Steven Galanis
Appearances
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
So it's like, you know, you're never just gonna go say this is good enough, like you should really own your work and feel like you're, like you're named the, you know, Stephen Golanus or the Ryan Hanley, like, you know, money back guarantee is like stamped onto the work that you're doing. Fight for Simplicity is a really interesting one. That came from Devin, our co-founder.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Devin ran product and engineering for most of Cameo's history. Today, he kind of oversees all creative and runs design. And the idea with Fight for Simplicity is to build something globally scalable, It is so hard to to do that if you have like all this complexity, like different buttons, different skews, et cetera. So what we're always trying to do is like, you know, how do we delete?
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
How do we streamline? How do we make this as easy as possible? Because if you make it as easy as possible, it actually allows it to scale. And, you know, fighting for simplicity
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
often means very difficult trade-offs, but cutting it all the way down, and that's something that I think that we're pretty proud of as far as the core product that we built, what the whole universe of things we could have done was, but focusing for, we're nine years in to this per-size video product.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Well, of course we want good ideas coming, coming to get surfaced. Right. And you know, it's funny, I was in a product review yesterday for this product called broadcast DMS that we're rolling out. And one of the ideas that we had, so, you know, imagine an algorithmic list, social feed.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
So basically if you follow anyone that follows you on cameo, Ryan, like you could send them a mass message that appears in a one-to-one DM thread and let it start having like a personal conversation with them. So we're really excited about that. One of the killer features we're thinking about is the ability for the talent to actually own, not rent their audience.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
So right now, like you're following on Instagram, you're following on Facebook, you're following on Twitch or YouTube, like the platforms own your followers. You just kind of rent them.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
But like, what if like we actually gave you like radical ownership and you could take anyone that followed you and export, you know, export their you know, their, their email or their phone number, their birthday to a CSV and like use that in whatever directive fan rails you, you think is best to go cultivate your network.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
So we were talking about this yesterday and, you know, we were really thinking about, okay, if we were to do this, like what are the critical things of information? Like you want the name, you want the email, you want the phone number, you want the zip code, you want the, you know, you want, you want their birthday, but like, like, do you really need email and phone number?
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Like, so it's just constantly, cause every time there's another field, you're going to have drop off. So, you know, we ended up getting to a really elegant solution where, you know, three of those
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
six things that we said were critical are like what we decided to move with in an mvp and then later you can always add add more information on or complete your profile in a deeper way have you had any that's not the right way to ask the question this idea of radical ownership of your audience
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Well, number one, the business model, our business model is really different from TikTok and Instagram and Snapchat. We do not have an ad-based revenue model. So for those platforms, they monetize on DAUs, MAUs, and basically selling their user data. The talent or the creators make the content for free, and then they sell ads against it to advertisers.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
So they are always going to be an advertiser-centric model, and the talent are – the deal they basically make with the talent is, hey, use our platform. You're going to get famous, but then we're going to sell – and if you get really famous, you can make money doing other shit. Like that's basically how it works is the –
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
The red share that comes from any, like any of that on TikTok or YouTube, it's, it's, it does not, you cannot support yourself unless you are like the biggest person in the world on the platform. So that's kind of the, so then what happens? Like you sell merch, you go on Cameo, you, you know, have a subscription on Patreon or OnlyFans. Like that's how you monetize.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
For us, the talent are the four knocks, right? Like our business model has always been talent centric. Like the talent make more money than we do for everything. So for us, if we can provide the best,
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
tools in the world the best rails in the world for talent to directly monetize their fan base and nurture it and cultivate it and strengthen it then like i think we win in the long term but it's impossible to go from you know a tick tocker youtube business model where you know they have 100 gross margins basically on this ad product and they don't have to give anything to the talent or they give almost nothing versus our model where the town are making 75 to begin with yeah
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Let's take it all the way back. This is December 2018. We're right in the middle of Christmas season, which is our busiest time of the year. I think literally this was like Thanksgiving weekend. Brett Favre had joined Cameo earlier that year and at this point is the biggest person on the platform, you know, like an American legend and like
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
hall famer and you know just getting a bread on had really started to be a halo for us to get you know snoop dogg and other like you know that kind of level talent onto the platform so that we're really just hitting kind of this big tipping point at that point we had closed our series a you know maybe six months before and all of a sudden we get a actually i think we closed the series a like like weeks six weeks before this happened and all of a sudden i get a
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Frantic text message from this guy named Sean Finnegan, who was extremely important to us in building this business. And Sean was working with Brad on a lot of his social stuff. And he goes, Steven, we got a problem. And I go, what happened?
