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?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 28 June 2019
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Steven Galanis is the Founder & CEO @ Cameo, the startup that allows you to book personalised shoutouts from your favourite people. To date, Steven has raised over $65m in VC funding for Cameo from some of the very best in the business including Bedrock, Nicole Quinn @ Lightspeed, Kleiner Perkins and Spark Capital, just to name a few. Prior to founding cameo, Steven was a Senior AE @ LinkedIn and before that was an options trader in Chicago. With their immense success, they have been featured in all major publications including The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Cameo has also been voted as "The Best Place To Work In Chicago" by GlassDoor.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Steven made his way from AE @ LinkedIn to revolutionising what an autograph means today with his founding of Cameo?
2.) What does Steven believe is the No 1 reason that startup founders fail with their startup today? Why does Steven believe that you have to give up your job to pursue your startup, even in the earliest of days? What advice does Steven give to founders and young graduates who approach him for advice in the earliest of days?
3.) As the company scales, how does Steven think about and approach role allocation internally? How does he prioritise hiring for them? How does he think about internal upscaling? How has he dealt with letting go of responsibilities and delegating to the team? What are the core challenges here? What does he advise founders facing this?
4.) Steven has said before, "don't let good get in the way of great", what did he mean by this? How does he determine between good enough and a stretch too far? How does Steven think about the statement of hiring for 6 months ahead of where you are? What have been his biggest lessons from scaling internationally so fast?
5.) How does Steven think about and approach investor selection? What can founders really do to leverage their investor base and get the most value from them? How does Steven think about the incredibly high CACs of the core channels today? What must founders in the world of consumer do to acquire customers more efficiently?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Steven’s Fave Book: Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
As always you can follow Harry, Steven and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are back on the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I'd love to welcome you behind the |
| 0:03.9 | scenes on Instagram at H. Stebbings, 1996 with 2Bs, where I answer all messages personally, and it'd be |
| 0:09.2 | great to see you there. But to our episode today, and a very timely one, just this week they announced |
| 0:13.6 | their round, led by Ilya at Kleiner Perkins, a $50 million round. Can you guess the company, though? Well, I'm thrilled to welcome Stephen Galanis, |
| 0:24.3 | founder and CEO at Cameo to the Hot Seat today. Now, for those that don't know, |
| 0:28.7 | Cameo is a startup that allows you to book personalized shoutouts from your favorite people. |
| 0:33.5 | To date, Stephen has raised over $65 million in VC funding for Cameo from some of the very best in the business, including Bedrock, Nicole Quinn at Lightspeed, Klinea Perkins, |
| 0:37.8 | and Spark Capital, just to name a few. And prior to founding cameo, Stephen was the senior account |
| 0:42.3 | exec at LinkedIn, and before that was an options trader in Chicago. Now, with their immense |
| 0:46.6 | success, they've been featured in pretty much every major publication, including and especially |
| 0:51.0 | the Ellen DeGeneres show, which is a very cool segment. You can see the link in the show notes. |
| 0:55.0 | And Cameo's also been voted as the best place to work in Chicago by Glass Door. |
| 0:59.0 | I'd also have to say a huge thank you to the wonderful Nicole Quinn at Lightspeed, |
| 1:02.2 | Ezra Galston, and Cameo's own Abby Shepherd for some fantastic question suggestions today. |
| 1:06.8 | I really do so appreciate that. |
| 1:08.7 | But before we dive into our episode today, it's time we spend less time managing our inboxes |
| 1:13.1 | and more time getting work done with Front. |
| 1:15.1 | The email platform that's helping teams respond faster to close more deals, delight more |
| 1:19.5 | customers and grow their businesses. |
| 1:21.5 | Front's shared inbox and workflows route emails to the right people right away, |
| 1:25.6 | keeping everyone in the loop from start to finish. |
| 1:28.0 | Internal comments keep teams focused so they can make faster decisions. And with 50 plus |
... |
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