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Steven Galanis

Co-founder & CEO, Cameo · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveinvestor@Mr312 ↗LinkedIn ↗cameo.com ↗

Steven Galanis is the co-founder and CEO of Cameo, a marketplace enabling fans to buy personalized video messages from public figures. Before Cameo, he worked as an options trader at the Chicago Board of Trade and as a Senior Account Executive at LinkedIn.

13statements → 6claims → 4claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 4.15/5average certainty → 2.23/5average debate potential → 4.3/5argument clarity · the sources →

4 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 6 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 4 assertions · 1 opinion · 6 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 6 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Steven argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Cameo completed 10,000 videos before building its first talent app
“We had done over 10,000 videos before we built our first app for the talent on the platform.”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 14:03 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
100% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.3 / 5 directness 4.2 · coherence 4.6 · precision 4.5 · compression 3.7

redirected or did not address 3 of 23 assessed questions (13%). Watch them ▸

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

236 words/min while actually speaking · 19 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,311 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 4/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 1/10
setup questions received 65%

Everything Steven Galanis said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Galanis: Founders must quit their day jobs before seeking his advice
“When a young entrepreneur comes into me today at the office of Cameo, the very first thing I'll ask them is, have you quit your job yet? If they haven't quit your job, I tell them to leave and let me know when they have, because if they don't have conviction i…”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 6:41 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
Opinion
Galanis: Cameo has already won the US personalized celebrity video marketplace
“We, you know, we have really high conviction that we've already won this marketplace in the US”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 16:29 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
Insight
Galanis: Only 3% of the world has the entrepreneurial gene
“I think that three percent of the world's population has that sick gene in their head. Their personality makes them an entrepreneur.”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 5:40 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
Insight
Galanis: True entrepreneurs can never be happy working under others
“When you're an entrepreneur, there's literally nothing you can do to be happy in any other job, no matter how amazing the place is, and you can never be your best self unless you are running the show.”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 5:48 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
Insight
Galanis: VCs should convince founders to take their money, not vice versa
“When you're fundraising, it should never be you convincing VCs or any investor to invest in the business. You want to find that investor that seeks you out and has so much conviction about what you're doing that they spend their time convincing you to take the…”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 19:30 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Galanis: Cameo spent $0 on marketing while growing 1,300% in 2018
“We don't spend any money on marketing. We grew the business 1300% last year because every single cameo is a commercial for the next one”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 21:26 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
Insight
Galanis: Entrepreneurs must love their mission, not their product
“It is so important as an entrepreneur to fall in love with your mission, but not fall in love with your product.”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 13:03 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
Assertion Supported
Cameo completed 10,000 videos before building its first talent app
“We had done over 10,000 videos before we built our first app for the talent on the platform.”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 14:03 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Galanis: Cameo will be embarrassed by its 2019 product within two years
“The cameo that everybody loves today, this product that got named one of the time, genius, 50 companies on earth, it probably will be something that we look back at and are embarrassed by in a year from now or two years from now, you know, as we evolve and con…”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 14:27 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
Assertion Supported
Galanis: Cameo has over 8,500 talent out of five million globally
“We have over 8500 talent at Cameo today, and we believe there's over five million in the world.”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 17:26 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
Prediction Held up
Galanis: Cameo will expand into holograms, voice clips, and offline experiences
“So while today we're focused on sending text messages to people and getting video in response in the future, that could be any interaction, both on the online, offline, or virtual world. So that might be having Brett Favre show up at your dinner via hologram. …”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 25:57 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
Insight
Galanis: Founders should prioritize top talent over worrying about equity dilution
“So I really tell founders always that talk to me, but don't worry about dilution. Don't worry about cutting the right person in worry about making sure you have the best people around you in the world that can help you fulfill your dream.”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 26:59 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?
Assertion Supported
Galanis: Cameo initially launched under the name PowerMove.io
“When we went to market, we were called PowerMove.io.”
Steven Galanis Jun 28, 2019 ▶ 22:52 20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Product, How To Extract As Much Value From Your Investor Base As Possible & Should You Really Hire For 6 Months Ahead of What You Need?

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Cameo's Steven Galanis on Why You Must Fall In Love With Your Mission Not Your Produ Jun 28, 2019 19m
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