Live data from Hacker News

Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

techcrunch.com

21–30 of 51 posts

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#22
People pay tons of money to take posed pictures with celebrities at meet and greets all the time, so I think that Cameos at least have a clear audience. It might not be for everyone, but I think it's kind of fun especially for minor celebrities who are fairly affordable to hire for something silly.

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#23
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience as a Cameo customer, the videos are received very well as a gag gift. "OMG, I can't believe you got them to make me a video!" To me, the open question is if the novelty factor will wear off. I don't think I would ever get the same person a second Cameo. I'm not even sure if I would keep buying Cameos if the service was well-known. A big part of the gag is "How did you pull that off?!" Maybe there are…

The more disconcerting problem is, even if it's a trend and not a fad ... there are still valuation problems with this.

Based on what? Celebs & pop stars are already getting paid millions per year to speak/play at private events. Commoditizing that market and making it accessible on a variety of platforms at a variety of pricing tiers is going to bring in a ton of money.

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#24

> Cameo has a roster of 15,000 celebrities that they believe could expand to 5 million. 5 million celebrities??? What does the platform offer the celebrities for the 25% cut? This is a cute gimmick, but how on earth is it worth $300MM? Any value comes from novelty; when everyone is getting a custom message from a "celebrity", how much value is left? Are they betting that this society gets more enamored with influence…

On top of that, is there even 5 million celebs to begin with? That number seems to high to me.

"Kleiner Perkins’ Fushman recently became available for booking"

if being a partner at Kleiner Perkins counts as celebrity, then yes, they should have no trouble finding 5 million.

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#25
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also wondering if deepfake could eventually disrupt them

Without an explicit license from the celebrity that likely would infringe on image or likeness of the celebrity and not be protected by fair use.

Which will matter to absolutely no one, just as music is remixed and memes made with no recourse.

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#26
I hadn't heard of cameo before, but my wife and I went to a broadway show, she very much enjoyed one of the performers, and afterwards she looked him up on twitter and sent me his twitter feed to show me some tweet or other. On his twitter profile he had a link to his Cameo profile, and for $20 I had him send my wife a little video about that performance we were at, and to talk about the show generally. A couple days later she got a 45 second clip he recorded during intermission, he talked about the show, thanked her for being a fan, and was generally very gracious. She was surprised and delighted, and I felt like it was $20 well-spent.

So, while I'm super skeptical about the C-list celebrity market ($50 for Chris Hansen? Presumably to make a to catch a predator joke?), I think there may be an opportunity here for fans to connect with the long tail of artists and celebrities.

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#27
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without an explicit license from the celebrity that likely would infringe on image or likeness of the celebrity and not be protected by fair use.

Which will matter to absolutely no one, just as music is remixed and memes made with no recourse.

For individuals doing it on their own, sure, but if it’s a service (like this but with “deepfake”) it wouldn’t last long before the lawsuits come in.

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#28

$50M means a valuation at least north of $150M I just don't see how this gets to that sum. How is this a sustainable business at the kind of scale needed to 10x a $50M investment? Especially by KP? #Bubblesignal

It's pretty hard to ascertain the value of a company and the required exit size from a a single investment round's size alone. There could be warrants to buy more stock, liquidation preferences, ratchets, etc. The math from this alone can get pretty tricky.

This seems like a revenue generating company from the get-go, unlike something like facebook, so I suspect they already have revenue and it's growing pretty fast. Given America's (and other countries too) fascination with Celebrities, I could see this as a pretty highly valued company.

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#29
Whilst this market baffles me theres no doubht its massively lucrative when you consider it can likely compare to atwitch service like twitch in a broad sense

Pay a personality for a second of recognition except as an added bonus you get some reactions in the chat

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#30
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which will matter to absolutely no one, just as music is remixed and memes made with no recourse.

For individuals doing it on their own, sure, but if it’s a service (like this but with “deepfake”) it wouldn’t last long before the lawsuits come in.

The component that generates would be distinct from the model used. You make the model freely available, but charge to generate. Highly unlikely we’re going to outlaw math distributed online.

Given enough time, assume you’ll be able to run this on a phone eventually.

Post reply on HN