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Some alt-right group had tricked Brett Favre into making a dog whistle anti-Semitic video where basically the script said something like he was talking about, you know, The shout out goes to the families of the USS Liberty, which was this ship that Israel bombed of the US in like 1970s. It's like a very like esoteric reference in history.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And Brett just thought he was doing the shout out for, for, you know, basically for, he thought he was doing a shout out for veterans. And then this group took that and put it on 4chan and they'd made a bunch of little dog whistle references that I wouldn't have caught or I don't think anybody reasonably would have caught.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And suddenly, you know, they were making it look like Brett was, you know, advocating for these, you know, like these Proud Boy-like groups, like these alt-right, kind of neo-Nazi type groups. And this became like a massive, massive story. And first things first, we always want to make sure our talent's safe. As I mentioned, the talent are our Fort Knox. Without the talent, we can't do what we do.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
We can't manufacture happiness. The biggest fear at that point was, holy shit, if like Brett loses his Wrangler jeans ad or, you know, and he leaves the platform and he never comes back, that will put a cap on whoever could go and join Cameo because suddenly he becomes the cautionary tale. And every single agent is going to be like, yeah, not worth it. I don't care how much you make.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
You just threw everything else away. So this is really existential at the time. And so what we immediately do is we kind of let our talent base know that this happened. Like we were super transparent.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
We immediately built this kind of like early AI bot on Slack that would basically, you know, we, we went to the Southern poverty law center and got this list of all these like hate words and different hate groups. And then it would, it would basically flag, uh, we called it Nazi bot at the time. It would basically flag anything and then let our talent team know,
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Hey, there's something fishy about this request or this reference. And then what we did was, you know, I needed to make sure Brett stayed and he felt safe. And I had heard that the 96 Packers, the Super Bowl champions were having like a reunion. Maybe it was 97. They were having a reunion up in Milwaukee, like, signing autographs and everything.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
So, like, me and my chief of staff at the time, Adam Ostrom, we drove up in a huge snowstorm from Chicago to Milwaukee. We waited in this big-ass line. There were hundreds and hundreds of people there. And we got to the front line and, you know, hey, I'm Steven from Cameo, Adam from Cameo. We talked to Brett. We told him how much we appreciated, you know, him. And we were there for him.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And, you know, by the way, we were – I didn't want to have that conversation like that, you know, but you know what he said to me, he looked me straight in the eye and goes, Steven, wasn't my best day, but it wasn't my worst day. I love how Cameo makes people feel. And, you know, just thank you for being there and stepping up.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And honestly, that's one of those little moments that kind of saved the company at the time. And what we didn't. What we didn't realize was even though that was as bad of a press cycle as you can, you can kind of get a lot of people found out about Cameo from that. And, you know, instead of the platform dying, like we had the biggest month we ever had.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And that really started, you know, just accelerating the flywheel of our business. And the rocket ship really started igniting at that point.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
I mentioned run through walls was that value that's not there, but that's just how we built this business. Cameo was built by very gritty people building the business brick by brick. And when some insurmountable obstacle came in our way, we busted through it. And that's something that it's really, even as we're rebuilding our culture right now,
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Like, that's the thing that, you know, and by the way, that run through walls, like, what is that? I mentioned we hired a lot of entrepreneurs at this company, right? And like, what are entrepreneurs? They're run through walls type of people.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Yeah, it was a really, really difficult, tough time. But, you know, let's start even going into COVID because I think it's a really important part of the story. So coming into COVID, I mentioned like this Brett Favre thing happened. And, you know, when you look at the first four years of our business, like we became a unicorn on the exact four year anniversary of launching. Right. And
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And that was at a time where there were no AI unicorns popping up pre-revenue. Our business went from $300,000 to $4 million to $20 million to $100 in its first four years. And this is just the classic rocket ship.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And for us, one of the things that happened, and we got called a COVID darling a lot, but people don't really know that in 2018 and 2019, we were the fastest growing consumer marketplace in the world at that time, too. So coming into COVID, we had this huge momentum.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
