- Cameo, a company that connects fans with their favorite celebrities, announced it raised $50 million recently
Cameo, a startup that connects fans with their favorite celebrities, announced recently that it raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Kleiner Perkins. The Chernin Group, Spark Ventures, Bain Capital and Series A lead investor Lightspeed Venture Partners also joined this round.
And Cameo now has a roster of more than 15,000 athletes, performers, social media influencers, and other VIPs. The company also announced it fulfilled 275,000 personalized video shoutouts in just 26 months after launching.
This round of funding will be used for underwriting enhancements to the Cameo platform along with the aggressive expansion of the company’s domestic and international footprint.
“Cameo has struck a chord with consumers by uniquely and genuinely connecting them with the talent and stars they admire. Actors, athletes, comedians, musicians, and celebrities in turn have been able to more deeply connect with their audience and broaden their reach and impact. This has resulted in explosive growth for the company,” said Ilya Fushman, partner, Kleiner Perkins. “But what excites us the most are the longer-term opportunities for the platform to create new types of engagement and consumer happiness. We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Cameo to the Kleiner Perkins portfolio.”
Plus the company is also planning to significantly increase headcount at its L.A. office that opened in February — which has 20 employees. Plus the company is also ramping up the company’s existing operations in the UK and Australia and to open key new markets in Europe, Asia, and South America. At the company headquarters in Chicago, Cameo has 66 employees.
“It’s the top of the second inning at Cameo. We have an ambitious roadmap that includes developing new, rich conversation features, bolstering our talent roster in key verticals, and aggressively scaling our global presence. Our co-founder Martin Blencowe, who is British, is even moving back to London to oversee international expansion,” added Cameo CEO Steven Galanis — who launched the company with Blencowe and CTO Devon Townsend in 2017. “This Series B investment will help supercharge our growth and allow us to continue to build out a world-class team. We look forward to making millions more around the globe smile, laugh, and cry.”
Cameo works with consumers to book celebrities in order to create personalized video shoutouts including birthday wishes, good luck messages, prom invitations, marriage proposals, baby gender reveals, job offers, pep talks, etc.
Some of the celebrities on the platform include NBA all-time leading scorer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, NFL Hall of Famer Troy Aikman, actor Sean Astin, Bella Thorne, Stormy Daniels, Sonja Tremont-Morgan of Real Housewives of New York, Lance Bass of NSYNC, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Caitlyn Jenner, Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank, and influencers like Evan Breen (booked over 4,000 times).
Rapper Snoop Dogg and Bethenny Frankel of Real Housewives of New York have also invested in Cameo.
“Cameo is cool and easy to use. Fans love it, talent loves it, I love it, and the size of this funding round shows that investors love it,” explained Snoop Dogg — who was a Series A investor and signed onto the company’s talent roster in April. “With their team and the new money behind them, they’re on their way to going worldwide.”
The celebrities can set their own prices ranging between $5 to $2,500. And Cameo splits it on a 75%/25% basis.
“I’ve spent my entire career interacting with fans, and Cameo’s approach lets me do it in an entirely new way that is really having an impact on people,” noted legendary NFL quarterback Brett Favre — who has served as an active advisor to the company since joining the Cameo talent lineup last year. “They had a great idea, they executed it well, and we’re seeing the results in the bottom line.”
