Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cameo was the fastest-growing consumer marketplace from 2017 to 2019
“In 2017 and 2018, 2019, Cameo was the fastest growing consumer marketplace in the world.”
Disclosure
Lightspeed pitched Cameo as an uncopyable, bigger Snapchat
“Jeremy Liu, who wrote the first check, walked in with Nicole Quinn, the partner that would join our board from Lightspeed. And you said, Hey, Steven, it's unanimous. You know, the Lightspeed partnership wants to help build Cameo. We're gonna offer you a term s…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cameo reached over $100M GMV before spending on paid marketing
“We were doing probably north of a hundred million in GMV before we even really started spending money on paid.”
Opinion
Talent makes more money per minute on Cameo than anywhere else
“One thing that I'll argue is that the talent on Cameo make more money per minute on Cameo than anything else in the world that they do.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cameo is more demand-side constrained than supply-side constrained
“We're probably more demand side constrained than we are supply side constrained. So we have plenty of talent that would do more cameos.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cameo achieved net negative churn on the creator supply side
“On the supply side. We had net negative churn. So not only were the, like, our talent cohorts were growing every single month when you looked at our waterfall.”
Insight
Creators finishing four Cameos in 14 days stayed for life
“We had a metric called four and 14, which was like doing four cameos in your first 14 days. Like that kind of, if you did that, you were basically like locked into our platform for life.”
Disclosure
Cameo raised at $1B post-money on $75M net revenue
“When we raised that a billion, businesses like ours were trading eight to 12 x forward net revenue. We were a seventy-five million dollar net revenue business. We got the 12 x multiple, nine hundred million pre, hundred million post billion. It wasn't even con…”
What-if
Cameo would have died without its 90% valuation down round
“And if we didn't take the tough medicine, like we wouldn't be having this conversation right now because Cameo would have been gone.”
Assertion Contradicted
Top 1% of athletes capture 99% of all endorsement revenue
“The top one percent athletes make 99% of all the endorsement revenue.”
Insight
The selfie replaced the autograph for shareable social proof
“The selfie is the new autograph. When you see someone famous today, you pull out your phone and you want something to go on your, you know, your Instagram you know, your Instagram grid or your Facebook wall. Like that's what you wanted. Back in the day when yo…”
Insight
In Cameo's marketplace, supply should generate its own demand
“One thing we always had high conviction about was in our marketplace, supply ought to be able to beget their own demand.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cameo's 500% growth in 2020 was its slowest year yet
“When we grew 500% in 2020, that was the slowest we'd ever grown in a year.”
Disclosure
Traffic fell 60% as Cameo hit $6M monthly burn post-COVID
“We probably took about a 50% hit. Traffic was down maybe 60% and it's like from peak to trough, you know, and that's tough because OpEx went up three or four X in that time period, right? So that's where suddenly you go from being a profitable business in, you…”
Disclosure
Cameo achieved profitability for a full year after three layoff rounds
“And, you know, over three, like really painful rounds of layoffs. That's what we were able to do. And the business has now been profitable for the last year.”
Insight
Down rounds enable startups to reset employee option strike prices
“So one of the nice things about bringing the valuation down is it actually enables you to reset the strike price for all of your employees.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cassius Marsh wrote Cameo's first $25K check a week before launch
“And by the way, Cassius had just wrote a 25,000 dollar check to be our first investor in the business, maybe a week before.”
Insight
Gift recipients sharing watermarked videos drove Cameo's organic growth
“When someone bought, we learned right away, they're almost all gifts. So I buy for you. Then you share on your Facebook, you shared on your Instagram, you shared on Twitter in a group chat. And then those people saw the cameo watermark. They're like, what the …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cameo's top-line GMV is almost 100% correlated with session traffic
“Our top line GMV is almost a hundred percent correlated to like session traffic. Like it's crazy year after year. Like when sessions are up, you know, the business is up. If sessions are down, the business is down.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cameo raised its Series A and B without pitch decks
“And we didn't have a deck at the series A, we didn't have the deck in the series B. You know, the reason that they understood it was like, they were users of the product.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cameo's business dropped 50% during the first week of COVID
“And if you go look at the first week of COVID, our business dropped by 50% the first week of COVID.”
Disclosure
Cameo peaked at nearly 500 total workers across 14 countries
“At our peak, we had, ah, we had 437 people, and then probably another few dozen contractors around the world, right? So, you know, it was probably close to 500 people, right?”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
14% of US adults have unaided brand awareness of Cameo
“14% of American adults have unaided awareness of Cameo and about 40% have aided.”
Assertion Supported
Cameo currently hosts tens of thousands of talent on its platform
“Today, when you go to cameo, there's, you know, tens of thousands of talent on there.”