We had just raised our series B from Kleiner Perkins and churning group and a lot of like incredible investors that joined the cap table. And like this thing was like ready to launch when COVID hit. Initially, we didn't know how that was going to deal with our business, right? The whole world shuts down.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And in fact, the first week of COVID, the first week of lockdowns, our business went down by 50%. And we had an emergency board meeting that Sunday night about, Hey, like what, like, were we going to need to do layoffs? Like, what were we going to need to do? We didn't know how long this was going to go on. So like, I remember me and the founders, we cut our salaries to zero.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
We got rid of like a lot of these benefits that we had like, Ooh, you could Uber to work back in the day or like gym membership or like, well, if everything's shut down, like we're not going to need any of those things. So we just basically did everything we could to avoid laying people off and took some costs out of the business.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And then basically the next week, like it rebounded and then it just shot out like a cannon. And, you know, in 2020, we grew about 500% in revenue, right? So suddenly, you know, this thing is like full speed ahead.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And as I like to describe it to people, that period of time was like playing the game Mario Kart when you hit the star and you can kind of go 10 times faster and you can bump into shit and you just keep going. And then at some point, like that star just kind of fades off. And for us, that was when the second vaccine came out.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And if you think about why our business accelerated during COVID so much, you mentioned that this was becoming a new way to communicate. Your mom is living across the country, so you couldn't see her for Mother's Day. You sent her a Kenny G to tell her how much you loved her and wish her a happy Mother's Day. So you're literally sending digital love.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And you think about the missed weddings and birthday parties and life events that happened, and a cameo is such a great way to do it. But On the supply side, for the first time in history, every athlete, actor, celebrity in the world was out of work.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And none of them, even those that are like, if you're a pro, if you're an MLB player, you're an NBA player, you have an annual salary, but you get paid per game. So guess what? When the games weren't happening, they weren't getting paid. So this was a massive supply side tailwind for us.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And, you know, there was more availability, they were busy and it just kept people were on their phones and at home. And it just, it was just the perfect storm, you know, for our business.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Yeah, that's a great question. Happy you asked it. You know, one thing I know a lot of you that are listening, you know, probably can empathize with, you know, the entrepreneur that was, you know, finding every excuse to be entrepreneurial even before college was over or while it was going on. I can't tell you how many successful founders I know that were running the nightlife at their school.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Our leadership team knew that at some point that was going to end, but at the same time, like we just raised a hundred million dollars and now we are, you know, we're building up to try to future proof the business and ultimately take it public. If you remember that period of time, this is specs, this is direct listings.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
You know, coming into 2020 Cameo was named the most promising consumer internet company in the world by the information. And we are just like humming on all cylinders. We hire a public company ready management team. We hire kind of the best of the best.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
The team goes from 100 people who are all in person in Chicago and LA to about 400 people that are fully distributed across 38 states and 13 countries, right? And we're building international out. We're starting new business lines. We're doing all these things to try to diversify our base. And then all of a sudden the second vaccine comes out. Like when people got their second shot.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And organic traffic to our site ended up dropping by 65%. So the core business, which was never built on paid marketing, was always built on virality and talent promoting and customer sharing, like just 65% less people came into our store and OpEx at three X, right? So suddenly, you know, we went from being profitable, breakeven business to burning $6 million a month.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And it happened in like under 90 days. When that happened, all of a sudden, our leadership team was like, we have to take costs out of the business. It was a falling knife. We didn't know how far it was going to go. Over the next 18 months, which were probably the worst 18 months of my life, we had to tear the company down to the studs. We went from over 350 all the way down to 32 people.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
You know, when we got to that third one, this was basically like, you know, our board was talking about, Hey, if we go that deep, you're a zombie company. There's no way you can grow again. You guys are dead, blah, blah, blah. But I was just like, I can't go and look at my team again if we're not profitable. I'm like, we have to get to profitability.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And, you know, happy to report that last year, you know, we were breakeven for the first time. And, you know, this is a company that was burning over $50 million two years ago. And it just was an absolute wild ride. And some of the lessons from that, you know, my biggest regret is in the first riff, we ended up, you know, laying off 25% of the company. And we should have gone deeper.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
We absolutely should have gone deeper in that, you know, our... you know, my naivety and, and like trying to save people's jobs ended up costing more jobs in the longterm.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And it's something that I, I deeply regret because if we could have done that in two swoops versus, you know, versus three, there's so many great people that aren't here anymore that I, that I wish were here, but you know, I'm so grateful to those that stuck it out and stuck around. And, and, you know, you mentioned Ryan, like that culture is what kept people here because by the way, like,
