check. ah You put any number you want. like we got We got you. We’ve got great conviction. And luckily, we were able to get all three on the cap table. So so now we’re kind of this hot thing in Chicago, but like the world doesn’t know about it yet.

Steven Galanis: ah And that all changed about six months later when I get a call from this woman, Jana Mastershmitt. Jana is kind of a legendary ah operator. She was early exec at Twitter through the IPO. And she’s part of a syndicate called Hashtag Angels, which was all the female execs at Twitter. and And they invest in in different startups.

Steven Galanis: And she she had like discovered Cameo that summer. She literally DM me every day for 30 days till I responded. And she’s like, you need me on your cap table, trust me. So I ended up talking to her. There’s a bunch of family connections. She randomly ended up in college at U of I. She worked at my uncle’s bar it was like she’s from the midwest there were just so many things so i end up letting her put some money in and that was one of the best decisions i ever made because uh that uh that labor day weekend right before labor day weekend i get a call from her and she goes

Steven Galanis: Steven, Jeremy Liu from Lightspeed would like to meet you. um you know he i just showed him i I just showed him Cameo, and he he thinks it’s awesome. Can I give him your email? So I’m like, absolutely. And by the way, my early stage investors had put together a list for Cameo of like every firm in the world and every partner. And the firms were kind of ranked five to one, five being the best. And then the and then each partner was ranked A to F on their fit.

Steven Galanis: And there were only like four or five 5A people that like we had on our on our metric. And it was Reid Hoffman. He had founded LinkedIn. It was um you know it was it was Matt Kohler at Benchmark. you know He had done like Instagram, a WhatsApp. like So it’s it’s like that level. people would in Jeremy, of course, you know Snapchat had just IPO’d around that time. So you know he was very clearly there. And I get an email from Jeremy. And he goes, I just heard about Cameo. It’s brilliant.

Steven Galanis: Where are you in the world? We’re having breakfast tomorrow. And I happened to be in San Francisco because I was, we were working on this deal with YouTube. So I ended up meeting him at the battery for what I thought was going to be like a 15 minute coffee. I have to fly to l LA to go to a wedding. And I’ll never forget this. Like I get in, I start getting into my pitch and Jeremy like cuts me off in the first 30 seconds. He’s like, no, no, no, Steven.

Steven Galanis: I get it. I know what this is. I’ve been looking for a business like this for 10 years. ah Let me tell you why we’d be the best partner for you. And we end up having this two-hour conversation. I’m watching my like flight because I’m about to miss my plane at this point. I got to get to my buddy’s wedding in l LA. and And it’s time to go, but Jeremy’s not done. So he goes, Stephen, here’s what’s going to happen. When you land in l LA, you’re on the you’re on the American flight. ah You’re going to walk to the United Terminal and go meet my partner, Nicole Quinn. outside of gate 70 in the United Terminal at LAX. She wants to meet you. So I end up landing in l LA. I walk from terminal four to terminal seven and I meet Nicole Quinn there who ended up becoming, um you know, a long time board member, led my series A. Nicole ah just absolutely like gets it. You know, she she was on the board of, she was on Lady Gaga’s board and Gwyneth Peltra’s board. She’d become like the Silicon Valley meets Hollywood.

Steven Galanis: you know, a person and we had some good like friends in common and, uh, you know, we have this great conversation that I’m like, Hey, I gotta get to the rehearsal dinner. She’s like, all right. And this is Labor Day weekend. She’s like, Steven, I’m going to be in Chicago Tuesday morning to come see you. And.

Steven Galanis: You know, sure enough, Tuesday morning, she’s in our office, spends the day with the team. She then invites me to San Hill Road to go pitch the partnership the next week. And after that meeting, I’ll never forget, Jeremy and Nicole walked in. And by the way, we didn’t have a pitch deck. I didn’t have finance. Like, there was nothing. You know, there was nothing. I remember somebody asked, what’s your five-year plan in the meeting? And Jeremy’s like, we’re not pitching. They’re not pitching us. We’re pitching them.

Steven Galanis: And Jeremy came in with Nicole and he said, Steven, the partners are unanimous. We’re excited to lead Cameo Series A. We think this could be Snapchat, but bigger than Instagram can’t copy. And we want to be the partner to help you build that. And like coming from him, like that was just, it meant the world. And once we got that Series A from Lightspeed, it totally changed our standing among any of the other kind of firms in Chicago that were startups. And we were just on a it was just a different level. like you know Tier 1 investors weren’t investing. yeah i don’t I don’t think Lightspeed had invested in in Chicago like that since Grubhub’s like Series A and Benchmark. Sequoia had never backed a business in Chicago early stage like that until one of our alums ended up coming and and and starting his business. so

Steven Galanis: it It was something that like kind of changed the ecosystem. And we were talking about Endeavor earlier. And one of the things that we love at Endeavor is like coming in, building these tentpole companies. And then some of those people are going to you know take the experience they got and go start their own. and And I’ve just been really proud and gratified that we’ve been able to do this in my hometown. And so many amazing people have come through our program, ah hopefully taking a lot of value. And and now some of them are are you know running their own really cool companies.

Alejandro Cremades: Now, obviously, you’ve been running the business for over eight years ah and you know with the ups, with the downs, you know everything in between. But if I was to put you back you know in in time, and I put you into a time machine, and I bring you, let’s say, to 2016, where you guys were getting started with the business, and you could give one piece of advice to that younger self, to that younger Steven, what would that be and why, given what you know now?

Steven Galanis: Yeah.

Steven Galanis: That’s a good question. Look, there’s so many different There’s so many different things there, but in my experience, the one thing I’ve seen over and over again um is hire for ceiling, not for a resume, right? I’ve just seen that a million times, right? There’s so many of the best hires we ever made were, you know,

Steven Galanis: someone starts as a, you know, they’re a PR intern and, you know, six years later, they’re the chief of staff of the company, right? Or, you know, one of the best people we ever had on our talent relation side was a bottle service girl bartender that had never worked in Tacker, had a corporate job, and we brought her in and now she ah leads all creators at another big company.

Steven Galanis: you know probably my one of my all-time favorites that we hired was supposed to be a one-year study abroad intern when it was just me at a desk in Chicago. and you know She loved it so much that when she had to go back after a year, she dropped out of school, ended up opening up our UK office, and eventually would come to run the talent team for us. and you know i’ve i’ve I had totally appreciate the what experience gives. ah But when you’re doing like really innovative things, sometimes that can be overrated. And and you know while I’ve learned a lot from some of the leaders that I brought in, um I would have just, you know if I look back on it, there’s probably times where I took people out of the game too early because we were in position to go make that big hire. And um in some cases, like that caused you know really foundational building blocks to like not have a place at the company anymore.

Steven Galanis: So that’s that’s really what you know what I continue to remind myself about.

Alejandro Cremades: I love it. So Stephen for the people that are listening that would love to reach out and say hi and learn more about Cameo. What can you tell them.

Steven Galanis: Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, you can follow me on Instagram or Twitter, on Twitter or X I guess now. Mr. 312, that’s the Chicago area code, or just my name on on Instagram.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well Stephen thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us.

Steven Galanis: Thank you for having me.

*****

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