Oh I remember this app:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/celebrities-...
Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers
31–40 of 51 posts
Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers
#32I 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…
your anecdote makes me understand a little bit of the value of cameo, despite otherwise being baffled by the product.
celebrity culture is fascinating, not because i care much about celebrities, but because its value seems on the surface of it both out of proportion and hard to pin down. and our emotional and social systems seem to be subverted somehow in the process.
the entertainment value of a movie, show or concert, and even their cultural value, seems somewhat straightforward, but how do we (over-?)value the entertainer beyond their craft skills? why do people so adore them from a distance, enough for something like cameo to have a valuation in the hundreds of millions?
Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers
#33Earlier 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…
Also wondering if deepfake could eventually disrupt them
Surely no one actually cares all that much about the video itself? The novelty is the fact the actual celebrity took some time to do something involving you or someone you know.
You can already happily Photoshop a hugely convincing signed celebrity photo, I don't see people who want such things affected by this or feeling the real thing is worth any less. Giving someone a deep fake as a gift or novelty would feel somewhat strange/hollow.
Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers
#34I'm honestly surprised Cameo is doing as well as it is. To me, I personally find it sort of cheesy. I didn't purchase a Cameo or anything, but I did sign up on the service to see what it was like, and who all was on it. It seemed to be filled with quite a range of actors/actresses/celebs/etc. but since each of them were basically just reading a cliché "happy birthday" type script with insert {blank} name into the Cam…
> Like being able to invite them to parties, or events, and pay them for an actual true "cameo." It would obviously come with a price, but to me, that would be much more innovative.
This so much. I would never pay for a VIP session with a guitarist I like, but I would pay quite a bit for a couple of actual guitar lessons.
Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers
#35I'm honestly surprised Cameo is doing as well as it is. To me, I personally find it sort of cheesy. I didn't purchase a Cameo or anything, but I did sign up on the service to see what it was like, and who all was on it. It seemed to be filled with quite a range of actors/actresses/celebs/etc. but since each of them were basically just reading a cliché "happy birthday" type script with insert {blank} name into the Cam…
You frame this as sensible business advice that would move Cameo from where they are now to being a business that could capture your money, but really what you're saying is that you aren't Cameo's target market. There's no reason for Cameo to change if they're doing well. They don't need to pivot simply because they don't appeal to you or me.
Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers
#36$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.…
Finding the 'technical value' of things can be tricky, as you say with all the special features of a deal.
But in general, it's actually fairly straightforward.
Investors are usually looking to take x% ownership, ballpark in a round, and they are all looking for at least a 10x return.
Technicalities of deals vary, but in the end, a 'round' of investors may get 10-30% and they have big expectations for returns, otherwise it's not worth it.
Given the paths to liquidity are IPO or 'get acquired', I'm hard pressed to see the logic on this one. How many pure media companies have done major IPO's based on hard, forecastable metrics lately? And what kind of 'big pockets' company would be interested in making a $500M-$1B acquisition of such a thing? Disney? I don't think so really.
I can certainly see the founders making some kind of 'big story' about what they are going to do, but the essentials of what they are doing is not great. I don't see how the experience will be protected, I don't see a lot of competitive advantage, I don't see how they get to the kinds of sales required for those massive valuations, and of course this has a lot of 'fad risk'.
Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How much is a 'ton'? 5 Million? 10 million? 100 million?
How big really is the market for a celeb sending a custom 10 second video talking about something, and can this entity really control that market? How do they maintain their margins.
Take Social Media for example, it'd seem there doesn't seem to be a massive player that controls how the sponsorship money flows into influencers, and not for a lack of trying.
Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers
#38> 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.
If you count niche markets, then yes.
I just found out that a friend of mine is one of the best players in the world of a certain card game similar to Magic The Gathering(but nowhere near as popular). I knew he played the game and was good at it, but only found out he was 'famous' in the scene when someone came up to our table when were getting lunch to take a selfie with him.
Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers
#39If the celebs are just doing pre-scripted videos with fill in the blanks, how hard would it be to alter the audio and fill in the blanks yourself using a machine?
IIRC there was a Google deep AI project or something similar which was able to "match" a human voice.
Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers
#40Another 50 million dollars of the world's hard-earned time and effort well spent by the VCs there.