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
When you lay off 300 people, these are awesome people. And suddenly they're at new companies and great jobs. And they're calling the people that are still there like, hey, the water's warm over here. Like, what the hell are you doing? I remember Mackenzie, my now chief of staff, came up to me late in that year. And she's like, Steven, I kind of feel like it's 2 a.m. at the bar. It's closed.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And we're the only losers left on the dance floor. Like, what's going on here? What are we trying to do? And, you know, I, and this is where like having a product that makes people happy every day and having a mission and core values and teammates that they love and leaders that they're inspired by, like that's what kept people together.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And, you know, I think it is a very similar skill set. But in my particular case, I had built the moat of my business in college, which had gotten really big. And there's a little background. So Spartan Entertainment was a company I started with my co-founder, Zach Maritas, who's now running a really successful software company in the triangle in North Carolina called Teamworks.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Yeah, I think there's parts I handled better than others. But one big learning that I took from that is in the ride up and the initial crash down. I was probably the most positive person on the ride-ups. I was the Pied Piper. No matter how excited anybody was, I was more excited.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And then when shit was going bad at the beginning, my expectations were so high that my tolerance for missing plan or shipping when we needed to or things not getting done, I just was so pissed off all the time. And I was more mad than anybody.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
You know, so one of the things that I've been really working on myself through coaching that I've tried to do better is to be more of the ballast of the emotional ballast of the company. So when things are very exuberant, like that's where I want to pull them back or where things are really shitty. That's where I want to pull people up. Right. So I've been working on that a lot. But, you know,
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
At the end of the day, you have to be putting a brave face out to your company. You have to have conviction in what you're doing. And in that period of time, I leaned on some amazing entrepreneurs that were part of my YPO forum and other people that kind of have come up when I did.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And we spent so many nights on the phone with each other, talking through the issues that we were all going through at that time. And it was just... you know, I know it's funny. My dad was like a longtime finance leader at a multi-billion dollar company. And I remember him saying like, man, that 18 months, you got like 30 years worth of experience with that.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Yeah, I think that's a great point. You know, one thing I was really worried about culturally, like as we went from 100 to 400 in 12 months, it had been such a winning team that had literally had, you know, like we had, you know, we had the Brett Favre issue.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
The two of us started this business where we used Facebook in the OG days. This is still when you needed a .edu email address to even get on Facebook. to eventually aggregate a group of 17,000 college students at Duke, North Carolina, NC State, Elon, and the surrounding communities. This became the dominant force in nightlife in that area.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
We, you know, of course in any business, you've got your little minor lumps, but like in many ways, like it kind of cameo just kind of worked from the beginning, right? We had, we found product market fit right away. The first thing we ever sold ended up being like the thing that we did. You know, had the name, had the space, like just it kind of was this company that had everything.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And when we started hiring people in that pre IPO level that were leaving public companies to come work for the next one that was going to be public. Like we had, you know, the resumes of people we were hiring were way better. They went to better schools, you know, they had, you know, they had, you know, better resumes.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And we started hiring for like resumes and experience over kind of what got us there, which was giving like really smart young people with no, that had no business, like having the responsibility, giving them the shot to be great.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And that was one of the periods where I really felt like organizationally, my spidey sense at the time was like, I don't know how much resilience or grit this, you know, this group of people have. Right. And, and obviously, you know, as layoffs started, um,
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
you know like we really found you know we we really found at that point like the those that remained the 32 that like cut down all the way from the mid 300s like those people like they've been through health with us right and that's why you know when it came to the return to office i'm like of course i'm going to roll out the red carpet for these people i know we need to be in the office but i love these people i want every one of them to be here for 10 years and you know part of the reason i want the people back in the office is because
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
