Earlier this year, rapper Ice T was recording videos for fans on Cameo, an app that lets you buy shoutout messages from celebrities, when Snoop Dogg joined him in New York while the two were collaborating on a record. Snoop started jumping in Ice T's videos, and liked the platform so much he joined Cameo two days later. Snoop was such believer in Cameo he even invested in the startup's Series A round.
It's safe to say that in Chicago, where the startup ecosystem is made up predominantly of business software firms, Snoop Dogg isn't showing up on many cap tables. And celebs like Tony Hawk, Brett Favre, Charlie Sheen, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Ice T aren't a part of the business model.
But Cameo is a different breed---a buzzy consumer app that connects fans with their favorite pop culture celebrities. And along with catching the eye of Hollywood, it's also getting a serious boost of confidence from some big-name investors.
Cameo announced Tuesday that it raised $50 million in a Series B round led by Kleiner Perkins, the venerable Silicon Valley venture capital firm known for its investments in companies like Google, Amazon and Netscape. Other backers in the round include The Chernin Group, Spark Ventures, Bain Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, who led Cameo's $12.5 million Series A round last November. The new round reportedly values Cameo at around $300 million, according to Axios.
In total, Cameo has now raised more than $65 million since it launched just two years ago. The app has 15,000 celebrities on its platform, who've sent more than 275,000 personalized video messages. (Celebrities set their own prices, which range from $5 to $3,000, and Cameo takes a 25 percent cut.)
Cameo CEO and co-founder Steven Galanis said the company has grown revenue more than 5X in the last six months, and it's done more Cameos since Christmas than the startup has delivered in the previous two years combined.
"We’ve just seen incredible growth," Galanis said. "We’ve continued to add top-tier talent ... It’s taken the company into another stratosphere."
Indeed, a $50 million haul backed by Kleiner Perkins is proof Cameo isn't just a flash in the pan, though Galanis admits the company is still in the "2nd inning." Cameo now has over 100 employees at its offices in Chicago, LA, London and Australia. It plans to be at 150 by the end of the year, and is eyeing new markets in Europe, Asia and South America.
It's also planning to roll out new ways for celebrities and fans to interact. Galanis said future features could include more back-and-forth communication, allowing someone to send video of their golf swing to a professional golfer for critiques, for example, or sending a top fashion blogger pictures of shoes to get their input on an outfit.
"We think the future of Cameo is all around developing even richer two-way, asynchronous conversations," Galanis said.
Last year Cameo landed on Time’s list of most “genius” companies of 2018, and was one of Chicago Inno's 19 Startups to Watch in 2019.
But as the startup's profile has risen, it hasn't been immune to controversy. Late last year a white supremacist group used Cameo to trick celebrities into making coded anti-Semitic video statements, which were then posted to sites like YouTube and Instagram. The celebrities, which included Brett Favre, Andy Dick and Soulja Boy, read messages that were submitted by an alt-right group whose goal was to make it appear as if the celebrities were supporting their hateful cause.
The story made national headlines, including a segment from NBC Nightly News. But Galanis credits Cameo's quick response to the crisis---he and his team flew to Milwaukee to meet with Favre in person---and ability to make tweaks to the platform to keep similar incidents from happening again. Cameo's tech team created a new screening tool that flags problematic keywords for talent, and launched it in less than two days after the initial controversy.
Galanis said only one celebrity dropped from the platform following the incident.
It's clear Cameo isn't your typical Chicago startup. And with a growing office in LA, it wouldn't be a shock to one day see the company relocate to the West Coast to be closer to its talent pool. But Galanis said Chicago "will always be home," and Cameo is committed to growing the business in the Windy City. And that fact could have a ripple effect on the city's startup ecosystem, as now more top Silicon Valley investors have another reason to come to Chicago, Galanis explained.
"People that probably have never been to Chicago are now going to be here quarterly, and I think that opens up a lot of opportunities for other exciting companies to get noticed in a way that maybe they were not," he said.
"This is a huge stamp of approval from some of the best investors in the world that, hey, this is real," Galanis continued. "This thing's got a real shot. And were able to do that here (in Chicago)."