This group of people creates magic when they're together. Right. So I don't want to do anything to force somebody to get another job. Like these are people that, you know, when push came to shove, like every single time in those spreadsheet exercises kept being on the green list versus the red list.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And and by the way, there's so many people on those red lists that I would kill to still have at this company. Right. But, you know, we had to do what we had to do.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
So, right, I got a my CEO coach who's now my board member, Bing Gordon, kind of like legendary long term partner, Kleiner Perkins, like founding board, like board member of Amazon for 20 plus years. He one time, like we're both hockey players and he gave me he gave me a framework on team construction that I think was so valid.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
He had basically went back and looked at all the Stanley Cup champions in the last 25 years, and he found that they had a mix of three archetypes of players, and You'll see where I'm going with this when we come and talk about how that applies to the company.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
But basically, he's like every great Stanley Cup winning team first had kind of your two lines of guys, like six players who are at the peak of their career and they're going to do the best work of their life right now. Then you also have a group of another six that are young, dumb, hungry, stupid, but they're playing out of their minds. They don't even understand what's at stake.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
In that generation, by my senior year, we were throwing 17 recurring events a week. I'm getting paid cash every single time somebody's coming in the door. It was a great business, but what ended up happening was, right at that point, because I was the first like grade that had Facebook all through college. Eventually once people started graduating, they needed to get rid of the dot edu limitation.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
They're rookies, they're second year in, but they're just workhorses and they're gonna do the best work of their life later, but they're playing out of their mind right now. And then he goes, lastly,
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
every team needs this you have to have the grizzled old vet that still has the blue burning flame that wants to lift the cup one more time maybe they've had a hall of fame career and they never won the championship and like they become the the the people that rally around this and you know at cameo we've had a really good mix of of those types but that's a framework and archetype i like for team building that at least resonated with me yeah and then your job becomes and i'm
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
That's how they draw it up, but in retrospect, that's probably the single thing that I fucked up or got wrong most in the build-up, especially in the heyday. When we were building this executive team, we're preparing to be a public company at some point in the next two to three years, and we went and hired the best of the best. Our head of product was one of the top product leaders at Uber.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Our CMO led Hims and Hers, which was the hottest brand out there at that point. Our COO was the global head of ops at LinkedIn. Our chief people officer was the global head of people at McDonald's. Our CFO was the CFO that everybody thought she was going to be the next great one to take somebody public. So we built this all-star team. But the problem was...
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And I remember at the time, my, one of my board members told me something. She's like, Steven, you've been Michael Jordan this whole time, but now it's time to be Phil Jackson. You know, like the last dance had come out and, and really like what she was asking was like, you need to now be the person that just brings all these people together. And I don't know if it's because it was remote.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
I don't know if it's because I brought in six senior executives, like all at the same time. And everybody's kind of fighting to be number two, but like, The sum of the parts, the whole was worse than the sum of the parts. Like that group of people I could not, and this was my failure and it costs, you know, it costs the company time. It costs the company money.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
It costs a lot of people, their jobs. And this was my failure. I couldn't bring that group together to make that a cohesive, you know, high functioning, high trust management team. And that is the regret that I have from that period of time. So.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And as we've torn the company down, I realized that like the consensus-based management or trying to get everybody on the same page, like that's not, I just had to step up more and be like, this is the direction we're going, like figure it the fuck out, right? So I actually needed to become Michael Jordan again and not be Phil Jackson.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
So I think like a lot of the management books will tell you it's all about being the maestro and creating the culture, but like, you know, as a CEO at the end of the day, like, Hey, I ran the company, you know, we as founders, we control the board.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
So they ended up opening it up and then suddenly the bar owners and the venue owners, like anybody could kind of create Facebook events. It didn't just have to be college students. So we kind of lost our edge if that makes sense. That said, the network that we built was, you know, was pretty enduring.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
You can't really look at anybody else on the bad things, you know, at the end of the day, like that, that starts and ends with us, with me and my co-founders. And ultimately I didn't do a good enough job in that period.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Well, let me, I think that's a really important point. I also think that that period of time was a very weird period, right? You had the great resignation. You had all these startups have, you know, series A companies had more money than series C companies.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
You had like, just, there was so much craziness going around, quiet quitting, you know, people wanting to, you know, only be remote or only be an office. Like it just, It was just chaos. And then you had, you know, employee activism and woke ism to the point where, like, as a leader, you're trying to foster a culture that's inclusive for everybody.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
You know, we're we're trying to build diverse teams. We're trying to build, you know, have different leaders with different perspectives there. But at the end of the day, like, I don't know, the captaining sports teams my whole life and having other businesses.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
aligned teams have always been the ones that have won right it hasn't been the dream teams it's been the ones that are aligned that have a share they have shared core values and that doesn't mean i don't care about diversity and it doesn't mean that i don't like bringing in different perspectives but it means that at the end of the day like everybody's got to be pulling on the same rope yeah steven i dude i could i could talk to you for another three hours about business this has been absolutely incredible i want to be respectful of your time you know
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Well, stay tuned. This is a plug for the soon to be launched Zeitgeist podcast. I'm going to be interviewing the top founders and marketers in the world that have shaped pop culture and hear the story behind the brands that are influencing like pop culture. So I think it's going to be a lot of fun.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
In fact, the signature party that we started Wednesday night beer pong and shooters still goes on today. And I'm about to have my 15th year reunion. So this thing's going about almost 20 years strong now, you know, which is, which is pretty funny, but you know, really to answer your question, like, I think you also have to go back to that time period.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
We've got a really killer season one lineup, but look out for that probably in the next three months. We'll get the first episode out.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
I graduated in 2010, which was right in the middle of the financial crisis. So, you know, you could imagine that, you know, maybe if I graduate three years earlier or three years later, you know, you're a sophomore year, junior year, you're interning on Wall Street or whatever. at a consulting firm, and then you're going to go work there.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And, you know, there was this whole cohort of people that were walking around Duke at that time that like maybe otherwise would have been at a Goldman or maybe otherwise would have been in a McKinsey that ended up starting companies like Coinbase and Plaid and Airtable.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
You know, these are guys that were like all the same age, you know, as me in that cohort from Duke in that era was pretty incredible about the talent and founders that came out of it. But one thing that I feel really confident about is the time that I spent both trading and at LinkedIn were things that really did shape me professionally. Now I think in both cases, I probably, especially trading,
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
If I had done two years of it versus five years of it, I would have been better off. But at the same time, I don't have regrets because I learned a lot. I made a lot of the connections that ended up being those that were my early investors or early employees of the company. So I don't have any regrets, but I do tell people that I always knew I was going to start a company.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
It just took me nine years to find my really good idea.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
We'll start from the top on this.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
I'm a deep believer that entrepreneurs are born not made. I think you can become more entrepreneurial by being, you know, hanging, working at startups or being around other entrepreneurs. But, you know, most entrepreneurs that I know, like, they – They were entrepreneurs in kindergarten.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
They were the ones with the lemonade stand or they were flipping baseball cards or pogs or whatever the fuck it was. Yeah, pogs. Oh my God. I just see that over and over and over again. You know, in fact, there's a personality test we used to make everybody take in the OG days of Cameo.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Now, One thing that I'll tell you is that entrepreneurs can be fostered by being around other entrepreneurs. And one thing that we've done, and I take a lot of credit and I take a lot of pride in is we've always like openly wanted to hire like future founders, like people that know they want to be an entrepreneur. They like.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
want to get their feet wet and i i think there's probably over 10 people that have left cameo over the years to become you know venture-backed ceos including two that became unicorns right which is which is something you know i like think i'm a college sports fan i love thinking about like coaching trees and and you know like the ceo tree and the alumni tree of cameo has has really spawned some incredible founders that have that have come through and and you know try to do
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Things from pet insurance to NFTs to, you know, marketplace for art or, you know, different things in the creator economy. So like we we've kind of run the gamut, but you know, I think, I think that's, I think that's super important. And then the last thing that I'll mention is that.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
If you are an entrepreneur and you know eventually you're going to start a company, but I really would say this is true for like anybody in any job. It's critically important to find the thing that's your ikigai. This is a Japanese philosophy that I really love. For those of you not familiar, imagine a Venn diagram with four circles instead of two.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And basically you're trying to find the intersection of what are you great at? What do you love to do? What does the world need and what can you get paid for? And if you find the intersection of those four things, you kind of get what I call like the iron man heart, right? It's like that perpetual motion machine. It keeps you going through the good times through the bad times.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
You know, you could have the best ride up ever, but that doesn't mean the, you know, the come down is going to be anything but Rocky, but like, you know, 99.9% entrepreneurs. go through major, major adversity at some period. And you know, sometimes the sector that you're in is the hottest thing in the world.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And then other times, you know, nobody wants to touch it with the 10 foot pole, especially on the venture side. So ultimately the way that I've always looked at it is if you find the thing that is your key guy point, it allows you to keep going on regardless of what's going on around you.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And then the last thing that I think is really important, and this is, you know, when you asked me the first question, Ryan, like, do I regret you know, being in the professional world versus being an entrepreneur, as long as you're learning, you don't regret it. Right. But the big thing is like I see too often and I've been guilty of this myself.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Like I mentioned, hey, maybe if I just in two years of trading, I kind of got what I needed out of that and I would have been ready for the next thing. But I stayed for five. Right. And ultimately, I think I think that's so important, whether you're in a role and thinking about a promotion or at a company. Should I stay? Should I leave? Are you learning? Are you growing?
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And if you're not, you should find something else.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Totally. And that's really what the whole premise of the Yuki guy is. you know, framework means to say, like, if you found that thing, then you are going to put the time and the effort because you love it. You're great at it. You know, you're, you're inspired by it. Like all those things, like you can get, you can make money doing it. Right. That's, it's so important.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
Well, I will tell you that those are the three that have stood the test of time. The other core values have been altered at different points, but those three along with run through walls, which is no longer a core value, but still like very much an ethos of Cameo are really the pillars upon which we built the company.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
So the thing that's kind of cool, I mentioned there were like four kind of OG core values at Cameo. We have six now, but each one of the founders and then Arthur Leopold, who was our first employee founding COO, each one of us had kind of a value that we brought to the table that became the bedrock and foundation of our culture.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
So starting with, you know, fight for simplicity, starting with Roll Out the Red Carpet.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
was the one that came from me like the whole idea with roll out the red carpet is any single person that interacts with our brand whether they're trying to interview for a job or they're a talent on the platform or a customer like the way that they should feel after interacting with cameo is like they were just escorted down the red carpet at the oscars and like they're the star of the show and you know the red velvet rope is there and everyone they want to meet behind it and
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And like we're lifting that red velvet rope up and introducing them to everyone they ever wanted to meet. Like that is us to a T. And you know, when we think about that from an employer employee perspective, you know, we always talk about like your first day at Cameo should be the best day of work you've ever had in your life. And then your second day should be better than the first.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And like, that's such a ingrained part of our ethos. And when we think about things like roll up, like the return to office policy that we just did. You know, we're giving a $10,000 raise to all of our Chicagoland employees to come do that. We lived up to our value of roll out the red carpet there, right? Like, I don't know of another company on the planet that's doing that.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
I totally think that people were asking more out of them if they have to come in and their peers don't. So like, why should we not compensate them for that and do that in a really generous way? So roll out the red carpet, number one. Number two, act like an owner is actually one that was a LinkedIn value link. I worked at LinkedIn right before, so did Arthur.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And this was one that we stole, but we really liked, you know, it's this idea that like every single person, like you mentioned earlier, you know, being in that role, but you don't really love it. So like, you know, you're remembering baseball cards. Like if you act like an owner, like,
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
you're the CEO, if you're the janitor or you're the COO of the company, like you're going to act like a CEO for your role. And we really believe in that. And you know, part of the, you know, part of putting our money where our mouth is like every single employee at the company has options in the, in the company. So like literally they are an owner. I've always felt that that was really important.
The Ryan Hanley Show
How I Built a $1B Business – Cameo CEO Steven Galanis
And, and on top of that, it's, it's just this whole idea of like, you know, like for the owner, the job's never done, right?